The improved feature should make it more popular with Gmail users

Jul 2, 2009 09:01 GMT  ·  By

Gmail, the hugely popular web email client from Google, has been always updating and upgrading and now it is launching an improved "Labels" feature. The tweaks are meant to provide better label management and to make the feature more visible and easier to understand as Google found that the majority of Gmail users were not familiar with it.

“When I joined the Gmail team, I was surprised to learn that only 29% of Gmail users had created any labels. At first, I thought perhaps conversation threading and search made the need to organize our mail less important. But when we talked to people who use Gmail, we got a different story. People often asked us to add folders to Gmail, assuming no system of organization existed,” Michael Leggett, Gmail user experience designer, wrote.

The first thing you will notice is the new location of the labels, which are now integrated with the system labels like Inbox, Draft, etc. The move also made it necessary to hide some of the less used labels, which are available only after clicking the “more” link.

Another improvement, made to make the label system more like the folders in other email clients, is the drag and drop functionality. Now you can drag one or more conversations over the label you want to give them but you can also move the label over the conversations to apply it to them. Labels are also a lot more visible now, moving away from the links that were used previously to clear them with a colored background and you can assign a custom color to each one. Label management is also improved by the easier way to remove them with a small 'x' now showing besides them.

With the improved system Google also announced it would be dropping “Right-side Labels,” a feature implemented in Gmail Labs, and which enabled users with excess screen real-estate to move the labels to the right side of the email list, which was especially useful for long lists of labels.