Google Rolls Out New Gmail Compose Features

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Users can now compose emails straight from their inbox.

Google has announced a "completely redesigned compose and reply experience" for its popular emailing service, Gmail.

The newly unveiled format allows users to compose messages directly from their inbox, allowing you to keep an eye on incoming messages at the same time, as well as the fact that you can reference other emails without have to close the draft you're working on.

When a user clicks the "Compose" button, the service's message template will appear in a window on the lower right-hand side of the screen; it's similar to how Gtalk messages appear within Gmail but larger.

"How many times have you been writing an email and had to reference something in another message?" Gmail product manager Phil Sharp said. "Saving a draft, opening the old email, and then reopening your draft wastes valuable minutes. Even better - you'll see the same changes when you respond to a message as well. The new reply window will take up much less space on your screen, and expand to fit your content. It will always show the message recipients, no matter how long your message gets."

A preview version of the new compose and reply format is now live for users; you can test it by clicking on the "new compose experience" next to the Labels button upon composing an email. As for when the new features come into fruition for everyone, Google said the new format will launch in the coming months.

Google is also implementing other notable features to the compose component such as the ability to insert inline images in a message. Also, when one is adding recipients to an email, the profile image next to their email address will be displayed in auto-complete.

In addition, the firm is adding a variety of other features to Gmail including emoticons, event invitations, read receipts and trashed responses; these will be available soon, Google assured.

 

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Zak Islam
Zak Islam
Contributing writer

Zak was a contributing writer at Tom's Guide with a focus on security, networking and general computing. As a fan of any and all news relating to hardware, graphics chips or CPUs, Zak has also written for other tech sites such as Tom's Hardware and Digital Trends.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rocknrollz
    Just used it a few times to send some business emails, I like the idea of it. Seems like a neat way to improve efficiency.
    Reply
  • eternalkp
    zak, you losing it?
    why no apple "news" today?

    isn't apple rolling out iOS6.0.1 update?
    Reply
  • killerclick
    Tried it, sucks, went back to standard compose.
    Reply
  • killerclick
    killerclickTried it, sucks, went back to standard compose.
    The reason it sucks is it can't be resized or moved without undocking to a separate browser window. I prefer Yahoo Mail's approach with tabs, but it would be trivial for Gmail to implement resizing/moving so I guess it has potential, just not very useful as it is now.
    Reply
  • joytech22
    killerclickTried it, sucks, went back to standard compose.Not sure what made it suck, it actually improved productivity here.
    Reply
  • pocketdrummer
    killerclickTried it, sucks, went back to standard compose.
    Also tried it, also sucked. The screen is tiny and every time you try to correct a address it removes the entire thing. Had to CC and BCC a bunch of people and it kept removing people, so I got pissed off that change it back. Needs work to be worthwhile.
    Reply
  • eijiyuki
    killerclickThe reason it sucks is it can't be resized or moved without undocking to a separate browser window. I prefer Yahoo Mail's approach with tabs, but it would be trivial for Gmail to implement resizing/moving so I guess it has potential, just not very useful as it is now.
    I was disappointed that it can't be moved at least, but in no way does it "suck." It has all the same features as before and it still improves efficiency many times. if you say it sucks that means Gmail before sucked as well.
    Reply
  • alidan
    i switched to html gmail when they changed the look of gmail because i hated what they changed it to so much.

    so im guessing this doesn't effect me at all.
    Reply
  • zak_mckraken
    Tried it and loving it!
    Reply
  • noblerabbit
    The best part that I recently discovered in Gmail, was the dropdown arrow box to the right of the actual inbox, you can resort the way messages appear, I totally didn't know that before.
    Reply