Google has released the “Preview Pane” as a Gmail Labs feature. This allows users to preview messages in their inbox using a layout similar to how Gmail looks on a tablet device.

“When I check my email, I often rely on the message snippets to figure out which messages to open first,” says Gmail Associate Product Manager Maciek Nowakowski. “Sometimes, though, I want to see more than snippets, which is why I’m happy to announce that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane.”

Like all Gmail Labs feature, you have to enable it in settings. Once you’ve done so, you’ll see a toggle button in the right corner of your message list. This lets you switch between preview and list views. The button looks like this:

“For those of you who have more vertical space you can also move the preview pane below your message list. You can enable this using the dropdown arrow next to the toggle button,” notes Nowakowski. “By default there is a 3-second delay in marking a conversation as read after previewing it. If that doesn’t feel natural to you, you can change the timing in the General tab of settings.”

Google also announced the expansion of phone calls from Gmail earlier this week. Last week, they showed off a script that lets you hit the snooze button on email messages.

Greg Bullock, a software engineer at Google, explained the problem on the Gmail Blog.  He wrote, "Have you ever found it just a little bit tricky to find what you were looking for on the Gmail Labs Settings page?  Scrolling was ok when there were a handful of Labs, but now that there are over 50 it’s another story."

Next, Bullock continued, "A lunchtime discussion made us realize that having to rely on the browser’s search function or endless scrolling makes it hard to find the Labs features you want.  So another Gmail engineer named Manu [Cornet] and I decided take an afternoon and address this.  The result is an addition to the Settings page which filters the visible Labs as you type."

This should make it considerably easier for would-be testers to find the Gmail Lab that’s right for them.

Google should then benefit as people provide feedback and help the company improve Gmail, which has in large part lost its "lots of storage compared to rivals" draw.

We’ll just remind everyone not to get too attached to any given Gmail Lab, since the old warning about them breaking or disappearing at any point still applies.

Chances are, the feature will be automatic in the future. Google says by using it, you’ll be getting a preview before its turned on for everyone. 

"The higher resolution video uses a new playback mechanism which enables widescreen VGA and frees up valuable resources on your computer," says product manager Serge Lachapelle.  "For it to work, both you and the person you’re chatting with will need to have the lab turned on. Remember that you can always revert to standard video chat by disabling the lab."

Google says it plans to add additional video chat enhancements to the lab in the future. Having the lab turned on will mean getting those features first as well. 

The lab is simply called "Video chat enhancements". You can turn it on in the labs tab under settings in Gmail. 

The feature is also available in Orkut.

Many of the "graduated" features are ones you’re probably familiar with, or can at least guess the functions of.  Forgotten Attachment Detector, YouTube Previews, Custom Label Colors, and Vacation Dates all fall under this heading.

The last two approved features are Search Autocomplete and Go To Label, and a post on the Official Gmail Blog covers the only tricky parts, explaining, "If you have keyboard shortcuts turned on, type ‘g’ then ‘l’ and instead of getting the old ‘Go to label’ pop-up, you’ll be in the search box with the ‘label:’ operator filled in for you.  Start typing the label you want to go to, and autocomplete will take it from there.  All you have to do is hit enter.  If you want to send your cursor to the blank search field, the keyboard shortcut ‘/’ will do it."

As for the experimental features that’ve been dropped, they’re called Muzzle, Fixed Width Font, Email Addict, Location in Signature, and Random Signature.  And a lack of popularity is the main reason they didn’t make it further, in case you were wondering.

Anyway, Google’s likely to introduce more Gmail Labs features to replace all of this stuff before long.

- Dictionary definitions
- Spelling corrections
- Calculations
- Local results
- Weather
- News

You can now enter "define" and a word in the search box to retrieve a definition. If you spell something wrong, it will ask you if you meant something else. If you type in a math expression, you’ll get the calculation. You can search for a specific place or for things near a specific place and get map results (although Google said this feature will become available in a few weeks). It will also show you the More Info link, which will take you to a place page.

You can type "weather" followed by your city and state (or country) or zip code and get local weather results not unlike what you would get in a regular Google search. If your query matches something in the news, you may get some news results.

The new features are available in all languages that Gmail supports. They have also added a search button to the toolbar when you compose a message. With this, you can select text, click the button, and it will search for that. If you don’t select text, it will just bring up a search box.

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"By installing Offline Gmail, you’re able to use the normal Gmail interface to read and write mail, search, and organize, even when there’s no internet connection," explains Gmail software engineer Aaron Whyte. "And Flaky Connection mode speeds up Gmail when your connection is slow or unreliable."

"Since we first launched in Labs, we’ve heard from a lot of you who tried Offline Gmail, and your feedback helped us make a lot of improvements," adds Whyte.

Google recently added a couple of new features for offline Gmail. These are an option to choose which messages get downloaded for offline use, and the ability to send attachments while offline.

"Offline Gmail has proven particularly useful for business and schools making the switch to Google Apps from traditional desktop mail clients — they’re used to being able to access their mail whether or not they’re online, and Offline Gmail brings this functionality right to the browser," says Whyte.

To utilize the offline feature in Gmail, just turn it on and adjust your offline settings from the "offline" tab in Gmail’s settings.

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"In the early days of email, messages were simple text meant to be read on a terminal. But with the growth of the web came the advent of HTML email, and overnight people began expressing themselves through bold and italics, colors and images, and whatever else their creativity inspired," Google says. "If you like to use a specific text style for your messages, you’ve had to change the font every time you’re about to start typing out an email."

The purpose of this new Labs feature is to change that. If you turn the feature on, you can easily control how your message looks and alter that setting when you need to.

"If you live and breathe code, now you can set your default text style to a monospace font. If your life is purple, your email can be, too," the company adds. "But remember: whatever you see is what your recipients will see, so be nice to them and try not to clog the intertubes with ginormous bold italicized red script."

Just like with any other Gmail Labs feature, you will need to go to the Labs tab in your settings and activate it. If you’ve not messed around with Gmail’s Labs features, you will likely find some other useful features to activate as well.

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This works the same way YouTube, Yelp, Picasa, and Flickr album previews have already been working. Gmail automatically detects when you receive a document link and displays the name and type of document below the email. You can then click "show preview" or "open in new window."

If you click "show preview," you won’t have to switch between the email and the document, making it much more convenient in many cases. The feature is available as a Gmail Lab, so you’ll have to activate it for it to work.

This is just the latest of Google’s frequent enhancements to Gmail. Earlier this week they released the "Got the Wrong Bob?" feature, which is the latest addition to Google’s "embarrassment-reducing" email tools. It is designed to keep you from sending a message to the wrong person (something you’ve more than likely done at some point in your life).

"’Got the wrong Bob?’ is the latest addition to our set of ‘embarrassment-reducing’ Google tools, which help prevent the little mistakes that can cost so much," Google’s Victoria Katsarou tells WebProNews. "If you’ve ever sent an email you wish you could take back, forgot your significant other’s birthday, or sent an inappropriate email to your boss instead of sending to a friend with the same name, you should find these helpful."

Other features she is referring to include:

- Undo Send, which is pretty self-explanatory.

- Mail Goggles, which makes you solve math problems if you try to send an email between 10pm and 4am.

- "New Message" notification, which while on a group email, composing a reply, Google pops up a notification that lets you know if someone else has responded to the thread.

- Cell phone appointment reminders, which again is pretty self-explanatory.

- Off the Record, which is a feature in Gmail Chat that makes sure your messages aren’t saved.

To activate the "Got the Wrong Bob?" feature, you’ll need to go to settings and labs in your Gmail account, and turn it on.

"A lot of people want to see their labels in order to see which ones have unread messages, but they don’t want a long list of label names cluttering up the left hand side of their inboxes," says Gmail software engineer David de Kloet.

"This is particularly handy if you use your inbox as a to-do list where unread messages are the outstanding things you need to take care of," adds de Kloet. "If you use that method along with labels like "Home" and "Project X," it’s easy to see all your to-dos in context. With this Labs feature on, labels with outstanding to-dos will be bold and have a number next to them; everything else will be hidden in the "11 more" section."

The feature can be accessed by turning it on from the labs tab under Settings.

Gmail has a number of other label-related features that users can turn on in the labs section. They have "customre label colors," which let you create your own combination of colors for labels. The "go to label" feature lets users enable keyword shortcuts "g" and I’ to display a popup for selecting a label to go to. The "multiple inboxes" feature lets you add extra lists of emails in your inbox. New lists of threads can be labels, starred messages, drafts, or other searches. The "hide unread counts" lets you hide the number of unread messages in your labels. The "hide labels from subjects" feature lets you eliminate labels from subjects to save space on smaller screens.

That last one might be of particular interest to a number of Gmail users, now that Google has announced the push for iPhone feature, which allows users to sync their Gmail accounts to thier iPhones.