Gmail’s new interface 
is gradually spreading through its user base. I have it now.
It brings mysterious backend changes which enhance “the performance and the usability” of Gmail, as well as new features for contact management and more.
Two things will strike Hawk Wings readers at once.
First, the new interface breaks the Better Gmail Firefox extension. Its keyboard macros, quick navigation, coloured labels, advanced composing options and more make Gmail a pleasure to use.
Luckily Gina Trapani (a productivity goddess) is quick off the mark, and Better Gmail 2.0 is already available, although with a vastly decreased feature set, as she waits for the developers of each feature to update their code. Still, it already contains the keyboard shortcuts which are the key feature for speeding up your Gmail experience.
Secondly, Safari 3.0 is not fully supported. For example, on a cosmetic note, compare the contact manager layout on Google’s blog (top) with how it looks in Safari 3.0 (below):
Other early adopters of Leopard may agree that it is possible to spend too much time on the bleeding edge of innovation. 
Luckily, you can opt to use the old interface instead by clicking on “Older Version” next to the Settings.
More new features?? I’m still waiting for IMAP to be switched on for my account!
Apparently ensuring your language is set to English (US) will ensure that the IMAP and UI changes present themselves!
IMAP is not in my gmail settings, but enabling POP3 also enables IMAP. I use it with Mail.app currently.
Tim, your right about Safari not liking the new Gmail contact interface. Good thing I don’t use Safari very much.
I have never found a compelling reason to use Safari over Firefox. If I keep Firefox’s extensions doing to a minimum, the speed of Firefox is pretty close to Safari’s speed. There is one extension I just can’t live without and haven’t found a good equivelant to, and that is AdBlock Plus.
I’m sorry if that makes me evil, but I just don’t put up with ads on web sites. Period. Text based or any other, they are just obnoxious and totally useless. I’m sure they make some money for the site owner, but I consider web based ads very similar to SPAM.
Anyway, sorry to get way off topic like that, but until Safari gets some kind of ad blocker that works as well as AdBlock Plus, I’ll use Safari for generating Dashboard widgets of web comics and other web page elements.
Dave, I quite understand. I do find Firefox slower though over all, so I find myself using both. Firefox especially as the front end for Gmail (with Better Gmail) and for other web sites – like my bank’s web site :( – that aren’t Safari-friendly.
Tim…thanks for the information regarding the new version of Gmail. I looked for information in Gmail’s ‘Help’, but to no avail. Hawkwings gave me the ‘good oil’. :-)
Clearly from the comments, many HawkWingers know that Gmail has IMAP as well, which for me makes the gap between Fastmail (for which I use IMAP) and Gmail smaller (especially as GMail is free). Also Gmail handles mail a bit like Opera Mail does, which I liked. (So, there is one less reason to have Fastmail as my dominant mail handler…)
Yep, Safari doesn’t work 100% with GMail. And on one site I frequent, Safari doesn’t work very well at all (and so I have to resort to FireFox, or Opera). If ‘might is right’, then Internet Explorer (in Windows world), and then FireFox, have the drop on nice (but minority) browsers like Safari and Opera, regardless of which is most (official) standards compliant.
C’est la vie.
SteveL