ajb{log}

I just logged on to my GMail and I thought there was something weird going on with my account. The red “Loading” status notification is gone. It was replaced with a plain black “Loading” and then the unexpected happened. I have the new GMail 2.0!

Some notable new features:

Chat window now features a way to adjust your chat list size on the options.

New UI for the contact info as you hover.

New “Add Contact” screen. It is sporting a 3-pane window for easier contact management.

Above is the 3-pane window for contacts management.

New compose message window. It now includes Google Calendars “Event Invitation” functionality built-in to the compose message window.

“More Actions” drop-down has a new style and I think (not sure) if the “Filter messages like these” selection is new.

The “Loading…” message notifier looks different. Old GMail 1.0 has the light orange while GMail 2.0 has the slightly darker yellow (Yes, I can tell).

Delete notification now tells you how many you are about to delete.

Forward all under a conversation is new.

You can easily change to the “Older version” if you want. But why?

New notification “Still working…” when sending large emails.

Inline changing of hyperlinks on the compose window.

Other significant changes:

• GMail 2.0 loads a lot faster than the old one
• When something is being processed, GMail 2.0 loads the content seamlessly almost without page reloads
• GMail 2.0 is a lot cleaner and has improved its frontend UI response

Some bugs:

GMail 2.0 seems to still have bugs like the one above. Can’t see it? Contacts is selected but the window is on the trash window. And clicking any link like Starred, Chats, All Mail does not work when you have encountered this. You will need to reload your browser again.

GMail 2.0 UI breaks on Safari 3.0.3 on Mac.

Inconsistency on different browsers. It’s “Event info” on Safari Mac and it’s “Add Event Invitation” on Firefox Mac.

Some other things to note:

• Better GMail will not work. Update might be coming soon. I hope!
• Google What’s New page is still not new. Still hasn’t announce these upgrades (still showing IMAP new feature). See screenshot below.
• It’s also not yet on the Google Blog
• If you are using Safari 3.0, you are still out of luck. It’s not yet fully supported. Arrgh!

Ok, those are the only things I saw quickly. I’ll try to update this page if I find more.

My overall impression on the new GMail 2.0 is that it simply rocks and it’s far cooler than the winter here in Canada!

–aj