Your calendar, now part of your search results. Image: Google

If you’d like to participate, head on over to the signup page and add your account.

Once that’s done, just log in to your Google account. You’ll then be able to search Gmail, your Google Drive documents and now your Google Calendar appointments directly from the Google search page (or from within Gmail).

The Google Calendar integration doesn’t just add appointments, it also features support for natural language queries. For example, type “what is on my calendar today” and you’ll see the day’s agenda. More specific queries work as well; to find out when you’re meeting someone, just type “when am I meeting” and the person’s name.

Note that the personalized search trial is still only available to U.S. users with @gmail.com addresses (Google Apps accounts are out of luck for now). If you opt in and decide you hate it, you can always go back to the sign up page and turn universal search off.

Google has graduated three popular Gmail Labs tools to proper Gmail features: reply to all, quote selected text and, the most useful of the bunch, the “Send and Archive” button.

Unlike some new features for Google Apps, these are available right now in Gmail, though all three remain off by default.

To enable the popular “Send and Archive,” which turns the Send button into a dual-function button that sends your reply and then archives the conversation, head to settings and look for the new “Show ‘Send & Archive’ button in reply” option. While you’re in Gmail’s settings you can also change the default reply mode to reply all, though frankly that seems like asking for trouble.

The quote selected text feature is not a setting, it’s just the new behavior for replying to messages. Select a block of text in an e-mail, click reply and only the selected text will be included in your reply.

Attaching Google Drive files in Gmail’s new compose window. Image: Google

Google is making it easier than ever to send large files via e-mail. The company has announced a new feature that puts all your Google Drive documents just a click away from Gmail. Now you can quickly and easily attach files from Google Drive to Gmail messages.

That means you can attach files up to 10GB in size, which is some 400 times larger than what Gmail will allow you to do with typical e-mail attachments. Of course the reason files can be so large is that Google isn’t actually sending the files; it’s merely sending a link to your recipients who can then access them through Google Drive.

Gmail has a clever new feature that checks to make sure that all your recipients actually have permission to view your Drive files. The feature works a bit like Gmail’s forgotten-attachment detector — if you forgot to grant permission to one of your recipients Gmail will prompt you to do so before sending your e-mail.

Like most new features from Google, the new Google Drive integration will be rolling out to Gmail users “over the next few days.” Note that in order to get the new Google Drive attachments feature you’ll need to opt-in to the new compose window option we wrote about earlier (see that post for full details on how to get started with Gmail’s new in-window compose dialog).

Gmail’s new compose window. Image: Google

Google is introducing a new way to compose messages in Gmail. Instead of loading a whole new “compose” page, you can now start a new email from wherever you are in a popup window. The window isn’t actually a new browser window, but rather an overlay on the Gmail page. The new compose looks like a Gmail chat window, though the compose version is a bit bigger.

The new compose window is rolling out as a preview today. If you’d like to try it out just click the compose button and Gmail will ask if you’d like to try the “new compose experience.” Hit that link and you’ll get the new window.

The change makes it easier to reference old emails while you’re composing a new one, since you don’t need to leave whatever page you’re viewing just to write a new message.

The overlay window also means you can search or keep an eye on incoming mail while you write your new message. Having compose in its own window also means you can write multiple messages at once and even minimize a message to finish it later.

The window within a window model mimics what you’d find on traditional desktop mail apps, and Gmail has also borrowed another feature of desktop mail applications — drag and drop “address chips.” The drag and drop features are nice, but the “chips” mean that your recipients’ email addresses are collapsed to just the name, which can be annoying if you need to double-check that you’re emailing, for example, a person’s work address instead of a home address.

For now the new compose window is optional, but Google says that it will, after some “finishing touches,” be rolling out to everyone “over the coming months.”

[Update: If you really like the new compose window, Google Operating System's Alex Chitu points out that, with a little URL hacking, you can open any message in a compose-style window. Check out Google Operating System for full details.]

Everything in its right place. Image: Google.

If you’ve ever wished you could search all your mail and documents from the main Google.com search box, your day has arrived. Google is expanding its experimental integrated search features to make your mail and documents part of the Google.com search results.

Sign up for the trial and when you’re logged into your Google account you’ll be able to search Gmail and your Google Drive documents directly from the Google search page. Your mail and documents appear in a sidebar next to the usual results from around the web.

Google kicked off the Gmail search results on Google.com earlier this year with a limited “field trial.” Now, after what Google Software Engineer Bram Moolenaar (perhaps best known as the creator of Vim), calls “very positive feedback from those of you testing it out,” the company is expanding the universal search feature to a wider audience.

As Moolenaar writes, “when you search on Google.com, your results will include relevant information and messages from Gmail … and now — new in this field trial — also files, documents, spreadsheets and more from Google Drive.”

The updated trial also brings Google’s instant search results to Gmail. When you search in Gmail links to relevant email will pop up in the search bar as soon as you start typing — just like Google.com.

The new integrated search still isn’t the default behavior by any means, but it certainly looks like Google is moving in that direction. For now you’ll still need to sign up for the trial if you’d like to experiment with it. Note that the trial is only available in English and to those with @gmail.com addresses. (Google Apps accounts are out of luck for now.) If you opt in and decide you hate it, you can always go back to the sign up page and turn universal search off.

Webmonkey could be in your Gmail, hanging out. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

Gmail’s web interface has long offered themes, allowing you to change its appearance to suit your whims, but choices were limited to the few canned options Google made available. The color schemes in Gmail themes are still limited to Google’s picks, but now Google is allowing users to upload their own images to create custom backgrounds.

To try out the new options head to Gmail’s settings menu and click the Themes link. Then look for the Custom Themes section where you’ll see a link to “Change your background image.”

To add a custom background you can upload your own images directly, select from your Google+ photos or point Gmail to an online image with a URL. There’s also a featured photos section you can browse and search for some high-quality images.

The new custom images aren’t going to change the way you use Gmail by any means, but if you’re like us and you differentiate accounts by appearance, themes aren’t just eye candy, they’re practical, helping you immediately know which account you’re logged into.

If you aren’t seeing the new Custom Themes section just yet, be patient; as with most Google updates this one is rolling out gradually. In the mean time you can see themes in action in this video from Google:

You can never have too many backups of your data. Unfortunately, when it comes to web-based e-mail like Gmail, backing up your mail isn’t always the easiest thing to do. The web is littered with tales of lost Gmail, whether because Google shuts down your account, an attacker destroys it or something else that’s never even crossed your mind happens and then — poof — your mail is gone.

That’s where Gmvault can help. Gmvault will help make sure that even if the unthinkable happens and your Gmail data is suddenly gone, you’ll be able to recover thanks to a solid backup system. Gmvault is a simple-to-use command-line Python app that will login, sync and back up your entire Gmail account on your local machine. Currently Gmvault is beta software. I’ve been using it for nearly a week and haven’t had any problems, but bear in mind that there may be some bugs.

You can accomplish the same thing with a desktop e-mail client, provided you remember to open it every now and then. But with Gmvault and simple cron script you can make sure your backup is updated every day. Throw in a line to move your database to a new location when the backup is done and you’ll have incremental snapshot backups of your Gmail account.

Gmvault will encrypt your saved e-mail repository to keep it safe from prying eyes. That means you can use Dropbox or similar web-based backup and syncing systems without worrying that your personal information is exposed.

Another interesting feature in Gmvault is the ability to restore e-mails to any Gmail account. That makes creating additional Gmail-based backup accounts a snap. Just create a new Gmail account, select your current account’s backup and use the restore command to recreate your mailboxes. All attributes such as Gmail labels are preserved and recreated in the new account.

Gmvault is a shell script available for Windows, OS X and Linux. Head on over to GitHub and grab a copy today so you can start making backups of your Gmail before you need them.

The offline Gmail web app

Google has launched an improved version of its offline Gmail web app for Chrome. The updated version can now store up to a month’s worth of email offline.

Since it’s a web app, current users of the Gmail Chrome app will see the new version the next time they open the app. If you’d like to try it out, you can install the Gmail offline app from the Chrome Web Store.

The main new feature in this release is the expanded syncing capability. Offline Gmail for Chrome will now synchronize 7, 14 or 31 days worth of email for use without an internet connection. That’s a considerable step up over the initial release, which only synced the last three to seven days’ worth of email. Mail attachments are now downloaded with messages and available for offline use as well.

Google has also added support for Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts, which means that the app version of Gmail is almost indistinguishable (functionality-wise) from the regular Gmail web page. The main downside is that the app version — and all its offline functionality — still only works in Google’s Chrome web browser.

Gmail's new look

Unfortunately, The new Gmail is still rough enough around the edges and, worse, slow enough, that Google might want to consider adding the beta tag back to the Gmail logo.

Google showed off the revamped Gmail interface earlier this year, but the company is now giving users the ability to test it for themselves. If you’d like to try it out, just sign in to Gmail and look for a small “Switch to the new look” button in the lower right corner of your screen.

For now the new look is purely optional and you can switch right back if you don’t like it, but eventually Google does plan to roll out the new version to all Gmail users.

Google’s new look, which is slowly rolling out across all its products is somewhat hit or miss. The black-and-white color scheme and heavy use of white space sometimes feels overdone (witness the reaction to the new Google Reader design), but in Gmail it actually works quite well, eliminating some of the clutter and allowing you to focus more on your actual mail.

One of Gmail's new hires backgrounds

Adjust Gmail to fit your screen

Another improvement in the new Gmail is a much better search interface. Gmail’s powerful search features have always been a big part of its appeal, but using some of the more powerful elements required memorizing arcane terms and operators. The new Gmail surfaces most of these elements in a handy new search form.

The quick search bar remains the same (and all the old operators still appear to work if you happen to have memorized them all), but a new arrow to the right side of the search box will expand a new search form that offers to search by From, To, Subject, attachment, Date and more. It’s the same search tools as before, but with a much better interface designed to help novice users discover the power of searching.

Conversations in Gmail — the features that originally set Gmail apart from the competition — have received a slight makeover. You’ll now see profiles pictures for your contacts (assuming one is available) and the collapsed view offers a bit more detail than it did before. Of course that also means that conversations take up more vertical space, which can be annoying on smaller screens. Sadly, the various white space settings mentioned above have no effect on the spacing in conversation view.

While the new Gmail looks quite nice — cleaner and often easier to use than its predecessor — the bad news is that the new version can be painfully slow. I tested Gmail using both Opera and Chrome over a fast cable internet connection and routinely encountered long delays when moving from list view to conversation view, or when searching for mail. Even something as simple as loading a few icons sometimes took as long as 20 seconds. The new look isn’t yet an official release, so perhaps the slow speeds are simply kinks in the transition process that Google is working out. If not, expect a mini revolt when Google flips the switch for all users.

Opera users should also be aware that the new Gmail has all kinds of rendering bugs in Opera 11.52 (there were also some obvious bugs in Firefox and even Chrome).

If you’d like to see what the fuss is about, but don’t want to commit to the new interface just yet, check out the video below. (Also note that if you do turn on the new look, at the moment you can still revert to old by click the new gear menu and selecting “revert to the old look”.)

See Also:

• Google Reader Gets a ‘+1′ Makeover
• Offline Gmail Returns, Sort of
• Gmail Gives in, Offers Up Traditional Three-Pane Mail Interface

The offline Gmail web app

Offline Gmail does, however, require the Google Chrome web browser. In fact, the offline version of Gmail is an entirely separate app you’ll need to install through the Chrome Web Store. The Web Store app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets and uses a widescreen layout that will look familiar to anyone using Gmail on an iPad or the new three-pane mail interface.

Unfortunately, the offline app for Gmail is just that, a separate web app. You won’t be able to use Gmail offline simply by clicking a button in the regular web interface. Rather you’ll need to install the offline Gmail app and switch over to that interface whenever you’re offline.

And that’s not the only downside to this release. Offline Gmail will only give you access to the last three to seven days’ worth of email (the exact amount will vary depending on how many messages you get each day). All of your starred messages will also be available, but beyond that you’re out of luck — there’s no way to, for example, download a specific tag or set of messages for offline use.

Things are even worse in the offline version of Google Docs which, for now, is limited to read-only access — not exactly helpful when you’re trying to finish that report sans wifi.

Google says these issues are temporary and that the offline support is a work in progress, but given the extremely limited functionality one wonders why they were released at all. Of course Google’s motto is release early, release often; clearly they’ve released early, hopefully the often will kick in soon.

In the mean time if you need offline access to your email, we suggest a traditional desktop client.

See Also:

• Gmail Gives in, Offers Up Traditional Three-Pane Mail Interface
• Gmail Features Graduate From Labs to Big Leagues
• Gmail Mobile Is Always on the Move