Gmail’s interface was revolutionary when it was first released, but the design was a bit too plain for a lot of users. After a short while, users started to develop Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox plugins that could bring some more excitement to the standard Gmail theme. Today, however, Google itself announced that will be rolling out over 30 different themes for Gmail in the next couple of days.
A few lucky Gmail users are already seeing a ‘Themes’ tab appear in their settings menu, though as is typical for Google, it might take a day or two before this new feature has been rolled out to all users.
Looking at the array of themes, some are clearly more playful than others (think ASCII logos and ninjas), though all of them keep the standard Gmail interface. Interestingly, most of these themes also feature modified Gmail logos, similar to the modified Google logos that often appear on the Google homepage on holidays.
Google also announced a ‘minor facelift’ for the default Gmail interface to make it look ‘crisper and cleaner.’
Dynamic Themes
Similar to the themes for iGoogle, some of these new themes also change according to the local weather and time of day, which is a neat effect, though obviously not very useful.
Overall, this is not a dramatic update to Gmail, but a lot of users have been waiting for this feature, and judging from the early reactions to the announcement we have seen so far, these new themes are going to be a quite popular.
