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Google Begins "Gmail 2.0" Rollout
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."
My wife, of all people, ended up getting this--she called me in yesterday and wanted to know "What the hell is wrong with [my] Gmail?" Among other things, it looks like they've further integrated the IM features (which we both hate) and made them far more difficult to disable. She's one of those computer users that gets absolutely terrified and unnerved if anything about her computing experience changes, so this is not at all a positive thing. Fortunately, there is an "Older version" link in the upper right corner that reverts back.
...how 'bout first enabling that promised IMAP interface so I can ditch the unreliable POP on my iPhone?[end-o-whine]
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
It's great that they're improving the interface, and being able to access mail stored on Google's servers via IMAP is a nice addition. But what I REALLY want is to be able to store my mail on MY server, and access it via Google's awesome interface. Really, just use Google as an IMAP client to my mail server.
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?
Ie: Can I stop changing the URL to "https" after logging into my account?
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
I can confirm that it is definitely a lot faster. It's really snappy now, besides that initial opening which still seems a little slow compared to most websites, though I don't use any webmail besides Gmail so I'm not sure if this is typical.
The new version was turned on automatically for me, I had a link to the Older Version at top.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I don't know what their actual problem is...Design by committee probably. I think one of Apple's greatest strengths right now is that they have a real solid clarity of vision; they have people who know what would be cool and useful and they give them the freedom to make it happen.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
first of all lets me get this straight I think Gmail is good client and the IMAP access has gone a long way to make it even better BUT
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
I think they opt for usability. After all as you said, they are geeks, not artists.
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 directly. UI 2 isn't polished enough yet. But things are probably going to improve. It's just a matter of time.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I think the "plain"-ness of the app is partly responsible for it's speed (at least the client duties). There isn't a whole lot of flashy css and there are no images at all... that's less for the client to parse and assemble which helps it render faster. Just my $0.02...
And I still can't click on a column heading to sort by sender, date, size, etc. Search and labels are great, but they don't fulfill EVERY need. Why does gmail still lack such basic functionality that every other binary and web email client of the past decade has had?
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.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I'm not going to speculate on whether they're talking client-side back-end or server-side back-end, but it could be server side: Steve Yegge has been working on some server side JS architecture at Google for nearly a year now.
I got it to work by changing my language away from English (US) -- to English (UK) because I was tired of not seeing changes on my settings page -- and after still not seeing changes, I changed it back, and when I did, IMAP became enabled.
Gravity Sucks
I never use chat and always disable it, so I was quite annoyed to discover that when Gmail 2.0 was rolled out, not only was chat re-enabled, but I was logged in! Any new account, or old account using Gmail 2.0 for the first time, will automatically have chat enabled and their status will be showing as online, without any request to do so. I consider this a privacy violation.
The "turn off chat" link at the bottom only disables it, though those stupid rollovers still show up (all I wanted to see was a reasonable-sized box with their e-mail address in it, not some big thing with a silhouette placeholder avatar that I will never fill in!).
There is no way to get rid of the chat box on top of the box of labels, without going to the "older version" in the link at the top right.
While I'm perfectly comfortable with the older version, and I'd have no problem staying with it, I have to click the "older version" link every single time I log in, especially when from a different computer or new location.
Why can't I simply kill chat once and for all?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!