Google just introduced Gmail Labs — 13 new optional features that you can try out on your Gmail account. To get them go to your settings and click the Labs button. Let's check the new features out.

Quick Links

Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.

Basically what you do is make a search in your gmail, and then bookmark that search, so you don't have to enter it manually every time. Ideally it would be best if you could put these next to the main menu, but for now these appear in a separate box.

Example search terms to be bookmarked would be "is:unread" or "from:boss@email.com".

Very useful. Should be part of Gmail rolled out for everyone.

Superstars

Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature, you can choose which icons you wish to use in the "General" Settings page.

Besides the traditional yellow star that helps highlight the most important emails you can now have several other icons. Blue star, red star, orange star, green star, purple star, red exclamation mark, yellow exclamation mark, forward sign, question mark and info mark. You can select which ones you want to use, so you won't have to cycle through too many of them to find the desired icon.

One extra icon besides the yellow star is useful. I use the yellow star to mark items that need my attention and will use the red star for highest priority. More than 2 levels will probably get confusing for most people, but it doesn't hurt to have them.

Pictures in chat

See your friends' profile pictures when you chat with them.

It's helpful if you have more than one chat window open.

I don't use the Gmail chat from the browser. I use Adium for this purpose, so I don't care much for this new option, but most people would see a benefit. Thumbs up, should be part of Gmail by default.

Fixed width font

Adds an option to the reply dropdown menu that lets you view a message in fixed width font.

I guess this feature has good use if somebody sent you information as a table that can only be viewed properly with a fixed width font.

Good to have, but I will rarely use it if at all.

Custom keyboard shortcuts

Lets you customize keyboard shortcut mappings. Adds a new Settings tab from which you can remap keys to various actions.

Can be very useful for those who use these shortcuts. I tried using shortcuts a few times before, but accidental hits on the keyboard generating commands scared me, so I switched it off. Now that I can limit the shortcuts to some basic features such as "Archive" and "Delete" perhaps I will start using the shortcut feature again.

Mouse gestures

Use your mouse to navigate with gestures. Hold right-click and move the mouse left to go to a previous conversation, move it right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the inbox view.

Gmail claims it works best on Windows, but it worked perfectly under OS X as well. You have to press CTRL with a one mouse button.

Absolutely amazing to see that this is even possible within a browser based application. Can't tell if this is going to be useful on long term. Perhaps not as it stands, but with more gestures it can become powerful.

Signature tweaks

Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures. Can't use this and the "Random signature" Labs feature at the same time.

While this a very simple new feature, it's the most useful in my opinion. Should be introduced to be the default on Gmail today. There is nothing more disturbing than having your signature appear after the quoted text in emails. It generates a confusing email thread and this new addition will put an end to this issue. Two thumbs up.

Random signature

Rotates among random quotations for your email signature. Can't use this and the "Signature tweaks" Labs feature at the same time.

This feature generates quotes from the feed of the site brainyquote.com. And, the feed can be changed. If this feature becomes widely used, I can see many sites offering Gmail email quote RSS feeds. We could do a creativebits designers quotes RSS feed for example to make your emails look different, funny, relevant and smart every time.

It's a cute feature, but I never liked quotes in business communication. I won't be using this one, especially that it can't be used together with the Signature tweaks feature.

Custom date formats

Adds options to the general settings page allowing the date and time format to be changed independent of language. For example, you can use a 24-hour clock (14:57) or show dates with the day first (31/12/07).

It's a good addition for those living outside of the US, but use the US English interface and prefer the more logical 31/12/07 time format. ;)

Muzzle

Conserves screen real estate by hiding your friends' status messages.

Not much to be said about this one. It's a small change and I don't see much use for it. If I want to save screen real estate I can just close the whole box and be done with it.

Old Snakey

Kick it old school with Old Snakey! Enable keyboard shortcuts and hit '&' from the main page to play a game of snake.

Silly feature. It's just like the Google doodles. Infantile.

Waste of a talented programmers time. Thumbs down.

Email Addict

Lets you take a break from email and chat by blocking the screen for fifteen minutes and making you invisible in chat.

This feature adds a menu point on the top of your Gmail window which simply freezes the screen with a 15 minute countdown. Why not just close the window. Btw, if you decide you don't want to wait 15 minutes to get back to your email you can simply open your Gmail in another window.

Completely useless. This must be some cubicle joke that is beyond me. Three thumbs down.

Hide Unread Counts

Hides the unread counts for inbox, labels, etc.

I don't see much use for this one either. Maybe it is useful for somebody who is stressed out by seeing 300 unread emails in his Inbox.

Conclusion

Gmail Labs is going to be a really cool new way to test new Gmail features before introducing them to a bigger userbase. Google is serious about it, they are hiring people to write such widgets. And, as a user you can give feedback on them.

I will be using 3 of the 13 features starting today, which is a good average. Hopefully these new features will be introduced on Google Apps accounts soon as well!

With more such new features being introduced Gmail is becoming the most powerful email application and with Yahoo! and msn putting ads in outgoing emails, I don't see why would anyone use anything by Gmail.