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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."
I guess I didn't realize that gmail was past 1.0 yet. I thought it was still a beta.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
...thanks to a JavaScript back-end rewrite...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.
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Apparently, one of Google's goal in releasing this new version is to provide a new code framework that will help them to speed up Gmail's response time in a number of areas. One feature of note is that Gmail now pre-fetches and caches messages in the current view, so when you click on a message, it loads almost instantly. On my broadband connection, I see much improved response--clicking a message now displays it almost instantly--no lags or delays.
-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
What is a beta of a beta?
A Microsoft beta
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
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.
Can't you just buy one?
...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.
No, a Microsoft 1.0 is Alpha, MS SP1 is Beta and MS SP2 is the 1.0 version. When the product is good enough it's discontinued and the whole cycle starts again.
OK - but I need more explanation. How about an analogy involving cars.
:(){
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?
is it compatible with Comcast ?
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?
It's called minimalism, and it's one of the many reasons why gmail is as good as it is.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
Because it's true.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It compiles! Quick ship the release candidate :D
Just set your bookmark to https://mail.google.com/ - you'll start & stay in SSL. I've been doing this for a really long time ( I can't remember when I even created the bookmarks I have in all my browsers to do exactly this. )
Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
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.
It works much better on my iPod touch. For one I automatically get mobile view instead of defaulting to (an extremely slow to load) full html view, and now there is a "basic html" option, which works a lot faster than how the full html view worked before. The full html view is no longer available, though.
--- What?
Just give me bigger attachments.
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:// 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 one of their monkeys to fix their javascript hacks to make them standard compliant?
I say, screw the interface [improvements], at least make it work well!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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 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...
Oops.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Well, first of all, my initial thought was "WTF happened to my Gmail?" because this change occurred the same day that I installed OS X 10.5 (and the new Safari). Now that I know the changes were made on Gmail's end, it makes more sense.
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).
**shiver**
The three scariest words in IT. Actually... pretty much any business.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
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.
Also, if you want to do subfolders with IMAP as such:
Family/Joe
Family/Joe/DamnForwards
Family/Mary
Family/Mom
Family/Bob
Family/Dad
You just have to create labels exactly like that and your IMAP folders should behave as prescribed.
Didn't work for me either.
I'm guessing that either this only works for enabled accounts or they said "oops" and turned off that functionality for accounts that don't have access to the new UI. I'm guessing that this never activated accounts for the new UI.
Try:
http://www.companionlink.com/downloads/
http://www.scheduleworld.com/tg/cal/day.jsp
and of course, the open source
http://www.gcalsync.com/
It's stunning that Yahoo fixed this ages ago. You get a free app to download to your desktop, (Intellisync - works fine).
This from someone who has to sync blackberry, notes, outlook, tbird, act! and oh god I'm going to kill myself if they add any more fsuking apps...just call me 'lord of the ugly hack'
P.S. Dawn takes some of the pain away for non-technical users if doing 'one-way' conversions with CSVs
...and how are binaries on usenet less hackish than binaries in e-mail??
'Cause USENET binaries are 1337, apparently.
After seeing this article, I took a closer look at my GMail interface (the contacts part). I did notice I've been running the updated version this whole time! I didn't even realize it. It's pretty subtle if you just look at your inbox all day like I often do. The new contacts is kind of nice even though I haven't had much time to explore it. However, in just a few minutes of clicking things I did manage to break the interface running in Firefox. After clicking from Drafts to Contacts, the interface just got "stuck". I now can't go back to my inbox or any other subsection and my contacts aren't showing up. A complete refresh though fixed that. Anyway, I look forward to picking through the new tweaks to the interface.
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
Firefox + GreaseMonkey + http://blog.persistent.info/2005/12/greasemonkey-christmas.html
I believe there might even be a Firefox extension that does this..
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!