Google announced yesterday a new Gmail Labs feature entitled Preview Pane. For those of you who view your Gmail on a tablet, they say the new layout should be very familiar to you. (And for those of you not using Gmail, do you need an email intervention?)

It basically allows you to preview snippets of an email while reading and replying to others.

From the official Gmail blog:

When I check my email, I often rely on the message snippets to figure out which messages to open first. Sometimes, though, I want to see more than snippets, which is why I’m happy to announce that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane.

After enabling the feature, you’ll see a button in the top right corner which allows you to switch between preview and list views. And for those of you with more vertical space, you can move the preview pane below your message list.

So far, I found it very simple to use and I like being able to see my inbox while I am replying to emails. I’ll keep using the Preview Pane mode for the rest of the weekend and will draw my conclusion about making the switch after testing it out a bit longer.

Have you tried Preview Pane and if so, what do you think?