Gmail Labs: Message Sneak Peak and Nested Labels

The Gmail Blog announced two new Labs Features today: Message Sneak Peak and Nested Labels.

Nested labels isn’t all that interesting to me, but I know a lot of people who are going to very excited about this one (as for me, Gmail search works just fine…). As you will see from the announcement, the key is using slashes to simulate a hierarchy. Clever – and didn’t the “better gmail” Firefox add-ins use this method?

You’ll then need to name your label with slashes (/) to make it the child of another. For example, let’s say you wanted to create a simple hierarchy with a “Home” label, and inside it a “Family” and a “Vacation” label. Just create three labels with the following names:

Home
Home/Family
Home/Vacation

The second lab added is Message Sneak Peak and I think this one is pretty cool. Sometimes, seeing some of the first line (the default way things work) just isn’t enough. With Message Sneak Peak you can right-click on a message and you’ll get a little preview popup. Again, from the announcement:

After you turn it on, right-clicking on a line in your inbox shows a preview pane with the message in it.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts for a faster sneak-peeking flow (enable keyboard shortcuts in Settings first if you haven’t done so): hit ‘h’ to open a sneak peek card, then navigate with ‘j’ and ‘k,’ and dismiss the current card by pressing “Escape.” Messages you peak at will stay unread (or it wouldn’t really be a sneak peek, would it?).

At first glance, you might think this saves you any time. I mean, click or right-click, you still see the message. But if you right-click you can just hit escape to close the popup and you’re still in your inbox. A very quick way to glance at the latest messages. I anticipate using this for “email triage” first thing in the morning.

Anyone else interested in either of these? Am I missing the boat on not being very excited about nested labels? Ya know? One advantage to nesting is being able to collapse and save screen space… that alone might make it useful for folks with tons of labels.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Gmail: Rich Text Sigs!