Gmail Labs

I've been using Gmail for years, and against my advice, most of my family hesitated to ditch their stale ISP-issued email accounts for correspondance (ie: Comcast.net). Thank goodness most of them have finally seen the light and migrated over. Are you (or someone you know) a newly coined Gmail convert? Then share this post with them, or bookmark for later reference!

• Tired of those boring text-only signatures or canned responses coming from your Gmail account? Take note: Gmail supports rich text signatures! Add links, colors, images, or formatting to your Gmail account signature, or any other account you've set up to send from Gmail. It's super easy to set up — just head to your settings page, scroll down to the Signature section, and design away!
• You can drag and drop attachments in Gmail, but did you know you can also select multiple attachments, find attachments in search, and view attachments online?

See more handy tips after the jump.

Since I generally keep my Gmail window open for much of the day, checking for new messages is like muscle memory. The downside: sometimes I do it way too often. Two new just-released tools from Google provide fast and easy access to new and unread messages.

If you, like me, tend to leave at ton of browser tabs open, you'll love the latest Gmail Labs release. The new unread message icon is a tiny number that displays directly over the Gmail icon in your browser tab displaying the number of unread messages in your inbox. It's not unlike the number in parentheses that typically displays on the browser tab, but that number can sometimes get hidden if you have many open tabs. To turn it on, go to the Labs tab in settings, enable it, and click save. This lab is only available in Chrome and Firefox.

Check out the second notification feature (that works for Gchat, too!) after the break.

Gmail has always offered a steady stream of new features and helpful tips aimed at streamlining your digital life. Recent helpful additions have focused on attachments, and now a new Gmail Labs feature allows users to search for attachments and files using a tool called Apps Search.

The new tool, which users must enable in Gmail Labs to work (go to Settings > Labs > enable Apps Search), changes the "Search Mail" function in your Gmail account to "Search Mail and Docs." When you use the search function within your email, search results will include both email (like you're used to now) and document results, including attachments and Google Docs files. For now, email results show up first and faster than attachments, so if you choose to enable this lab, it won't slow down your search results.

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