Gmail offers inbox preview

For those too busy to wait for the whole shebang to load

26 May 2009 9:35 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

...Or on a really slow connection. Peter Balsiger, a software engineer at Google, says in a post on the Gmail blog that when he checks his personal Gmail account, "sometimes I end up checking my mail only to find nothing new there".

Balsiger's lack of personal email aside, the point of the new feature is to save a timely full load up of a Gmail inbox, only to find no new messages, or none of interest.

Balsinger explains: "Imagine that you access Gmail on a super slow connection from a remote place in Ethopia where it might take minutes to completely load your inbox. The disappointment is larger when you find out that there is nothing new to read and you could have saved all that time".

To "ease this pain" the new feature in Gmail Labs called "Inbox Preview" offers a simple, static preview of your inbox with your ten most recent messages shown while Gmail is loading, so "you'll know from the start if it's worth the wait".

The new feature, due to save time and disappointment everywhere, is available now through Gmail Labs in Settings.