We released a major update to Boomerang for Gmail tonight and hope you will find Boomerang more stable, more usable, and even more helpful than before.

• Your browser will automatically update the extension to the new version at its regularly scheduled time to update.
• Not happening, or want the update faster? Clear your browser cache and (in Chrome) go to Wrench Menu–>Extensions, click developer mode, and tell Chrome to check for updates. In Firefox, go to Tools–>Add-Ons, right click Boomerang for Gmail, and click Update.

Almost all of the improvements we’ve made are based on feedback that you have given us about how we could make the Boomerang experience better for you, so please keep sending us your feedback!

Here’s what’s new!

Manage Your Scheduled Messages

Dozens of you asked us, “How can I see all the messages I have scheduled to return or send later?” We’ve added a new page that lets you see when your messages are set to return and be sent, reschedule or edit them, and cancel the scheduled action.

To get there, click on the new Manage Boomerang link in the top right part of the Gmail page.

When you click that link, you’ll be taken straight to our new message manager. You can

• See all the messages you have scheduled for return and for sending
• Reschedule when a message should be sent/returned
• Cancel sending/returning a message
• Edit a message you have scheduled to be sent
• Send/return a message immediately
• Set your preferences

We think it’s a beautiful, easy-to-use design, and we hope you’ll find it fills all of your message-managing needs. If not, maybe we’ll flog the designer 😉

Customize Boomerang’s Behavior

With Boomerang’s new preferences section, at the bottom of the new Message Management page, you can now choose whether or not returned messages are:

• marked as unread
• starred
• brought the top of your inbox (we’ll send a new reply, from you, to get Gmail to bring the message to the top). Perfect if you’re not an Inbox-Zero person but still want to get reminded to take action on an email
• labeled as Boomerang (the messages will always be labeled Boomerang while they are being held for return, this option just gets the label removed when they come back)

Take a look! Hopefully, you will find a combination that works for you. We default to our original set up and messages will return to your inbox as unread, starred and labeled as Boomerang if you don’t change anything.

Send Later Behavior Changes

It was way too easy to accidentally cancel sending a message later by editing or viewing a draft in Boomerang 0.1.

We redesigned how Send Later works so that you can go back and review the messages without canceling the scheduled send. Now when you schedule a message to be sent later, we will store it under a new Boomerang-Outbox label until the time you specified. If you change your mind about sending the message or wish to edit it, you can cancel sending it from Manage Boomerang page. That will move your message back into your regular Gmail Drafts folder. Edit it, press Send Later again, and it’ll go when you’re ready.

UI Improvements + Random Return Times

Our menu looks a lot more like it belongs in Gmail now. We have redesigned the Boomerang and Send Later menus for better usability and we added a new option called “Random Time”.

Bear with us for a second. It turns out, having a message return at a random time is a perfect cure for email procrastination.

There are times you just don’t want to deal with a particular message. And instead of you dreading deal with it, then going off to check Twitter for an hour, then deciding you’ll get to it after lunch, Boomerang will make that decision for you. Tell us if you want to deal with it before 5pm today, sometime within a week, or sometime within a month, and we will return it to your inbox at a random time before the time you specified.

When it comes back, you better deal with it. Or else….

Photo by Dplanet

Bug Fixes, improvements, awesomeness

We’ve fixed about a zillion problems that we never saw coming when there were only 50 people using Boomerang, but that cropped up an awful lot of times now that we’re over 40,000. If you’ve had issues with scheduling messages, disappearing buttons in Chrome, or any other issues with Boomerang over the past two weeks, we hope we’ve fixed the problem.

Also, if you speak the Queen’s English, rejoice! We now support UK English. So you can write colourful emails from your mobile while you’re riding on a lift, and the date format won’t break Boomerang anymore. Support for a bunch more languages will come soon. We are still working on it.

Thank you

We hope you enjoy using the new version of Boomerang! If you have any issues, please email us (support@baydin.com) or even better, check out our handy-helpful-faster-better-please-go-there support forum at http://baydin.vanillaforums.com where people who are smarter than us (your fellow Boomerang users) can help too.

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