A preview of Gmail’s new look

I'm a pretty huge fan of all the new Google designs. Plus, gmail, the top bar, fonts.... They've kept things minimalistic while making things just feel cleaner and crisper. Whoever is leading this redesign is doing a fantastic job.

I really hope they preserve the Classic view. I can't stand how spaced out everything is. I went from being able to see 10 or so contacts in Gchat without scrolling down to just 4.

Edit: That's with the "Dense" view. Regular is even worse.

In the old Gmail interface, my eye goes straight to my inbox. In this new interface, it goes straight to the bold blue "Search Mail" in the header—which is proportionally much larger than necessary.

The new look for Google is a huge step up overall, but that's a huge usability violation to me.

I just wish they would get rid of the invite widget. It served a purpose when Gmail was invite only but now it just wastes space.

Holy ad batman. The new themes move the small text ad to the bottom of the page....but then it floats as you scroll.

That's one way to increase clicks.

I'd try the new theme if it wasn't for that...it's very distracting when scrolling down.

I just can't get past the black bar. After years of it being white, black just feels imposing.

Does anyone with an Apps account have the ability to preview the theme(s)? I don't, in my apps account.

Yet another example of Google treating apps customers as 2nd class citizens. See also: account/login issues and lack of profiles (which means no Places, no Google+, and other products). Google is effectively ignoring what are often their best/most enthusiastic customers in by doing things like this. Very puzzling.

There's a lot more white space in the new design - enough vertical space is lost for about seven conversation entries. Not sure I like this change for that reason...

Wow...Google is on FIRE! That shake-up at the top, seems to be bearing fruit.

This is exciting.

Interesting that they're adding additional details of the person you're conversing with to the right above the ads. I wonder what that means for Rapportive.

It looks like Google has somewhat abandoned the Google Colors for a black blue and maroon(?) color scheme.

They really want people to notice these changes, it creates more publicity for Google+.

My biggest complaint about the way Gmail currently looks is that it lacks structure - different features and components run right into each other. It's messy and feels cluttered even though it isn't over-designed. (That's a complaint that holds true for most Google products.) This new design looks like a real step in the right direction. It looks much cleaner and more structured. Big +1 from me.

I'm happy to see Google taking as much care and pride in the visual engineering that goes into their products as they do the back-end.

Things are a little too spread out perhaps, but I already love that the top action bar (archive, spam, delete, etc) follows you down the page. As someone who's never quite mastered gmail keyboard shortcuts, I was constantly checking items then scrolling to the top or bottom to manage them. Nice little timesaver.

I'm going to be honest here and say that I think it looks horrible. The ALL-CAPS on buttons looks amateurish, and I want my separators and selected-mail-box background highlighting back.

The non-dense theme also is too sparse.

I suppose this is just because I'm used to how it looks, but hopefully they'll keep the old themes around.

Google's UI upgrades have me really excited. What I really like about Google and all their products is how utilitarian they are. Their products are not about looking pretty, but about giving me the most useful features I need. What I like about the new UI look is that they are thinking about the aesthetics of design more. Gmail used to look like a bland data grid from excel, and it was very dense with information. Now there are more pixels in between rows and columns in the new Gmail, giving the layout visual space. The color changes also make the UI more interesting to look at and quicker to navigate. But the best part is the dark navigation bar at the top. Love that.

Really liking the work. I'm really looking forward to what they have in store for Reader.

But why is the top bar charcoal gray instead of the black seen on all the other sites?

This interface would be much more suited to tablet-sized screens.

Apart from information-density (which should be more forgiving on the tablet form factor when compared to PCs), the spacing also makes this a touch-friendly alternative to the Ajax-laden tablet interface.

For a PC screen, however, I'd say 'power users' quite like the higher information density on the current UI. It's much more efficient if you think about how far the eyes need to move and how much one needs to scroll to get to an element on the page. Navigation is not much of a problem currently with a precise device like the mouse and with keyboard shortcuts.

Although I appreciate the clean design, I find it blinding, I'm going to use it for a few days and see how I get on but for now, the plethora of white space seems to hurt my eyes!

I like it a lot. It reminds of Whistler and Windows Mobile (yes, that's a good thing). The only thing I would change would be to tighten up the outside margins by about 50%.

My instant reaction to the lower visual density was negative, but after using it for a little while, I think it's dense enough to be usable but sparse enough to be calming. It's amazing what the removable of a few borders and shaded areas does to the feeling of apprehension about email.

I actually don't kind much how it looks but speed is important. UI performance is an important UX. Hopefully the new GMail UI is faster than before.

I, for one, don't welcome the new look. The old overal Google look given an air of unrefined, raw 'geekness'. I liked the feeling that I was using something designed and made by scientists rather than enterpreneurs. This is, saldy, finally going and Google is becoming one of many.

Of course look is not all, the quality of service they provide is uncompared. I'm still a fan, but I really prefered the old days.

so they added padding to everything?

Wow, definitely keeping as my new theme. I had to disable the "Right-sided chat" lab feature but works great other than that.

When I first saw Google+, I felt that it looked a lot like [Helvetireader](http://helvetireader.com/) to the point where I thought that they may have been (heavily) inspired.

With the new Gmail interface, this can't be a coincidence.

Credit where credit is due? Hell, are we talking about a blatant rip-off?

Perhaps it's because I'm used to using the darker "Shiny" theme, which I've had on for many years, but the colors of the Preview theme are way too bright for my taste. I think they should come up with a more subdued version of it that doesn't feel quite so loud. Functionally, though, it's great.

Hm. I'm actually quite happy with the design Gmail has right now. A customer in a situation like this wonders, if any change to the interface doesn't just mean more costs for me as the user (like the change of "open in new tab/open in new window" between FF3 and FF4).

I really like the new apps and search interface, but the use of red is really bugging me. Surely this is basic UI that urgent things are made red like alerts etc. I fail to see why the 'compose mail' and 'create' calendar event buttons need to be a glaring red?

Hmm two issues that google needs to resolve with this. The new ad bar at the bottom is constantly obstructed by waiting for mail.google.com ajax request, so it is effectively useless. The color of the compose mail button needs to be changed asap.

It's just spaced out more, I don't see anything removed.

I hope I can change the vertical line density back.

Just a few tweaks and a general tidy up. We'll barely notice it after a week or so of use.

The new theme looks good but the boundaries between the elements doesn't seem well defined, giving a floating appearance to them. Also the background is kind of glary.

It almost looks like the "html only" view of gmail which is originally meant for slow connections. Nevertheless, lighter is better and it is definitely soothing.

Gmail now gives YOU the benefit of the doubt, dropping that pesky 'Report' and putting 'Spam' right up there with all the other important verbs of our time.

I'm going to complain about the amount of padding in the messages list per message, but praise the rest. The redesign of most of Google is a welcome change.

I prefer a stronger contrast between read and unread messages. While the new look looks great for search, maps etc. I find it less useful in GMail.

Looks like they took some of the design ideas from their mobile version and migrated them into the main one. Square(er) buttons being one example.

It does look good and yet the only think I can think off is "cover fire", from one of Spolsky's classic.

Google+ looks like a real improvement though.

What happened to the Priority Inbox? I still see the add or remove priority buttons, but there doesn't seem to be a proirity inbox?

I like that Google's new UI designs are using more buttons instead on text links. This is easier to see at a quick glance.

Am I the only one who was instantly reminded on http://calvetica.com ?

After using it for a couple weeks, the bright red Compose Mail button is really annoying. I hope they change that.

The article describes the new look as "modern". I hear that all the time. What the hell does it actually mean?

This may actually have me switch to using a site-specific browser for gmail instead of mail.app!

Looks great! So glad Google finally has some design talent instead of just smart engineers.

That big red button is distracting, the rest is awesome. same with calendar

I love the new design theme. Clean, minimal, elegant. Well done Google.

Hate the new back button. Loved the simple hyperlink back to Inbox.

Basic White is still the best gmail theme.

Looks like they got rid of Buzz?

anyone else has the top bar in white even with the new theme ?

While the extra white space requires more scrolling, it makes it easier to read, for me at least. It also makes it easier to click a message.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts): White space should not be considered merely 'blank' space — it is an important element of design which enables the objects in it to exist at all, the balance between positive (or non-white) and the use of negative spaces is key to aesthetic composition.

Most people actually seem to be liking it which is suprising to me since it's such a dramatic change: http://www.wepolls.com/r/1012846/Gmails-new-look

Yawn! I'm on TB, so don't care.