Gmail Shifting to a New Version of the GUI

My Gmail was behaving in a funny way since at least yesterday. Some times there was a blank page when you clicked on something. Some other times there was a strange looking error message like “Zero Sized Reply” or something. Then the look of the interface was a bit different. Finally, the URL also was looking different: a small one instead of the usual long concatenation of apparently random letters, numbers and symbols.

On asking around and doing some experiments, I realized that Google is shifting to a new version of the Gmail interface. I wish they had given some explicit indication of this, so that I didn’t have to worry about what was happening. The network in my place has been behaving strangely and some other funny things have been happening (e.g., my academic home page suddenly and completely disappeared from the Google index).

This is what the new interface looks like:

I have not yet tried the new features (if any), except noticing that the GUI looks a bit different.

I have heard that there is a plan to shift to a Yahoo! like interface. Personally, I would prefer a Gmail like interface.