I like the color. It allows me to scan my inbox quickly for important email or email that needs correspondence. But I agree, I think it should be an option that the user can turn on and off at their leisure.

As for the folder-y-ish functionality, I just don't understand why people are SO stuck on folders. Labels are so much more versatile and using the label list on the side, it's pretty much the same as using folders. I just wish my work email in Outlook worked the same. I've started using smart search folders in Outlook that work similar to labels. Anyways, people need to get with the times and stop holding on to the old because it's familiar.

xious

My labels are plain, not colorful! What gives?

Ruiz

It's good to see this feature finally being added to Gmail. IMHO, the bubbles are good, and here's why: they stay out of your way when you don't need them; but when you do need them, they're very easy to distinguish. If they had been done any way else, it would be hard to use, and basically pointless. Granted, the colour choices are somewhat limited, but (again IMHO), it's fine the way it is.

tampabill92

The idea of colored labels is OK, but the implementation isn't very good. The new labels take more space than the old ones and break the flow I was accustomed to. Furthermore, I've filters that add more than one label to incoming mail (generally list mail), and that really pushes the subject to the right.

I think that a per-label configuration would help: Each label could have an optional abbreviation and a "collapsisble" status. If the collection of labels exceed a length threshold, for all the labels with the collapsible status set, the abbreviations could be used. Beyond a second threshold, the label could be collapsed to a colored box, for all collapsible labels with non-default colors.

Waitasec..... There. I've submitted my suggestion to GMail's team.

Most of the latest changes in Gmail have been slightly off the mark, but the GMail team generally fixes things up in a reasonable amount of time. Besides, you can't beat the price...

mzamora

I wonder how long until I see this show up on my account. I cant wait.

New features for Gmail are great but I'm too attached to Maxthon to switch over to Firefox for the Greasemonkey script.

chris-mcc

This is a "neat" feature, but not particularly useful. I have a zero inbox, so it doesn't really matter what the colors of labels are.

If the Gmail team is cherry picking features from greasemonkey or better gmail, they should start with implementing the "label" hotkey, followed by the option to display monospaced fonts.

There's a great many technical and programmer type people that use Gmail that would find great productivity boosts in both those features. Yes, I know. Better Gmail and Greasemonkey can do both those, but I don't want to install extensions on every single instance of Firefox that I use Gmail on.

jtimberman

Like it!

I do hope they port all of these recent changes to Google Apps mail as well, and soon.

Fras

Gina wrote:"Whoah, this is awesome. I love how the Gmail team uses Greasemonkey scripts to help them grow their product! :)"
yeah right, did you read what I said about the latest update

frank290

@timage: Yeah, they are a little scant on the colors. If I tried to color all my labels I'd have to repeat the sequence at least twice.

@Evan_D: I like the fact that they have the bubble when you choose a color, but the fact that even the "Remove Color" option has a bubble, it's kind of annoying. And having no color makes black label text, not green like they were before (green text is a separate color option, the default when your account is switched over, but it has an annoying bubble). I think if we all whine enough, Google will probably add some more options for these new colors.

voyagerfan5761

the greasemonkey script never worked quite right (you couldn't easily unselect categories in the main view), so this is a great step forward imho. Love the idea of colorcoding, and in spite of what evan says, I like the look too!

TechTalk WRLR 98.3FM

Love the labels. I was a big user with the colored labels in both Greasemonkey and the monkey's uncle, Better Gmail 1. One thing that I like now is that the colored labels don't revert to text after 10 minutes (needing to refresh the screen to bring them back).

One request...bigger color palette!

timage

I wish there was a way to turn these off. I may not be the average GMail user, but whenever anything is labeled, it's also archived. I don't like the visual clutter in my inbox of having labels. Especially in that particular column where it disrupts the vertical alignment of the preview text of the message.

Then again, I suppose if that were true, I wouldn't see the labels in my inbox anyway, and my complaint would be baseless.

Still, I'd much rather they used a tiny colored square, with label text as a mouse-over tool tip.

ahawks

Whoah, this is awesome. I love how the Gmail team uses Greasemonkey scripts to help them grow their product! :)

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor

"Colored labels do more than look pretty, of course..."

That's true - they look ugly! =( Don't like the new bubbles at all in the context of the whole interface, I think they're distracting and break up the nice blue cohesion they had going on.

Time to start figuring out how to do a Greasemonkey script to get labels looking like they were before. I wish Google would option more of these things out so the users can choose how they look.

Evan_D

I was messing around with my Gmail Settings, and when I changed the "Gmail display language:" to "English (UK)" my coloured labels and IMAP dissapeared! Now I'm not a big fan of coloured labels anyway, but don't take away my IMAP access!! I quickly changed the display language back to "English (US)" and thankfully everything came back.

I guess too many z's and not enough u's is a small price to pay for IMAP access :)

charlie13

@Evan_D: I agree. I think they are unattractive and intrusive. I liked the old labels, they did not stand out from the subject line. Google needs to add a black text/light blue background to the color options so that we can reset the labels to their former appearance. I would also like the option to hide labels in the inbox view. I click on the labels in the sidebar when I need to; I don't scan the inbox.

John David

like it too.

One of my complaints about the label function is that I can't effectively label drafts. After further editing, the label will invariably be lost upon saving.

Also, it would be great if gmail allows us to multi-tag a mail right within the content like tiddly wiki. Currently, a workaround may be foreign language or __ (the only searchable non-alphanumeric sign).

Ludwig_Hung

Love the new labels, but I'd like more options. Why isn't there a "red" option, for example?

Why not have it pull up the standard Windows/Mac color-picker palate and let me pick a color?

J. D. Harper (aka Blog Jones)

Sweet! Love it!
I must be seeing something different because my new labels look the same as the old and I have red.

dr.coop

Another feature that is only available if you use English (US)... why even have UK English as an option if you cant be bothered to translate a few words?

Also disappointed with the colour options. Not just the lack of options but the fact that I select a blue label and the text of the label is burning bright teal.

chris-mcc

According to what was written here on Google Operating System, the performance of the new version of Gmail seems to have been improved. It was said there that Gmail "doesn't cache messages so aggressively" anymore. I find it surprising that not much seems to have been said about this.

It is interesting to see that features available through Greasemonkey scripts are becoming features in Gmail. I would be interested in finding out which features currently only available through Greasemonkey scripts will become features in Gmail. I have gone into greater detail about this on my blog, as you can see here. I have certainly found this quite interesting.

JKasprzak

@Ruiz: I had trouble finding this too. In the labels "side pane" to the left of the messages, hover over the label you want to colorize and an down pointing triangle should appear. Click on it and you should have access to several (10?) colors. Click on the one you want.

Felt like an idiot at first when I couldn't change these, but this configuration should be in the "settings" page too.

nsxstorm

@nsxstorm: Seconded, quite enthusiastically. Why put the colors only in the sidebar? They probably just didn't think about the settings.

voyagerfan5761

Am I the only one who hasn't been updated yet? I'm still running plain vanilla GMail and I haven't even got the IMAP update yet (still says Forwarding and POP in the settings page).

graham.reeds

I don't use Firefox or IE7 to view my gmail, but all I had to do to activate this was to logon to gmail once in firefox and set things up. Now in Camino it all works wonderfully, I am so pleased with this, go gmail Labels! I love having things that are bills having a big red label on them so I go to them first off

Nuchtchas