Mountain View, California — It is not merely Apple who is relentlessly on the brink to devise various ways for pleasing iPhone users. According to a post on the Google Mobile blog, iPhone owners who access Gmail through their prized possession on Apple’s mobile Safari browser, the iPhone’s default browser, will now experience a cleaner, faster interface thanks to some new enhancements made by the Internet search engine giant in the last few weeks.
Recently, Google has unleashed some new features for Gmail in mobile Safari for the iPhone. Google’s Brett Lider, User Experience Designer for Gmail, has announced that the people working on the iOS version of the service have managed to speed up scrolling response, a useful enhancement for those who need to handle long conversations. The team also made the toolbars stay on screen while the user is scrolling, as opposed to moving down into view after each scroll.
The search engine giant’s plan is to make Gmail feel more like a native app on the iPhone. “Being able to access your toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage your email and move around the app,” says Lider. “If you use Gmail in your mobile browser a lot, you may have noticed that we recently tried several different variations of these buttons.”
According to Google, “First, scrolling is snappier: the speed of scrolling reflects the speed of your swipe gesture. This is helpful for long conversations where a few quick flicks will get you to the information you need much faster than before,” Google wrote in a blog post.
A second nice touch is the ability to keep toolbars on screen as the user scrolls, “rather than moving down into view after each scroll. Being able to access your toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage your email and move around the app,” Lider wrote.
Gmail is one of the clear ways, apart from search, where Google can stay in front of users who prefer Apple’s devices to Google’s Android devices, and this will be especially important as Google bolsters its social strategy. Google wants to keep iPhone users happy, even if they are going to their competitor for the mobile operating system.
So why not make its apps as iPhone-friendly as possible? Google is also encouraging users to add Gmail to their Home Screens. Furthermore, it has disclosed in the blog that based on the feedback received from users, the company has developed the new design and other upgrades for Gmail.
“We have iterated on the design and made enhancements based on your feedback. If you have more suggestions, please post them in our forum, or if you use Twitter, mention #gmailmobile and we will take a look.”
Lately, it has revamped the on-screen Gmail buttons on a number of occasions. In addition, users can offer feedback for enabling Google to dish out a refined experience.
For developers, Google promises to provide an article to code.google.com/mobile in the coming weeks, on the topic of learning about the Javascript and HTML techniques used to do the latest alterations.
“You can see these improvements by visiting gmail.com from the browser of iPhone and iPod touch devices running iOS4 (English-only for now),” Lider notes.
He ends his post with a quick tip for those who use Gmail in mobile Safari quite often, telling users to tap the “+” button and select “Add to Home Screen” in order to have the service within easy reach.
Making the product as attractive as possible across as many devices as possible is just common sense. It will be interesting, however, to see if Gmail for Android-based tablets gets any special treatment, compared to the iPad version.
And as for those who are not yet able to enjoy the new changes might want to try clearing their cache and refreshing the page, one last piece of advice goes.