Gmail's mulitple inboxes

If you use Gmail's web-based client you know how great Gmail is, especially compared to all the other email services and clients. The engineers at Google have been adding features to Gmail's web-based client that make it ever more compelling as the email client of choice.

The latest improvement is the Gmail Labs Multiple Inboxes.

In the picture above the regular inbox is augmented by two smaller panels on the right side, starred and draft messages. The user can set up to five panels in addition to the basic inbox view.

The additional panels are essentially filter views of your entire Gmail message store. You can use it to track items by label, subject, sender, or message content. The value of this view is limited only by your imagination.

You turn on Multiple Inboxes from Settings > Labs. Once enabled you can go to Settings > Multiple Inboxes to configure your extra inboxes. The picture below shows the configuration console.

I recommend the Gmail web-based client over Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and the Mac OS X Mail and iCal applications for mail and calendar.

A negative item of note is Gmail's Contacts needs quite a lot of work. I am hopeful that will be addressed in the very near future.