Back in July I wrote that I preferred reading Gmail on my iPad even when I was home and had my iMac available. That’s because the iPad Gmail has a preview pane. If you haven’t used it, it doesn’t sound like much but it really improves the Gmail work flow. On the desktop I scan the list of emails and delete any that I know I’m not interested in. Then I go to the first unread email, read it, and click on the next button to get the next message. That’s OK but if I want to delete a message or mark it as spam I get taken back to the list of emails and have to click on the next email to read. If I want to keep a message in my inbox, I mark it with a star. When I’ve read all the messages, I tell Gmail to check all the unstarred messages and then click on the archive button to save them.
With the iPad, there are three panes: the menu pain listing mailboxes, the message pane listing the messages, and the preview pane that has the selected message displayed (on the iPad, the menu pane is usually hidden but it can be swapped with the message pane). With this setup, I can just choose archive, delete, or mark as spam and the next message displays. It’s a much easier and more natural flow and when I’m done, I’m done—I don’t have to mark messages for archiving and all that.
Now, at last, desktop Gmail has a preview pane. It’s still a “Gmail Labs” project so you have to enable it—see the linked article for directions—but once you do that it works fine. Jason Kincaid, who wrote the TechCrunch article above, has a few problems with it but I’m happy. Very happy. The first time I used it I expanded my browser to full screen, which on my 27-inch iMac gives everything plenty of room, but I’m not sure I really need to do that; After all, it works fine on the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen. I’ll experiment with it a bit more before I settle on a definite routine. For now, I’m just happy to have this functionality on my desktop as well as my iPad.