The problem with Gmail Labs: Remember The Milk gadget goes dark

I don't know about you, but I've gotten so used to the Beta label in Gmail that I don't really take it seriously anymore. Sure, Gmail is still a work in progress, but it's been pretty reliable with just a few hours of downtime over the last few years.

But there's beta, and then there's Gmail Labs, which is a collection of admittedly experimental add-ons and tweaks for Google's email service. The problem is that while intellectually I know these plugins are experimental, I kind of expect them to work as well as Gmail. And sometimes they don't.

Case in point: The Remember The Milk task manager gadget for Gmail. I first wrote about this gadget for Gmail labs in November and I've been using it ever since. Today it stopped working.

When you try to add the gadget, you get an error message stating that it's an "invalid gadget specification." There's no information about the change available from Gmail or Remember The Milk. But if you've grown used to having the RTM task manager in your Gmail sidebar, it's a sad day.

It's possible that Gmail or Remember The Milk broke compatibility with a recent update. Or it's possible that Gmail wants to encourage users to switch to the official Google task list. Hopefully we'll know soon enough. But the takeaway point here is that it can be dangerous to rely on experimental features as if they were officially supported.

Update: Thanks to Will for pointing out a workaround for the Remember The Milk Gmail gadget. Just use the HTTPS version instead of the HTTP version of the URL. But the larger point is still valid: Somebody (either Google or RTM) broke the compatibility of this feature, and it could happen again.

Update: And support for the gadget using the original URL is back.

Tags: experimental, gmail, gmail-labs, remember-the-milk