New Gmail for the iPhone
January 14th, 2008 | Published in Gmail (Google Mail)
We've just released a new look and feel for the mobile version of Gmail on your iPhone. Our goal: make Gmail fit nicely as part of the latest Google on your iPhone experience. This means that we had to make Gmail faster and more fluid.
To do that, we decided to use AJAX--a powerful set of web development techniques that make web pages more responsive. We also implemented two of the coolest and most requested features for this release: pre-fetching and auto-complete. Now when you use Google on your iPhone, Gmail will automatically pre-load all your most recent messages for you. So when you decide to read a message it will be on your screen in a snap.
Address auto-complete is my favorite new feature--and one of the most requested. I wanted to be able to type a full email address in under two seconds on the iPhone. With auto-complete you can often get the right email address on your screen within 2-3 key strokes.
Finally, our user experience designer worked hard to develop a very fluid interface that fits the whole Google experience on the iPhone. These changes take into account that you have to tap the virtual buttons with your finger, so we made sure to size everything appropriately.
To get to Gmail on your iPhone and get the full new Google experience, just go to www.google.com in your web browser, hit the Gmail tab and sign in. Google Apps users with custom domains can also use this new Gmail interface by visiting mail.google.com/a/yourdomain