It seems that Google sneakily updated GMail without informing many people at all. In fact, many people I have spoken with don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll elaborate since it seems this isn’t a huge phenomenon yet, and the larger tech blogs haven’t started buzzing about it yet. They might not though, it’s pretty minor changes and nothing that you’ll even notice immediately. The GMail blog has also remained oddly silent about the change too. So how do I know I’m using a ‘new’ version? Because it said so! My GMail inbox now has a link to use the ‘Older Version’, which is right next to settings. Here, although you may not notice much, are the screenshots (new first, old second):

You can click on those to get bigger screenshots. See if you can spot the differences! Because I’m a moderately nice person, I’ll go over a small list of things I’ve noticed thus-far in using it:

• AJAX loading system has been changed. No more white text on red background!

• Messages now load with a small “Loading” thing showing up very temporarily in the white bar where the GMail / Calendar / etc links are already.

• Any loading or setting saved or message sent etc messages have been changed to a softer yellow background

• Quick Contacts is now ‘Chat’, and has a new options menu at the bottom

• There are some new hover over things for emails and the chat that have been redesigned and have more options.

So yep, like I said, not such big things! Here are the new hoverover boxes:

Have you got the new GMail? Comments are appreciated!