A Peek at Google's 'Beautiful' New Gmail UI

The old interface really doesn't matter to me the biggest reason why I prefer Gmail to Hotmail and/or Yahoo is that Gmail gives it's users IMAP/POP3 access to their e-mail so that I don't ever have to be bothered with these web ugly/slow web interfaces.

Hotmail works just fine in Outlook.

this ui better not be forced.

People are ' bubbling with excitement." Yawn! Whatever!

I don't like Gmail because it's weird... labels and conversations instead of folders, it just doesn't click with how I like to organize messages... so I don't use it except as a throwaway account.

killerchick, “labels” are essentially folders - with the ability to add multiple labels to a message or conversation it’s a pretty cool tool. And, one can turn conversations off for a more traditional look to the interface.

I hate that black bar at the top. It's distracting and ugly.

The new format requires significantly MORE vertical scrolling than the old one. How exactly is this an improvement?

the new ui stinks. can't even read the screen. light gray on white? are they nuts? thank god you can skin gmail. too bad you can't skin gcal.

So, in the world of just living and you don't google, you are really googled. Nice upgrade. Clean looking. Kind of on the light side, like less is more. Where's the more? OK, so everyone else has to catch up before we can move on to something that is actually really better and doesn't just look different.

Don't buy a google phone. I never use gmail, it is too much trouble, I use yahoo. In 7 months of having the HTC G2 phone, I have had my account disabled twice for no reason. Since they don't tell you why the account has been disabled, it is a nightmare to get the account reopened. Until that time, all your contacts, pictures, anything is not accessable on the phone. Google could care less. New format? Who cares. In 10 plus years of yahoo, I have never had a problem. With google, I have had nothing butproblems. Do not buy a google phone.

Hey, you know who needs a new interface? Toms Hardware...

All the brown-gray and orange reminds me of Ubuntu (specifically 11.04 that I'm running)

ok, so a UI wastes more space, and is harder to differentiate objects because it looks like white on white... and this is a good thing? And what is with the black bar over a white page? Really? It sticks out like a sore thumb. Toms can get away from it because we know they don't know better, and it blends with the rest of the header, but google? shame on you, and leave my old ui alone. I welcome new innovation, but wasting space and making things hard to look at is not good.

It does feel unfinished, and its a little bright for my taste. Even so, I still prefer it over the other themes.

They have a new format? I wouldn't know since mine has been on 'basic HTML' for a looong time
(basic HTML = 30 MB mem usage in task-manager vs +100MB for gmail's standard view. yeah, google really knows how to keep things simple ...)

I like gmail, but one thing that annoys me so much - because I have let my inbox build up too much - is that when I want to sort it out to put into folders, I use search to locate the relevant mails. It then allows me to label these alright, but it does NOT allow me to put them directly into a folder only back to inbox! This means I have to go page by page to find the labelled ones before I can move them where I want to.

Am I missing something or is this just bad design? If bad design, has this been rectified in the new interface?

In response to some of the critiques (and a bit of my own):

The black bar doesn't really stick out all that much when ACTUALLY viewing gmail in the preview theme. I find it very easy to ignore. Some people have complained about the gray on white. In my case the coloring is MUCH nicer on my eyes than the old theme. As far as the text being too light, it really hasn't lightened much and is still very readable on my screen, although darkening the operations links would help some. The UI in general is a bit more drab but I imagine Google is expecting (hoping?) that people will spend a lot of time using this design (remember, they're using similar design elements on Google+) and want to improve scan-ability and reduce eyestrain. The extra padding also helps with that. As for their operations buttons, I'm really impressed that they went this route. The use of "current internet style standard" icons instead of text shows that they're trying to condense and get the UI out of the way and make a cleaner interface. I also really like the extra spacing; that makes things much easier to read (even in condensed). Good work, Google.

As for things I don't like: Let's extend the message container all the way to the right edge, please. There's already padding between the date and the container edge and having those rows stop short just looks strange. I know what you're thinking, "but if we do that, the pagination links will be right at the edge!"...so right-align the older/newer buttons with the date display instead of the end of the row...easy stuff.

Did anyone else notice that the "highlight" colors used throughout are very close the Google logo colors...unlike the original which used more Microsoft-standard colors?

I have been receiving obscene emails from people who have gmail.com. As their email address is there any possible way I could find out who is doing this? I do not think it is funny, I am a pensioner and I do not like the content of the emails from gmail.

Fkin spambots.
I hope all the current themes can be made available for this.

This changes are good but Back Shade is not look good...

Old was Nice

@zannah
If you've figured out the labels, 'archive' your email in the inbox.
In reality archiving just removes the inbox label from the email, making it so it only shows up in the label you've selected for it.

@zannah
If you've figured out the labels, 'archive' your email in the inbox.
In reality archiving just removes the inbox label from the email, making it so it only shows up in the label you've selected for it.

i like the UI of Yahoo and Hotmail better - simple to use.