Tag Archives: tabs

Get Ready for Gmail Revamp – New Inbox on Desktop and Mobile Gmail Coming

gmail, google, , , , , ,


Google has been doing some major updating as of late to try and make it all work together. Gmail is one of those items that is getting a revamp. Today on the Official Gmail Blog, Product Manager Itamar Gilad announced the new features of this version to Gmail.

From the Gmail Blog: We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more. All of these emails can compete for our attention and make it harder to focus on the things we need to get done. Sometimes it feels like our inboxes are controlling us, rather than the other way around.

The new Gmail inbox will include tabs to organize different emails. Inbox groups (as Google calls it) will organize mail into categorized tabs. So spammy posts can go to an “Offers” tab and friends can be put into another tab.

desktop[1]

The mobile version of Gmail will also have this option. You will need to download from Google Play or Apple iOS App Store to get these features.

If you don’t like the new inbox, simply switch it off and it goes away.

This feature is rolling out slowly. When you get the new feature, you will see a “Configure Inbox” option in the settings (the gear icon on the top-right).

Firefox’s Tab Candy Extension

Firefox,

An Introduction to Firefox’s Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

I think I’m in love.  This is exactly what I’ve needed for a very long time.  I keep a lot of bookmarks, which are organized in folders, but I also tend to leave Firefox open for days and days with the tabs open that I need.  To be able to group tabs and create the groups I need to hold the things I need together…I’m just in awe.  Can’t wait for this to get out of Beta.

My only request?  Let me share those tabs and the tab candy in the cloud, so that I can access my tab candy’d stuff no matter what computer I’m using (since I float between at least four on a daily basis).  This would be totally awesome for me!

Using Your Tabs

Information, ,

One of the fabulous features of Firefox, and now Internet Explorer, is the ability to use tabs inside the browser. I have a complete routine upon starting up my computer each morning at work, loading up tabs that I will use frequently throughout the day: our trouble ticket system, gmail, the staff directory on our Intranet, the document center on our Intranet, the local television news site that I look at when I have a pause in activity, etc. The effect is a neat and clean task bar that includes only one Firefox tab, along with the other things I may have open to work with (Outlook, MS Excel, Omnipage, etc.). I can even save these tabs when I close Firefox for the day, and they will reload when I boot up in the morning. Using tabs rather than several instances of the browser makes it that much easier to switch between items I’m using, as I don’t have to open or re-maximize a window every time. I just click the tab and the web page appears almost instantly.

I am surprised at how many techs in my department either don’t know about tabs, or haven’t tried them. One of my coworkers has so many instances of her browser open that there is no task bar left, and I can’t imagine how she even figures out which item is which in that mess, the tabs are so squished in her task bar.

I rarely use IE, so I can’t speak as confidently about how tabs work in it as I can about Firefox, which I use 99% of the time. If you’re a tech and not using tabs in the browser, I’d be interesting in knowing why not. If you haven’t heard of them before, or tried them, you should.