Subscribe by EmailGmail Plays Dress-Up
November 20, 2008 by Casey | 13 comments
By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Those of you accessing Gmail through the web (as I do) may have noticed the new “Themes” that showed up yesterday. I’m already a fan, myself! The options encompass everything from basic color scheme changes to more complicated redesigns that use soothing photos or cute cartoons.
To change your Gmail theme, click on “Settings” at the top righthand corner of the screen, just beside your email address, and you’ll see a new “Themes” tab. They activate automatically when you click on them, so you can easily click through and try them out.
I suppose the “geeky” one is supposed to be “Terminal” (pictured to the right), but I think I’d go blind if I had to stare at the neon-green-on-black for too long. So far my favorite is “Tea House” (pictured above), which seems to a time sensitive theme. When I first activated it, the fox was sitting in the middle of the yard, and now he’s up in the shade of the tower while the sun is higher in the sky. I suspect this may be one of the “weather-sensitive” themes as well, since it asks for your specific location when you activate it.
Sometimes little differences can actually be big ones. I’m thinking of how excited Livejournal users get when the site adds new blog themes to choose from.
If you you’ve chosen a new Gmail theme, which one are you using?
- Send attachments straight to Gmail with gAttach
- Could Gmail Become a Corporate Solution?
- Gmail introduces secure net connection
- Gmail now supports IMAP
i don’t know gmail (prefer using my own domains) but that tea house theme does look really nice, weather sensitive is really cool. i have an htc diamond and it changed the wallpaper when we went from summer to fall which i thought was pretty interesting :D
I’m using tea house too. Now if they’d just build in the option to have the same themes avialable for iGoogle and Google Reader.
i’m using the “Shiny” theme, just because it looks classy and will still load pretty quickly if i use my phone or have a slow connection when i’m onsite with a customer…i wish there was a way to customize what colors make up the gradients and items, though (for the simpler themes, of course). It’s about time Google implemented this, i was really getting sick of the same UI i’d seen since i first signed up.
I’m currently using Phantasea … I wanted to go for a minimalist theme but nothing caught me eye
Summer Ocean… the waves and the beach are always just a click away.
I really like Steel and Minimalist and Planets is pretty geeky and cool, too.
I use a mail client, but I did login to GMail yesterday just to check out the themes. I chose the Terminal theme. And that really is how my terminal looks. Green on black is os much easier for me to read than black on white.
Wow, I didn’t know they were making it for gmail, too. I thought it was just for iGoogle. For that I have the Autumn theme with little raccoons doing fall activities. Including one that shows up after midnight of them eating pumpkin pie :D
I picked Ninja for Gmail :D So cute!
I love terminal, but it’s tough to look at like you said.
I’m currently using the Tree theme; it’s really smooth and sleek. Ninja is really cool too. I’m really impressed, and hope they release more soon.
hmm. i dont think its “weather-sensitive”. i think they ask for your city in order to know what time zone you are in. making each time of day with different weather would be a little much, i think.
Could be! I just saw one of the press releases mention weather-sensitive themes (as in, raining down on your email, etc.), and it seemed like this one was the most likely option. But so far I’ve only seen the time of day change.
I’m using “Desk” theme – maybe one day my real desk will be as clean as the desk theme.