New Version of Gmail Being Tested

Keith writes "Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004, and has revolutionized the way many of us use email. The interface has remained largely untouched since it launched, but get ready, it's soon to undergo a change in what they describe as a 'New Version'. Only a select few people have access to use the new interface — mainly employees and trusted people outside the company called 'Trusted Testers'. From the ZDNet blog entry: 'Google lets every-day users who are fluent in both English and another language translate small snippets of English text into the language of their choice. This is how they can offer services in several languages without spending a dime on professional translators. Unfortunately, exposing sensitive information in this manner makes it hard to keep a secret. One of my readers, who wishes to remain anonymous, stumbled across an interesting snippet of text (which I confirmed exists) spilling the beans on a new version of Gmail that is either currently being tested, or about to be released to testing in short order.'"

Comments

Bit speculative

[Pop69]

So, on the basis of 2 words in a translation request, there is a whole new version of Gmail coming out ?

How the hell did this get to be news ?

Re:Bit speculative

[Cutriss]

How the hell did this get to be news?

Posted by Zonk on Sunday September 23, @05:13PM

That's how.

Re:Bit speculative

[Nimey]

Google is the new Apple.

Re:Bit speculative

[smittyoneeach]

And Apple the new Microsoft, and Microsoft the new IBM. Was there reality before IBM? and what will succeed Google? What if IBM succeeds Google? Would this be proof of reincarnation?

Cheapskates

[xaxa]

"without spending a dime on professional translators"
Why do people do stuff for Google for free? What do they get out of it?

Re:Cheapskates

[GreyPoopon]

Why do people do stuff for Google for free? What do they get out of it?

They get to find out about secret new products and tell the world. ;) But seriously, maybe some people do stuff like that because they want to give back; they want to see Google's ideas succeed. If spending one minute a day translating a sentence helps out, who are we to give them a hard time about it?

Lots of mystery...

[Glowing Fish]

seems to be a lot of mystery and intrigue around what is probably going to be minor cosmetic changes.
Are we all so enamored of googles many accomplishments that a site redesign becomes major news?
I don't think anyone was that concerned when yahoo and hotmail redid their sites...of course, they just made them more annoying.
Having said that, it will probably be that this rumored site redesign is when Google starts rolling out their sinister "Phase II"

Re:Nothing to see here

[kebes]

Someone was asked to translate "Newer version" for the Gmail UI. Big deal. This truly is the bottom of the barrel.

It's even worse than that. At no point does TFA provide evidence that the text "New Version" is related to Gmail, and not some other Google product. It could be a new version of Google Calendar or a new version of Google Scholar. (It could even be outdated text referring to a "New Version" of a product that has already been released.)

Or... it could just be one of thousands of random snippets of text that appear on various Google documents, and requires translation into other languages. There is no evidence here... only wild speculation. The author of TFA is either an idiot, holding back information, or is trying to create some kind of joke.

:P

[n1hilist]

I'm a nerd, It's news to me, it matters.

Great

[DaleGlass]

So this will be a beta of the new version of a service that's still in beta?

I wonder how many years more it'll take for gmail to lose the "beta" designation.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Aladrin]

Someone already pointed out that the translation if for the 'GMail UI', so yeah, it's for GMail.

But what nobody's proven is that there are any significant differences. 'New Version' might mean it's using a newer AJAX library, or has different colors. I don't care about color changes, but I care about functionality changes. Especially since I convinced the company I work for to use them for mail, and I use the web interface exclusively. If it takes a turn for the worse, I'll end up going back to Thunderbird or the new Eudora or something.

What the hell?

[glwtta]

"revolutionized the way many of us use email"

It's just a nice webmail system - webmail has been around for years before gmail. I use gmail, I like gmail, but what exactly did it revolutionize?

Re:What the hell?

[macshit]

It's just a nice webmail system - webmail has been around for years before gmail. I use gmail, I like gmail, but what exactly did it revolutionize?

It didn't suck.

In the context of webmail, that was pretty darn revolutionary!

Re:What the hell?

[catbutt]

It didn't suck. That's very true. I hated web mail before gmail, and love it now.

Also, prior to gmail, users of free web mail had to constantly delete all their old messages so they wouldn't go over their quota. Also if you didn't log in for a month you got your account cancelled. Also you couldn't use free web mail for professional purposes because it stuck an ad on your outgoing mail. Web mail also didn't allow free forwarding, pop access, or allow you to use an address at your own domain....which basically locked you in. Gmail changed all that.

And it was the first mainstream Ajax application I know of.

I agree...it was pretty damn revolutionary. At least for those who pay attention to such things.

Re:What the hell?

[jjohnson]

A conversation is just a thread, yes, but what was innovative was google's non-tree method of grouping them, and making that the basis of the email interface. Usenet accomplished this with headers, and displayed it in a tree mode that wasn't particularly good, imho, at sorting things tidily into piles based on most recent update. I'm not aware of any email program that operates like gmail does (rather than simply offering an option to sort an flat mailbox by subject). I could be wrong, though.

Re:Pkease,,,,

[Antique Geekmeister]

Or a "delete" button that goes to the next thread automatically.

Re:let's get a grip

[Tim Browse]

gmail hasn't brought anything to the table that wasn't there before.

Apart from a little thing I like to call "User interface that doesn't irritate the living fuck out of me." And almost instant searching of all my email.

Re:One request

[mattwarden]

you can search by any of those items (and more) and you would rather sort??? What the hell good does sorting do? Surely you are looking for emails from 1 person, not a group of people with names starting with 'A', right???

Re:The feature everybody wants!

[Almahtar]

I hope it has flash ads. Firefox's flashblock extension makes Flash ads very convenient for me.

Re:I prefer IMAP

[DaleGlass]

It wouldn't be over an IMAP connection, since it's offline IMAP all the messages are on the local disk already, and can be searched without any internet connection.

If I needed to search that amount of data, I suppose I'd install Beagle. There, problem solved.

Outlook Web Access

[snowwrestler]

And it was the first mainstream Ajax application I know of. As far as I know, Outlook Web Access was the first mainstream "Ajax" application. It was used by millions long before Gmail hit the Web and before Jesse James coined the term. In a very real way it defined that type of Web UI, because XmlHttpRequest was placed in IE specifically to support it.