Google to Add New Features To Gmail! Introduces 'Labs' Option for Gmail

News.com reports that, Google is introducing a new 'Labs' option for Gmail. Google wants to add new features to the Gmail service and at 6 p.m. PDT Thursday, users would be able to select from 13 new features in a "labs" tab in the Gmail settings page.

According to Keith Coleman (Gmail product manager), “The idea is you can do whatever you want, get it out to tens of millions of people, and get feedback.”

Some of the possible new features are:

1. A quick-link tool that lets people bookmark specific Gmail messages.
2. The "e-mail addict" tool that lets people lock themselves out of their e-mail account for 15 minutes.
3. A fixed-width font option to view a message with in a font whose characters are the same width–handy for some formatting challenges.
4. Mouse gestures that let users take actions based on mouse movements.
5. Signature tweaks that let people automatically add a signature file above quoted text in an e-mail reply.

Keith Coleman further added, “Any engineer can code a labs feature. Once the code is written and mostly working, it'll get into the next product build that goes to users.” It basically means that, for now only engineers are allowed to add features.

When asked as to why Gmail, has been in the Beta phase for the last years, Coleman replied, “We have really high standards. There are a few things we want to do before we take it out of beta, but we expect to do it soon."

These new features, are quite a welcome change, as it's been quite a while, since we've seen a major upgrade to Gmail.

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