Color Me Happy: Gmail Adds Colored Labels

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Since I learned of / experienced the slowdowns and issues in the newer version of Gmail (2.0), I switched back to the older version (as you can do in the user interface). This, however, may give me a reason to switch yet again.

Gmail has added colored labels. Now, instead of just seeing the text of a label next to the subject, you’ll see the label in color (pictured). You can use either white text on the selected color or colored text on a lighter background of the same color. Strictly speaking, it’s just prettying up the UI, but still …

Now, what are the drawbacks? Well, you have to use the newer version of Gmail, as I said. You also have to use IE7 and Firefox 2.x, as well (I would hope you were already anyway).

Typically I use labels and filters in a sort-of “folderish” format; in the blog post that announces this new feature, Google also indicated they “kinda like folders. In fact, we’re doing some work to add some folder-y-ish functionality.”

Not sure what this means as labels and archiving work fine for me, but I guess we’ll see!