Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Gmail Adds a Splash of Color with New Colored Labels

Well... I guess I've just got Google on the brain. I noticed that Gmail now sports colored labels to help keep things a bit more organized. This is particularly helpful if you find yourself needing to give specific emails extra attention.

You can use labels in more of the traditional sense; you can apply a label to individual emails as you read them or to groups of emails in your inbox. I, however, wanted more of an automated approach. I used gmail filters to automatically apply a particular label as soon as it was received. That way whenever I get an email from any of my good friends, a colorful "Friends" label is placed along side.

A second benefit of using filters to apply the labels for you is that you can know exactly how many unread emails you may have for any particular label. So at a glance I know that there are 3 emails from my friends, 2 from family, and 5 that are (bleh) work related. With this knowledge, I can choose to get the work stuff out of the way or choose to take it easy for a bit and catch up with friends and family.

FYI, the new colored labels feature is only availble for Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7. And just so the world knows where I stand on the "which browser is better" debate, Firefox is where its at. I've been using it for a couple of years now and never looked back.

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