I don’t know if you have noticed but Gmail, now has integrated Google labs in it. The purpose is as simple as the purpose of Google Labs. It allows you to test features which are under testing. If you haven’t seen it you might want to see it under the settings link in your gmail. Once you go into the settings page, you’ll find a new tab that’s been added called Labs. Under this there are various new features which you can enable and disable. By default all the features which are present in the Labs tab are all disabled. However, there are some really cool features which you want to turn on.

Before you do that, read carefully, the message from the the Gmail team:

“Gmail Labs: our testing ground for experimental features
Gmail engineers come up with new ideas all the time. Gmail Labs is our place to try them out and get your feedback. None of these features are really ready for prime time yet, so they may change, break or disappear at any time.

Learn more about Gmail Labs
If (when) a Labs feature breaks, and you’re having trouble getting into your account, there’s an escape hatch — just go to http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 and Labs will be temporarily disabled.”

Most of the them are self explanatory. Few of them might conflict with you Firefox features. Especially, the mouse gestures. If you are using any kind of mouse gesture extension on Firefox, think twice before you turn on the mouse gestures feature in Labs under gmail. I really liked, Hide Unread Counts feature. This feature when enabled doesn’t show the number of unread mails in your inbox. I had close to 3000 unread mails (courtesy some news letter, from where I’ve not unsubscribed because of laziness). Now when I enable Hide Unread Counts I manage to avoid embarrassment of not reading my mails.

I found quick links feature also of great help. Feel free to experiment with them because they are there to be experimented on.