Gmail is huge hit amongst users not only because it is a part of family of Google, but due to many reasons. There are so many extra features created by some professional and independent developers. Every feature makes it more users friendly and hence it is becoming the most favorite of all users.

Canned Responses

If there are common messages to be sent to all friends, it can be done with a button next in compose form.

Google Calendar Widget

All upcoming events, locations and details can be viewed in Google Calendar. It is seen in left of the mail box.

Google Docs Gadget

There is special notification by Google docs, recent dos, starred docs and even faster search.

Google Maps Preview in mails

Google maps will show address of all the senders who are sending mails, as it previews all addresses.

Image Insertion

All kinds of images insertion can be done by URLs too. You need to be online for this, as it would not work in offline mode.

Mark as Read Button

Just select the mails and click on ‘Mark as read’ to avoid having them unread in your mails.

Message Sneak Peaks

Conversation can be easily peeked without right clicking and opening them in new window.

Mouse gestures

Mouse gestures are helpful. Holding on right click of mouse  and moving it left will help to view previous conversation,  moving it right will help to go to  next conversation, while moving up will help to go to main inbox.

Preview Pane

reading mail is easier when it is connected with list of conversation. Gmail allows with the preview Pane feature too.

Sender Time Zone

Why to call the sender and disturb him at any odd hours when you know the time the message was send.

Undo Send

whether you forgot to add a sender or has too many names in sender list, undo button is here to help. Message can b stopped even after hitting send button by clicking on ‘Undo’.

All these features make Google very special and friendly to be used by everyone. So start accessing Google Labs now.

If you are using Google Chrome and Gmail in it then you might be interested in the new desktop notification features that Google has introduced. Many a times it may happen that you are working on other browser window and miss out on some important chat or email that you received in your Gmail. Now you will not miss any conversation as Google has introduced HTML5 based desktop notifications that shows a pop-up whenever a chat message or new email arrives.

Google’s Andrew Wilson said –

Many of us are guilty of constantly switching back to Gmail to check for new messages. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably missed an important chat message because you weren’t looking at your Gmail window when it came in,

If you use Google Chrome, these days can be over since we just launched HTML5 desktop notifications which display pop-ups whenever a chat message or new email arrive

You might have noticed “update desktop notification” showing by default on top of your inbox and if you have missed, then to activate this feature, go to Gmail settings and activate desktop notifications. You can also customize it so you only receive Gmail or Gchat notifications, or only priority inbox notifications.

[via - Google Blog]

Gmail is certainly one of the most advanced web email provider available today. Along with excellent storage space, fantastic search functionality and less complexity, it carries all required qualities you can ask in an email-client. Many of us use Gmail for all kind of email communications as it is fast and reliable. So, most of us also end up registering several Gmail Accounts for different purpose. But it becomes difficult to access all accounts at once on the one browser.

Previously, you had to log out from one account in order to access another account if you are working on one same browser. But not anymore, Google has come up with new feature that lets you login to various Gmail/Google accounts in the same browser. This new feature removes the need of signing out or using a different browser for using various accounts at once.

Steps to unable multiple account access in one browser:

• Go to google.com/accounts
• Locate multiple sign-in option in personal setting, click on edit

• Turn on multiple Google account in the same browser (select each checkboxes)
• Save the settings and your done!

Note – If you use multiple sign-in, the first account you sign in to will be your default account. If you visit other Google products that don’t support multiple accounts after you’ve signed in, you will automatically sign in to your default account for that product. If you sign out of any Google product while signed in to any account, you will be signed out of all your Google Accounts at once. This feature can also be disabled by going through the same process.

You must also know this multiple account sign-in feature is not supportable for few Google service like Blogger and Picasa web albums etc. As of now it supports App Engine, Code, Calendar, Gmail, Reader, Sites and Voice. Further it is restricted to desktop browser and not enabled for mobile phones!

Gmail is increasing its reach by time by time introducing lab feature out of  box. There are many lab features that make mailing extraordinary. Mailing is not supposed to be composing a mail and write few words or attach a documents. The meaning of email changing day by day because along with normal mailing feature we have lots of new features that e-mailing extraordinary. Here are 10 amazing list of Gmail lab features from the use of which you can become an extra ordinary e-mailer.  For enabling the lab you should go to Setting> Labs.

Offline You can use Gmail while your internet connection not ready to support you. You can access you Gmail inbox, preview mails and send mail also. Your outgoing mail will enter into outbox and next time whenever you will be online your mil will automatically sent.

YouTube previews in mail

If your friend send you any youtube video link then you should open it into another browser to have a preview by default. By enabling this lab feature you will preview your youtube videos directly in your mail.

Message translation

Suppose you got a client from a country like China or Russia then you should face some problem regarding language of the mail. By activating the feature you can translate the mail of any language to English, it use Google Translate to translate messages you receive in other languages

Custom keyboard shortcuts

By activating this feature you can save lots of time. You can use lots of keyboard shortcuts to save your time. A new setting tab will automatically added to your Gmail setting from the help of which  you can remap keys to various actions. Here are a keyboard shortcuts.

Google Search You don’t need to go to other tab to search on Google. By activating the feature a search box will appear inside your mail window and it will displays Google search results inside your mail window, letting you quickly find things and use them when you’re writing an email.

Right-side chat
Want some fun with Gmail chat box. You chat box will move to the right side of the inbox.

Inserting images

You can insert image directly in you mail. You don’t need to attach image file. You can upload and insert image files in your computer, or insert images by URLs.

Undo Send

This is called as panic button of Gmail. After sending the mail if you realize your mistake in your mail, you don’t need to worry, after enabling this Gmail lab feature an option of undo will appeared on the upper side of mail window. You will get some extra seconds from Gmail to edit the sent mail.

Tasks adds a to-do list to Gmail. After adding the lab, click the Tasks link above the chat box on the left-hand-side of the page. Your task list will appear on the right – click anywhere in the list and start typing to add a task.

Email Addict
If you are Gmail addict then this feature is specially made for you. After particular time interval your screen will block. You can take a break from email and chat for 15 minutes.

If you like any other lab feature, you can explore it via comments.

Gmail Labs seems to the most happening place as they are constantly adding new features into Gmail. Today Gmail labs has added another feature for converting emails into Google docs. If you ever wanted to have the email conversations as a document, this is the best feature to do it. Once you have enabled the feature in Gmail labs, you can start creating documents for any email.

Google recently introduced a new feature in Gmail that lets you easily convert an email conversation into a Word document without having to use copy-paste.
Simply click the “Create a Document” link next to any Gmail thread and the entire message gets uploaded as new document in Google Docs

If U don’t have Gmail,no problem!

The good news is that you can enjoy this email-to-doc facility even outside Gmail. Go to “Upload a File” page and grab that secret email address assigned to you by Google Docs. Now open any email message in Yahoo!, Outlook or some other mail program and forward that thread to your “secret” Google Docs email address. Your email message will become available as an editable Word Document in Google Docs within seconds.
This trick could be useful for Gmail users as well who access mail on mobile devices where it is not always possible to add the “create document” gadget from Gmail labs due to browser limitations.

Prevent Gmail from Marking your Important Emails as Spam
Gmail has included a new Never Send it to Spam option in Gmail search filter that allows you to set rules for messages that should never be marked as spam. False positives in Gmail are rare but not non-zero and there’s always a possibility that an important email may miss your Inbox because Gmail filters have marked that message as spam.
So why are you waiting now Get Rid of the Unread Spam Message Count in Gmail and Your IMAP Client
If you are a Gmail user, you’ve probably noticed the annoying unread message count for the Spam folder. It’s even worse when you use an IMAP client to access your email, and then try and use a search folder for unread mail… which gives you nothing but spam.What we’ll do is use Gmail’s filter capabilities to create a filter that automatically marks spam messages as read, preventing the unread count from appearing anywhere.This method should work for both Gmail as well as any IMAP client that you use. (Note: This only works if you are using the new gmail interface.)
Mark All Spam as Read Automatically
Open up Gmail and then click the link to create a new filter. In the “Has the words” box, enter “in:spam” (without the quotes) as you can see in the image below. You can use the Test Search button to make sure it shows just spam emails.

Now click the Next Step button, and ignore the error message you get. Select the checkbox for “Mark as read”, and then click the Create Filter button. Note that you could auto-delete all spam using this same filter, although I’m not recommending that.
At this point, all incoming spam will be automatically marked as read. (You’d want to clear out the current spam, of course)

All Gmail Users Are Given Two Separate Email Addresses automatically>

All Gmail users are provided with two distinct e-mail addresses when they join. If you have xyz@gmail.com as an e-mail address, then Google also provides you with xyz@googlemail.com

This feature apparently has been there for a long time in Gmail, for some reason Google didn’t announce this. But tech bloggers were able to dig this detail out.

With Gmail, you can create multiple e-mail addresses (or aliases) with the same account and you can do this with the following three ways.
1. With a plus sign: Once you log on to G-mail, go to Settings –> Accounts –> Add another e-mail address –> then enter “xyz+xyz1@gmail.com” or “xyz+xyz2@gmail.com”, so on.
2. By adding a dot sign: I have explained this procedure here. Gmail’s program code is set in a way it doesn’t recognize dots or periods in e-mail address. So you can add dots in between the e-mail address as follows:x.yz@gmail.com or xy.z@gmail.com and so on by going to Settings –> Accounts –> Add another e-mail address –> then enter 
x.yz@gmail.com or ,xy.z@gmail.comso on. 3. Two e-mails in One: No setup necessary for this third method, when you register your account xyz@gmail.com, Google automatically registers an additional e-mail account as xyz@googlemail.com. Both addresses will receive the e-mails at the same account. To separate them you have to use filters. For example, you can pass one of the e-mail addresses to your close friends and filter them to a separate folder, and can give the other e-mail addresses for shopping or websites. Thus you can create literally 100s of e-mail addresses from one Gmail account.
Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft can match this feature.
Some more useful tricks
While Web-based email is nothing new, Gmail introduces some new and unique concepts. Managing email has become very easy while at the same time having powerful tools to find and review information.

• Advertizing
• Reading Messages
• Archiving
• Labels
• Gmail Tip #1: All About Labels
• Gmail Tip #2: How to Maintain ‘Notes’
• Gmail Tip #3: The ‘Plus’ Side of Gmail
• Gmail Tip #4: What Happens To Sent Messages?
• Gmail Tip #5: Advanced Search – View Multiple Labels
• Gmail Tip #6: Advanced Search – ‘Query Words‘
• Gmail Tip #7: ‘Official’ Features and Bugs Status Page>
• Gmail Tip #8: Cleaning Your Contacts
• Gmail Tip #9: New feature! Import Contacts
• Gmail Tip #10: Find Your Unread Messages
• Gmail Tip #11: Creating a Pseudo Address Group!
• Gmail Tip #12: Improved and New Contacts Feature
• Gmail Tip #13: Auto-forward received Gmail!
• Gmail Tip #14: Google Gmail Minibrowser