One thing I dislike in the new Google styling is the general lack of contrast. It makes navigation a bit slower due to delayed object recognization for power users.<p>Everything just takes milliseconds longer to sink in.
The new search dropdown is what I am excited about. I know that the operators were always there and advanced search was a click away, but what can I say, I am lazy.
Seems like they addressed a lot of the initial gripes people had with the new UI preview. I'm hopeful that similar evolution will be coming to Google Reader.
Each time Google updates Gmail, there is another hit on accessibility for visually impaired users. With each new version, zooming makes the content area smaller and smaller, while making the (significantly less useful) editing elements and other mostly uninteresting things larger and larger. Adding more padding and reducing contrast is completely at odds with accessibility (and, potentially, a good desktop mail experience). I think I can still get by with Gmail at high zoom, but one or two more changes and I’ll have no choice but to jump ship to something else (or go fulltime with Outlook, which is overkill for personal mail).<p>It makes me really sad to see that accessibility is getting worse at Google, not better. The problem isn't limited to Gmail, it's also now in core search and probably just about everything else since the G+ wave of updates. :(
I use a netbook for my gmail. This new UI is, once again, a big negative from me because of all the wasted "white space".<p>I hate this love affair we have at the moment with white space. To me, it's wasted space. I guess I just hate scrolling or maybe I should just move to Asia.
I get the point that designers want to design and fiddle with everything like little children, constantly, regardless of how other people have actual work to do regardless of their playtime.<p>However constantly changing any user interface is a fantastic way to make customers furious when they can no longer find things and have to stop to adapt, over and over.<p>Why not allow the old look to function for years instead of weeks or months. There is no way you are going to convince me google doesn't have the resources to do that, it's not a massive internal change, it's a visual layer.<p>I really need to make a point to switch to Thunderbird and imap in 2012 - google is getting on my last nerve on every product they offer.
Based on what I've seen from this blog post, my initial impression is that I don't think I'm going to like the new Gmail UI (I haven't been able to use it, so this is based on the preview). But I'll be perfectly happy when they arrive.<p>One of the many reasons I switched to GMail was the fact that they didn't charge to access mail from a POP3 (and now IMAP). Neither protocol is perfect (or perhaps it's the implementation in the variety of mail apps that support it), but the bottom line is that there are limitless numbers of clients that support those protocols, which allows me to abandon the web platform if I choose to.<p>When my bride complains about the next Facebook UI overhaul, I always think of this. To clarify, I'm always stuck thinking of Facebook in terms of old-school online service like AOL with features that fit better in the 21st century...I get that it's not e-mail+ or e-mail-. And I appreciate that it has a powerful API, the usage of which allows me to avoid the UI overhauls for the limited feature-set that I enjoy. But for e-mail, I still prefer the provider with the most options.<p>Count me in as perfectly fine with the new UI changes because I don't have to care if I don't like them.
I love the use of white space and the clean looks of Gmail, but it pains me to see when "UI designers" build an interface where 20% of the screen is taken up by useless objects.<p>I understand Google wants me to search and to use G+, but for user's sake, could you shove all that into 1 button and make it expand on click, so I could actually use my gmail screen for something like... answering emails.<p>Is this too much to ask?
Google, the new Yahoo!?<p>p.s. No, the "compact" view doesn't really solve the problem. The objects get smaller and narrower, but the top banner still takes up all the premium space.
This is a very refreshing look. They've really simplified and glossed over a lot of the details of email going on underneath. I wonder if they were able to do this in a way that still has all the features of the original, or else what didn't make the cut.
I absolutely love the fact that you can control the density of the emails. This was a huge deal-breaker for me with the new theme and made me go back to the old theme. I'd be more than happy to try this new look out.
Are other Google products using the same layout engine or are they just copying the visual appearance? I'd like to have the same layout controls available in Docs, Calendar, Reader etc.
Still won't do partial word searches.<p>I use Gmail's backend but I can't use something that won't find “client” in “mynewclient”.<p>Amazing that a company known for search can't provide this simple and essential feature.
It looks good. But the one thing I do notice is that the screenshots they've provided in the blog don't have a strip of ads running down the right hand side of the page. I'll be interested to see what it looks like with those in.
One unmentioned feature I loved is the ability to hide the chat and "invite" sidebars. On the lower left corner there's two unobtrusive buttons to toggle chat and invite (does anyone use that?) visibility.<p>I'm still waiting for a UI where I can just drag the components I need, a la browser's toolbars.
The compact view looks much much nicer than the dense version of the preview theme they have now. Hopefully they'll add a few darker lines here and there too.
I'm very impressed. They really solved a lot of the issues I had with preview, such as multiple views for different screen sizes/resolutions.<p>Overall, the highly visual approach allows some hidden but useful features to emerge for the average user. However, I'm still on the fence about the excessive padding on the individual email items.
Web-based "apps" have this great feature: updates require no work on the part of the user. And they have this terrible bug: updates require no work on the part of the user. With real (i.e. native) software, users get to decide. Important deadline approaching? Click "not now" for any and all updates.
Not about GMail, but does anyone else find Google's new blog templates to be annoying?<p>Chrome and Firefox optimized away much of the 500msec or less it takes for the page to render, and I don't want to have to spend that time watching the loading logo instead. Plus there are unavoidable animations for every page I try to access, but they're <i>slow</i> and make my netbook lag. I like being able to access the alternative views, but some of them seem clearly oriented towards photo blogs and turn into a pastiche of menus and grids, defeating the point of making the blog more usable for the reader (I have to try click on each one to see what it does?). /complain
I mostly don't like it.<p>The left sidebar pops open, thats great!<p>However, read messages now have a lifeless grey background. The archive buttons have been replaced with icons. I can now only see half the amount of messages per screen due to the increased spacing.<p>Its disappointing.
I use labels aggressively, but I monitor the numbers next to the labels to see if I have stuff coming in rapidly. When I tried the new GMail interface, it hid a bunch of important labels, requiring me to hover over that section to check if I was getting emails from particular projects and groups of people. That broke my email workflow, so I had to switch back to the old interface.<p>Hopefully, the comments I sent to the GMail team didn't fall on deaf ears - I really don't want to rework how I do email.<p>It must be tough working on a product that is so core to people's life and work. The changes in XCode never sit well with me either.
I've read the threads re: netbook but haven't seen my problem with the new look. I chose Compact for the density, but when I Reply, write a return email to someone - lo and behold, I can no longer scroll up to hit Send. It is hidden by the new icon bar - surely I am not the only netbook user with this problem? 10.2 inch screen, Gateway computer, Chrome browser...yeah.<p>Any ideas? I won't change this netbook to the 'new look' unless I can figure this out - guess I'll have to use Thunderbird or something. I'd rather not.<p>Thanks for any help.
They seem to have fixed the speed issues, which was my main gripe with gmail up to this point.<p>F'ing terrible in the usability department, though, especially on the default super-spaced view - it makes it much harder to scan quickly, and lets you see half the number of emails in the same vertical space.<p>The wide open space with no border between panes is also really annoying. Adding a border-right on the folder pane via firebug/whatever brings it almost back to being bearable.
Help!! With all the none-scrolling stuff the new design has, on my netbook I have only some 600x300 pixels left to see the actual email message.<p>To read the email message is the reasong I am opening Gmail!<p>I don't care about a static user account bar, a static search bar, a static action buttons bar, a static folder and tags sidebar, etc. All that c%#p should be scrolling! It's a web page!<p>Is there any fix for this in the Gmail settings?
You can use a theme thats similar to that video. Its been available in the Themes section of Gmail settings for several months.<p>I find it a huge improvement.
Display density doesn't work in my browser (chrome on a Macbook pro) it says it only works on larger displays. Since my browser takes up all of my screen's real estate I don't understand why I am having this issue. As a side note, if you want to see a failure of customer service design, take a look at their feedback form page and count the number of unnecessary form fields.
I love the new UI. The conversation view and the way the content flows together. It's just brilliant.<p>Only one complaint, I want to have a more loose display than the current one, I want 'Cozy' rather than 'Compact' regardless of my screen size. I should be able to change that somewhere.
I hope they have tested this new design with some of the old "Gmail Labs" modules. I've been using the "Right-Side Chat" Labs module for a long time, and so far, using the Preview Theme, resizing my browser window sometimes causes me to lose my chat box.
> <i>Better search</i><p>I seriously hope they would _FINALLY_ include some sort of sub-string search as the lack of it really makes their mail search pretty much unusable unless you know exactly what you are looking for but I have a huge mail archive that goes a good 10+ years back - and that is google we are talking about, of all companies.<p>I would be totally fine if they limit me to just 2 or 3 sub-string searches a day and then just grep through my mails if that's what it takes but come on people, this feature has been requested ages ago and there surely are ways to implement this without breaking your servers' backs.
So, is this real, or is this a spoof of the mess with Google Reader?<p>(PS: I know whether this is real; I'm just phrasing it this way for ironic impact.)