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Google Begins "Gmail 2.0" Rollout
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Oct 31, 2007 07:02 AM
from the still-the-same-primary-colors dept.
from the still-the-same-primary-colors dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "Google on Tuesday confirmed it is giving Gmail a new look. This blog post has screenshots of a new Gmail interface that has been made available to a limited number of users. They are calling it "Gmail 2.0" even if Google isn't. Google confirmed the update is underway at its new San Francisco office, just prior to a briefing on an unrelated upcoming Google announcement. A Google spokesperson said that the new look has been made available to about one percent of all Gmail users and is being rolled out the rest on an ongoing basis."
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2.0? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2.0? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the plus side:
a) Clicking a message opens it almost instantly. This is a HUGE improvement.
On the bad side, two very annoying problems:
b) Scrolling up or down in the message list is much slower than the older version, either with the scroll bar or with the mouse wheel.
c) The label-applying drop-down being now an HTML element makes scrolling it with the mouse wheel painful. The moment the I hit the end of the list, it start scrolling the whole page down. Previously, it'd hit the end of the labels list stop there.
For me, 'a' isn't worth dealing with 'b' and 'c', so now I have a bookmark that opens https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1 [google.com] directly. UI 2 isn't polished enough yet. But things are probably going to improve. It's just a matter of time.
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Re:2.0? (Score:5, Informative)
But they should be calling it Gmail UI2 instead of 2.0.
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version 2 had better sync ! (Score:5, Interesting)
gmail does NOT SYNC with anything e.g. my contacts in my phone
solution = syncML !
contacts, calendar etc lots of others e.g. plaxo (annoying interface) and ZYB have this sorted and here I am fumbling around with CSV files
I hate it I try and sync with many differant devices and just wish there was a nice way
hell there is a thunderbird plugin there is a outlook plugin and MOST phones support it....
please please google gmail 2 should focus on contacts and introduce syncML !
regards
John Jones
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Re:2.0? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:2.0? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:2.0? (Score:4, Funny)
GET ME OUT OF HEEEERE!!!!!!!
Yours,
unbornfetus33421
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You prefer that users expect 1.0 to mean 'beta'?
Re:2.0? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, even back in the days Microsoft used numbers to differentiate product versions, it was common sense that "x.0" versions weren't worth it. Those who knew advised users to prefer a previous version with a higher number after the dot, as by then it would be stable and actually working as expected...
In short: whenever Google decides to remove the "beta" tag from Gmail, I doubt they're going to call it "Gmail 1.0". It wouldn't be good for business.
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Re:2.0? (Score:5, Insightful)
I lay the blame at the feet of open source developers who started this nonsense. Far too many open source utilities have had years of stable versions numbered <1.0. These apps are in permanent "beta" simply because the developers don't want take responsibility for a finished product. It ate your hard drive? Ooh, sorry. You gotta expect some bugs in a beta. We expect it to be finalized sometime before the heat death of the universe. But don't quote us on that.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh... No. If it ate my hard drive, it's alpha.
I expect "beta" to work somewhat, though without the full functionality that the developer wants it to have. Sure, it may have bugs that cause it to crash sometimes (or often), but I the more violent, destructive sorts of repercussions, I relegate to alpha-level software.
If you happen to be talking about disk defragmenting software on the other hand, that's something else entirely.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
JavaScript back-end? (Score:5, Informative)
I highly doubt that GMail uses JavaScript on the back-end. In fact, it is pretty well known that GMail is written in Java and only uses JavaScript on the front-end.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:JavaScript back-end? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:JavaScript back-end? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, that explains it (Score:3, Insightful)
Faster access due to pre-fetching and caching (Score:5, Informative)
-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/ [gmailtips.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The new version was turned on automatically for me, I had a link to the Older Version at top.
Re:Faster access due to pre-fetching and caching (Score:5, Informative)
Until Google develops to make it more compatible with Opera, you may want to either try the "Older version" link at the top of the page, or the "Basic HTML" link at the bottom. At least they're providing viable options.
-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/ [gmailtips.com]
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Not deploying with any rhyme or reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not deploying with any rhyme or reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Not deploying with any rhyme or reason... (Score:4, Informative)
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[whine]... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:[whine]... (Score:5, Informative)
1) Change the language setting from English(UK) to English(US).
2) Go back to settings, and then into the newly available "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.
3) Enable IMAP.
4) Configure my client (Thunderbird) and make a successful connection.
5) Go back into the settings, and change the language back to English(UK). The "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab changes back to just "Forwarding and POP".
6) Continue using my sweet, sweet, IMAP.
This method is hit and miss it seems. But hopefully some people might be lucky.
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Re:[whine]... (Score:4, Informative)
I just tried one of my IMAP enabled accounts again, and accented characters (ISO-8859-1 and -14) either show up as a ?, are replaced by the 7 bit equivalent (é becomes i), or are missing. There is a lot of work to shoehorn real-world language support into the IMAP protocol. It's an area I've actively avoided, but could be why the rollout is only for people likely to receive only US-ASCII or CodePage=437.
the AC
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What I REALLY want is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know they offer to do that via POP, but I want the "live" copy of my mail to remain on my server, and for Google to access it via IMAP. I don't like the idea of all my mail being stored on someone else's server, especially when I'm not paying anything for it and therefore should have no real expectation of it still being there tomorrow.
Google for domains seems at first glance to do this, but your mail is actually still stored on Google's servers.
Has anyone ever heard of this sort of feature coming in the future?
But (Score:5, Funny)
is 2.0 automatically secure? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:is 2.0 automatically secure? (Score:4, Informative)
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Just start there (Score:5, Informative)
Works much better on the iPod touch (Score:3, Informative)
Some changes I have noticed... (Score:4, Informative)
1) For a while yesterday, the new titlebar/tab of the main Gmail window said: Gmail - Inbox - username@gmail.com (where username is my account name). Now it just says "Gmail". That's right, it doesn't update anymore to say "Inbox (1)" when I get a new mail.
2) Hovering over names in your message list gives a new style pop-up that shows the person's name, email address, and picture. Across the top of the pop-up are styled gradient buttons that say "Email", "Invite to Chat", and "More...". Clicking More will show options for "Recent Conversations" and "Show in Contact List: Auto, Always Show, Never Show, Blocked". Previously, hovering over names in the message list just showed you their email address. The new functionality seems similar to what the old version did when you hovered over your contact / chat list in the sidebar.
3) Chat now works in Safari. There are new (?) options for the chat list, including "Size of chat list: tiny, small, medium, large" and "Show in chat list: Most popular, all". (This may not be new, I never used G Chat in a browser because it didn't work on Safari before).
4) There are new actions to apply to messages. One is "Filter messages like these" the other is "mute". I'm not sure what mute does.
5) As the linked article says, Contacts management is now vastly different. It actually still looks a bit unfinished (or maybe it's just Safari's rendering, but I doubt it).
still has SEARCH but no SORT (Score:4, Interesting)
For example: say I've got a few hundred messages and I want to find the few that have large attachments--ZIP files, a bunch of pictures, whatever. How do I do this with Gmail? Should I tag message with large attachments in a special way? If that's your suggestion, I'd like to point out that that is STUPID for two reasons:
1) the data is ALREADY THERE. Why should I manually tag messages? Aren't computers supposed to DO WORK FOR US?
2) that requires me to know ahead of time what ALL my needs will EVER be. What if I've been collecting this mail for years and then suddenly think "I'd like to find all these messages." But oops, I don't have my TIME MACHINE, so I can't go back and tag them all.
With anything else, it's just a click or two.
Re:still in beta (Score:5, Funny)
A Microsoft beta
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Re:still in beta (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:still in beta (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:still in beta (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:still in beta (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has bits and pieces...Some teams know what they're doing, and put out good products...I'm not displeased with IE 7, or Office, aside from the usual proprietary crap. Vista...Well, I haven't used it much, so I'll not claim to be an expert. But it fails on some of the most fundamental stuff, stuff that should be right as a given, like file copying and responsiveness. The security features are executed really poorly from a user standpoint; it's much more friendly to turn them off.
To me that just suggests that no one is in charge. The worst design decisions almost always result from committee and compromise. You need to hire a good lead, and let them stamp their vision on it.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why not use a protocol concieved for attachments? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheesh, when will people understand that EMAIL was *not* concieved for large binary attachements... and that UUENCODE is just a hack allowing that... if you want to send a big file just upload it to an FTP and mail the ftp:// [ftp] link... or use teh usenet!
In a more on-topic comment, when will people at google fix their broken javascript so that gmail can work properly with Konqueror web browsers?, sure they are all for open source and summer of coding, but can't they just pay o
FTP loses based on ease of use (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't. Not trying to be snide but that battle was lost long ago. It does not matter that FTP is technically more efficient and better designed for file transfer. Attaching a file is simple and, like it or not, using an ftp server involves more steps, additional software, additional security, and additional training. FTP fails the mom test. It's harder than attaching a file for NO additional benefit to the user in 99.999999% of cases. Furthermore, most people do not have or know about ftp servers, they have email accounts. So they use the tool they have and know how to use.
Does this cause problems for the network admins? Sure. Doesn't matter though. Ease of use/learning for the user wins here. If you want ftp to be used, make it easier to use than attaching a file and people will flock to it. Until then, it's going to be used only by nerds like me in the few special cases where ftp is the only alternative.
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Re:Why not use a protocol concieved for attachment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Trust? (Score:4, Funny)
Oops.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh dear.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe in the same way Microsoft managed to forget 1902 versions between Windows 98 and 2000?
"I just want" (Score:5, Funny)
**shiver**
The three scariest words in IT. Actually... pretty much any business.
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