New Labs Feature for Gmail: Move Icon Column
Gmail Labs is the place where Google software engineers release new and interesting experiments they come up with during their 20% time – the one day per week when they are allowed to work on something that is not necessarily in the job description. The developer to showcase what he worked on is Greg Bullock. The Gmail Labs experiment he came up with is called Move Icon Column.
What this Gmail experiment does is move the icon column from containing the attachment and other icons over to the left hand side to make it more noticeable. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture of what the Move Icon Column experiment does.
Software Engineer Greg Bullock comments on the Move Icon Column experiment: “The icon column in Gmail helps to easily distinguish the various types of items in your inbox. It's usually all the way over on the right of the screen, but with screen sizes becoming increasingly wider, I chose to make a very modest addition to Gmail Labs to try and give these icons greater visibility. I found it much more useful to have this column situated on the far left of my inbox.”
If you would like to turn on Move Icon Column, here is what you have to do (a simple 3-step process):
1. - Go to Gmail (click here – a new tab will open), enter your login credentials and click Sign in. If you are already signed into your Google account, click this link and you can just skip step 2 in this tutorial.
2. - In the top right corner of the screen, right next to your user name you should be able to see Settings; click it. Now locate Labs and click it as well.
3. - Scroll down until you find a Labs experiment called Move Icon Column. Select Enable, then click Save Changes (there’s a Save Changes tab at the top of the experiments list and at the bottom as well) and you’re done.
What this Gmail experiment does is move the icon column from containing the attachment and other icons over to the left hand side to make it more noticeable. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture of what the Move Icon Column experiment does.
Software Engineer Greg Bullock comments on the Move Icon Column experiment: “The icon column in Gmail helps to easily distinguish the various types of items in your inbox. It's usually all the way over on the right of the screen, but with screen sizes becoming increasingly wider, I chose to make a very modest addition to Gmail Labs to try and give these icons greater visibility. I found it much more useful to have this column situated on the far left of my inbox.”
If you would like to turn on Move Icon Column, here is what you have to do (a simple 3-step process):
1. - Go to Gmail (click here – a new tab will open), enter your login credentials and click Sign in. If you are already signed into your Google account, click this link and you can just skip step 2 in this tutorial.
2. - In the top right corner of the screen, right next to your user name you should be able to see Settings; click it. Now locate Labs and click it as well.
3. - Scroll down until you find a Labs experiment called Move Icon Column. Select Enable, then click Save Changes (there’s a Save Changes tab at the top of the experiments list and at the bottom as well) and you’re done.
