Google is Testing a New Preview Pane Layout for Gmail

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Posted August 5, 2011 at 1:46am by iClarified

Google has announced that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane

After you enable Preview Pane from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings you'll see a toggle button in the top right corner of your message list, which lets you switch between preview and list views.

Google is Testing a New Preview Pane Layout for Gmail

For those of you who have more vertical space you can also move the preview pane below your message list. You can enable this using the dropdown arrow next to the toggle button:

By default there is a 3-second delay in marking a conversation as read after previewing it. If that doesn't feel natural to you, you can change the timing in the General tab of settings.

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Notch - August 7, 2011 at 5:02pm

The preview options are a mixed bag. For Outlook users, this feature has been the source of problems, for example a recurring security risk. First someone sends you a malicious email script, then you have to open it. Auto preview makes this automatic! Better to delete suspicious email without opening it. Also, it muddles commercial email response rates, since an auto-open counts as a false "read". Outlook finally countered these issues with the default setting to not run scripts or download images automatically: you have to make an extra click to be able to view the fancy HTML email properly...which offsets the convenience of auto-preview! So, if gmail has solved this conflict, (made it safe, kept it easy, left it optional) I'm a happy user. Honestly, I never missed this feature. We should keep in mind that progress sometimes requires us to learn new, better methods. Like labels over folders. We don't want gmail to be like Outlook. Outlook sucks. I'll never go back!

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Alex Dias Teixera - August 5, 2011 at 7:54am

I'm glad they caught up, was waiting for this!!

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Zero Cool - August 5, 2011 at 3:19am

This Cool

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Buggsy2 - August 5, 2011 at 2:28am

Uhhhhâ¦hasn't MS Outlook had preview panes for years? So this is playing catchup, badly.

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dave - August 5, 2011 at 2:20am

This is pretty sweet