Posted by Michael Davidson, Software Engineer

I recently posted about Gmail's fast new windows and explained that the only downside of them was that they closed when the main Gmail window closed. Today, we're changing that. If you're using the latest version of Google Chrome, you can now continue to work in popped out windows after you close your main window (especially handy for those of us who always like to keep an eye on our tasks).

For the technically curious among you, our friends on the Chrome team made it possible to transfer the code that runs Gmail from one window to another as the window closes. When the window that hosts the code fires an unload event, we move the iframe with the code to a surviving window. Everything continues to run, including timers and outstanding requests.