Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is working hard to improve its popular Gmail web email system, with one particular focus being to update it to HTML5. Speaking at the Usenix WebApps '10 conference in Boston, Adam de Boor, a software engineer working on the service, divulged that many upcoming new features will be rendered in HTML5, the upcoming standard that is also favored by Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Elaborating on the company's enthusiasm on this front, De Boor said, "We have things that we can do much more efficiently in HTML5."

One feature being worked on would be the ability to drag and drop a file from the desktop into the browser, which will make attaching files to email a much simpler task. Since I can already do that in Chrome 5 beta on Windows 7 though, I presume De Boor is referring to making this ability more robust and compatible across all operating systems.

Also, Google's is working to load Gmail in under a second. It is clear that a one second load time will enhance usability, in turn allowing the search engine giant to further whittle away at traditional fat client email software such as Microsoft Outlook.

One nugget of additional information: The Gmail program is written in JavaScript and comprises of 443,000 lines of code--all written by hand. In the meantime, you might be interested in a new Gmail feature that was announced this week; you can now use Gmail to preview and edit Word attachments, be it the older .doc format or the newer docx file. Clicking on the file again when in preview mode opens it in Google Docs for on-the-spot editing.

For more on this story:
- check out the article at PC World
- check out the article at InfoWorld

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