

Google is beta testing letting users change the look of their gmail - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/gmail-themes-thats-totally-ninja/

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vaksel
although beta testing may not be entirely correct, since Gmail itself is still
in beta.

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litewulf
Perhaps some parts of Gmail are RC and some are beta? (No idea, beta really
doesn't have any meaning here)

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vaksel
I meant that they have the beta tag in their logo

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trickjarrett
This is a nice feature, users like to adjust the look and feel. I know I've
wanted to do away with the look before.

I am beginning to feel like Google is just sort of playing with gmail, they
could be pushing it further as a mail client. The labs and the new look and
feel stuff are all rather quite inconsequential.

They need to push gmail out of beta and begin a full development support for
it.

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josefresco
"They need to push gmail out of beta and begin a full development support for
it."

That's a joke right? Is there any perceivable difference between the
development of a 'beta' Google product and a 'final' Google product?

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trickjarrett
No it's not a joke. Google lets things sit in beta forever, why? Because then
they can work in spurts of development rather than continuous improvement.

How long was it before we saw improvements to gmail after it first launched?
We're in a period of development now but for a while it was stagnant and had
no real features rolled out for it.

If they move it out of Beta and commit to continuous development for it, then
they can continue to attract users and converts, and have a more appealing
tool with which to sell corporate systems etc.

No joke, I was serious.

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axod
"for a while it was stagnant and had no real features rolled out for it."

I agree, but maybe the top priorities were coping with scaling or other boring
infrastructure issues. They may have been continually improving, just not
improvements anyone outside google sees.

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pmjordan
Agreed - if I remember correctly, the first user-facing added features were
things like POP3, later IMAP, then google apps/domain integration which points
at some serious back-end heavy lifting.

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trickjarrett
Absolutely, and it's with the Google Apps/domain integration in mind I say it
needs to be pushed out of beta and have Google commit to continuous
development of it.

Now that the infrastructure is solid they need to continue to really drive and
improve the user interface. It's still clunky with some searches and the
interface can lag a little bit with the javascript.

Also, as I think about this, the themeing is also probably a step towards
allowing Apps accounts to customize how the email looks for their domain and
users. I hadn't considered that when I initially posted, and if that is
correct that's a feature that will DEFINITELY help them push corporate
accounts.

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pmjordan
Your Apps idea is an excellent point. As of right now, I certainly don't have
the feature available in my apps account, but I don't have it in my @gmail.com
account yet either. Apps accounts also don't have access to "Labs" features at
the moment though, so this could take some time.

If I remember correctly, you can actually already apply some branding to a
google apps account (if not for a free one then the paid-for version) at the
moment, but I recall it being very limited. (just the logo, possibly)

(tangent: some bizarre modding going on here - I'd love to hear why)

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mqt
The Gmail Labs features are available for Google Apps accounts. The domain
administrator can enable them in the "Domain settings."

[http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...](http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=82691)

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azsromej
Some pics of the themes <http://romej.com/archives/616/new-gmail-themes>

