The Iterative Web App: A new look for Gmail and Google mobile web apps

On April 7th, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code which allows us to more rapidly develop and release new features that users have been asking for, as explained in our first post. We'd like to introduce The Iterative Webapp, a series where we will continue to release features for Gmail for mobile. Today: A new look for our buttons and toolbars.

Some of you noticed and asked us about recent changes we made to Gmail for mobile and a few of our other mobile web apps. If you use the web browser to access Gmail, Latitude, Calendar, or Tasks on your Android-powered device or iPhone, you'll see that we freshened up the look of the buttons and toolbars.

We never want the buttons and toolbars of Google apps to compete with your content; rather, they should complement them. So the headers and buttons are now darker, to better show the content of your emails and calendar entries.

We also made the all the buttons a bit larger, for easier button-tapping.

To try these apps yourself, point your mobile browser to Gmail (gmail.com), Calendar (google.com/calendar), Latitude (google.com/latitude), Tasks (gmail.com/tasks), or just go to google.com from you phone and find all these web apps under the 'more' link.

Is this an improvement? Let us know what you think.

by Charles Warren, User Experience Designer, Google Mobile