While analyzing Gmail’s data transferring protocol and data structure for our development of libgmailer, we sometimes see hints or clues suggesting “hidden” new features of Gmail that Google programmers could be testing or developing at the moment.

For example, I was checking Gmail’s “send mail” protocol for fixing some bugs and implementing the new “send as” feature, when I discovered a field called “autosave” in the data packet.

Does it mean Google is implementing an “auto save” feature that you can enable when you are drafting email? If yes, that would be really, really useful! Everyone knows how frustrated it is if you closed the wrong window or pressed the wrong “discard” button after you have typed a long email.

I surely hope my theory is correct and they will release this new feature very soon.

UPDATE: The auto-save feature has just launched! By default your composing mail will be saved every 20 minutes, and it seems that there is no way to change it. You can read more about it here (required Gmail login).

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 at 2:29 am and is filed under libgmailer, Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, bookmark the Permalink in your Browser, leave a response, or trackback from your own site.