Gmail has seen a lot of changes since its inception, with innumerable features being added to what was essentially a mailbox. One thing that hasn’t changed much over the years is the way you compose mail. That is about to change.
When you compose mails in Gmail from now on, a New Message box will open just like a chat window. So say you are looking at mails in your Inbox and you want to compose a mail, the Gmail will not open a separate compose mail page, instead, you will be able to see the contents of your inbox and write out your mail in the New Message box. You can even insert messages inline.
On hovering your mouse pointer over the Attachment logo, it further breaks up into two more logos, namely Insert Photos and Insert Links. There are two more icons which are currently disabled - Insert Emoticon and Insert Invitation.
Just like in a chat window, you can minimise the New Message box and continue writing the mail later. This solves one of the critical issues that faced the older compose mail page. In case you wanted to refer to some other mail while composing your mail, you would have to Save the current mail as a Draft, go back to Inbox and then re-open the Draft to compose the mail. With this move, Gmail has made referencing older mails a piece of cake. You can even use the search mail option while keeping the New Message box minimised.
In a move to integrate this new feature with Google+, you can now even see your contact’s photo as you are typing out the address. You can also drag and drop the new address chips between to:, cc: and bcc:. When you’re done adding recipients, the address area collapses automatically to get out of your way.
Even the Reply option is designed to fit inline. It takes up a lesser vertical height and intelligently expands to fit in your content at the same time keeping your recipients and other controls in view irrespective of the length of the message.
