Gray Background in Google Image Search

Google Image Search uses a gray background for almost the entire page. The same background color from the header of most Google services is now used for the list of image search results. It's a light shade of gray and it looks a little better than the white background.

Gmail's Old Mobile Sites, No Longer Available

Gmail's mobile interface has a link that used to send you to an old version of the interface, launched in 2008. I was curios to see if the "older version" link at the bottom of the page sends you to the interface that has been replaced this week.

It turns out that the older versions of the Gmail mobile site are no longer available and the "older version" link is now less useful because it sends users to the Gmail site for feature phones and for unsupported browsers.

It's also interesting to notice that the "desktop" link loads the basic HTML version, not the regular desktop interface. If you click "standard" in the basic HTML interface, Gmail sends you back to the mobile version. I've only been able to load the standard interface by using Chrome's "request desktop site" feature.

10 Differences Between Gmail's iOS App and the Mobile Gmail Site

Now that Gmail's iOS app and the mobile Gmail site look almost the same, you may wonder which one is better. Why install the Gmail app when you can use Gmail from Safari, Chrome or any other browser? Here are 10 differences I found:

1. The native app is faster. Almost everything is faster, from transitions to scrolling and loading messages. This is especially noticeable if you have an old iPhone (I've tested the native app and the web app on an iPhone 3GS: the web app was a lot slower).

2. The native app supports push notifications. If you buy a new iPhone or iPad right now, the Gmail app is the only way to receive notifications almost instantly. The Exchange-powered Google Sync is no longer available for new devices (it still works for existing devices and Google Apps for Business/Education).

3. Gmail's iOS app opens links inside the app, while the web app opens links in a new tab. The first approach is better because it's much easier to go back to the message. You can open pages in Chrome from the Gmail app and Chrome adds a new button that sends you back to the Gmail app, replicating an Android feature.

4. You can preview photos before attaching them to a message in the native app, but this feature is not available in the web app. Photos sent using the native app are a lot more compressed: I've sent a screenshot using both apps and the native app attached a 91KB JPG file, while the mobile Gmail site attached a 239KB JPG image.

5. The native app doesn't show Google's navigation menu and doesn't include browser controls, so there's more space for displaying messages.

6. Gmail's iOS app has a different navigation interface borrowed from the YouTube and Google+ apps. It supports gestures, it's faster and it doesn't replace the current view.

7. The native app integrates with your phone contacts. That means you can open the system contact picker when composing a new message.

8. The web app shows status messages at the bottom of the window, while the native app doesn't.

9. The web app asks for permission to increase local storage to 10MB or more, while the native app doesn't.

10. Both apps let you switch between multiple accounts, but the native app has a nicer interface with profile photos and unread mail counter.

New Mobile Gmail Interface

Gmail's mobile site now looks like the hybrid Gmail app for iPhone and iPad. There are some differences: the app has a sidebar, a different interface for changing accounts and support for push notifications.

Unlike Gmail's app for Android, the iPhone app is just a wrapper for the mobile site with a few extra features. Until now, Gmail's app for iPhone used a different interface than the mobile site. Mobile Gmail had an old interface that predated the Google-wide redesign efforts.

New interface (iPhone 4S) vs the old interface (iPhone 3GS):

Unfortunately, the new mobile site lacks the previous/next buttons, just like the iPhone app. The good news is that you can now upload photos from the mobile site if you have an iPhone or iPod. Until now, the feature was only available in the Android interface and the "native" iOS app.

Google Now Topics

Update: two days later, it no longer works.

Google Now has a cool feature that shows useful results for the topics you've recently explored using Google Search. Now you can find all the topics if you visit this page. Unfortunately, the links to the topic pages only work from an Android device.

It's likely that Google notices when you're clicking a lot of search results and refine your query multiple times and creates a new topic. Google automatically classifies topics and it lets you filter the topics by time. Google Now Topics could be a modern version of Google Alerts if Google added more notification options.

{ Thanks, Florian. }

Google Search App for Android Tests New Colors

The Google Search app for Android experiments with a new search results interface that uses soft colors: light blue and orange. Right now, the regular interface uses the same colors like the web search interface: blue (#1122CC) for links and green (#009933) for web addresses.

While it's refreshing to see new colors in the search UI, orange makes URLs stand out too much. Blogger's new interface uses a similar color for headers and important buttons.

Here's the current interface:

{ Thanks, Andrew. }

Google Support Will Use Hangouts

Google will start to use Google+ Hangouts to provide support. The screensharing feature is especially useful because a Google employee can see what's on your computer screen, so you don't have to take screenshots.

Here's the text used by the screensharing feature:

"Would you like to share your screen with Google? By clicking 'Share my screen' button you will enable screensharing. Your microphone and camera will remain off and your computer will be visible to your Google representative. Please make sure you close anything you do not want your representative to see. To turn off screensharing at any time click the 'Stop sharing my screen' button."

It's not clear which Google service will have this option, but the wording suggests it will be limited to businesses that use services like Google+, AdWords and Google Apps.

{ Thanks, Florian. }