Mountain View, California — Gmail Account, well, the latest buzz about Gmail is that eagle-eyed Alex Chitu at Google-focused blog Google Operating System has just buzzed about some significant changes in Gmail that Google appears to be testing with some users. Yes, from the Gmail haven, news of a redesigned version of Gmail used by Google employees has been leaked through a Google Chrome OS bug report.
Google continually tests new features in its products, and while some of the applications takes on to become regular features, some of them fade away and never get integrated on a mass scale. Occasionally, Google employees get to try all the good/not-so-good/bad/excellent stuff before it is actually introduced in the market. A routine testing for its apps and one of the first stages of the testing period lies with the google employees.
The latest in the testing series is a Chrome OS bug report, which Google Operating System blog spotted about the new Gmail interface in a Gmail Inbox image with slew of new features. However, it is also possible that it might be just a version for internal mail available only to Google employees. Nevertheless, let us go ahead and analyze what we can find.
According to Chitu, the leaked screenshot suggests many changes in the existing Gmail. “Here is what he noticed: there are three links that are as follows: ‘mail‘, ‘contacts‘ and ‘tasks‘ just below Gmail’s logo, then there is a new button for composing messages, a ‘call phone‘ option in Gmail Chat, a drop-down for switching between Google accounts and the options that let you select unread or starred messages use less space.”
Nevertheless, most of them are design and navigation makeover, but makes a good change. Though all the above modifications are already present in the existing version, but are grouped together in this one. The theme colors are slightly different, there are no more rounded corners and so on, but the changes are subtle. However, some of the changes are deeper in nature.
Additionally, the “Compose Mail” link is no more text link but a button making it stand out from other menus. Another change is introduction of drop-down menus, perhaps making the page interface uncluttered and clean. For instance like ‘select’ text link with options like all, none, unread, starred and so on are clubbed under a drop-down menu. Also, managing different google accounts looks easy with another drop-down menu next to the email account detail, on the top right corner of the page. Something Google has promised its users.
Finally, the icing on the cake or as we think it is one of the biggest revelations is the “Call phone” button available in the Chat window. This is clearly related to the Google Voice integration the team has been working on. There is a move to create a soft-phone for Google Voice to make it a complete communications tool. There have been rumors of a dedicated app, based on Gizmo5 technology, but the plan is now to have it integrated with Gmail.
But one thing to remember, these changes are mere mock-ups, what actually is rolled out to people can be a completely different design. Whatever we could break down from the leaked screenshot is up here for you to read and see. Changes are refreshing; a lot of integration and an attempt to create a clean interface are on the cards.