slashnode.

Users may have noted today that the GMail interface was switched up today by the design guys at Google. The changes seem to be shifting GMail towards a function-centric interface, whereby the layout of the page reflects the function you are currently using Gmail for.

See below:

You’ll note the 3 main functions Google are expecting their user-base to perform in Gmail;

• Mail based tasks
• Contact management
• Scheduling / ToDo based tasks

Clicking the “Mail” button brings up the usual GMail interface. Clicking “Contacts” brings up a list of all contacts in your address book with fields for email and contact phone number. Finally, clicking “Tasks” triggers the “Tasks” widget to pop-up in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

One thing I love about the new layout is the positioning of the “Compose Mail” button. I always found it slightly convoluted to create a new mail message; especially considering this was the main reason I was in GMail in the first place. The new position of the button is just about perfect.

Nice work Google!… too bad about Google Wave…

Facebook have hinted on many occasions that they would be reducing the page width of Applications built using their Pages feature. There seems to be a lot of confusion and misinformation about this; mainly, I think, because it was actually stated that Pages would start to have the new width rolled out to them in Late 2009 / Early 2010. Obviously this didn’t happen.

Now the FB team have come out and announced on the Facebook developer’s blog that the new width will DEFINITELY be rolled out, starting on the 23rd of August 2010. And the reduction is significant. Currently pages can be as wide as 720 pixels (px). This will be reduced to 520 pixels…

So what does this mean for developers with existing pages? It means if you don’t adhere to the new width of 520 px, your pages are going to look horrendous. Luckily the FB development team have stated they will provide a tool to allow developers to test their layouts in the new format the week before pages start getting rolled over into the new width.

For more information check out the Facebook developer’s blog.

It’s moments like these that I need to stop and remind myself that the Google search engine is not just a technical miracle – but is also, from the perspective of an end user, a pretty damn good product.

Case in point: I went to a client’s Facebook Page to make some changes today and was (more than) slightly irritated when clicking on the ‘Edit Page’ button resulted in the page hanging. After 10 minutes of frustration and testing in 4 different browsers I decided there must have been some deeper cause for the problem. Enter Google.

I entered the first query term that entered my thoughts: “can’t edit facebook page”. I tried the first result which didn’t immediately answer my question. Sensing that my problem would most likely be a recent occurence, I clicked the ‘Latest’ filter from the menu on the right-hand side. Bingo. I was greeted with the following:

Facebook error Google Query Results Page

The Yahoo! Answers page and accompanying Tweets answered my question: the Facebook ‘Edit Page’ function has been broken all day. Let’s hope they resolve this issue as soon as possible – luckily the changes I wanted to make aren’t urgent!

But the moral of the story?… Live Search is here – and it works!

Google have finally released a secure, HTTPS version of their search website. This is long overdue, in my opinion.

SSL creates a secure tunnel through which communications between the client (ie: you) and the server (ie: Google) cannot be understood if they are intercepted. In a world where unsecured public wireless networks are becoming increasingly available, SSL enabled websites are becoming more and more important.

To read more about Google’s SSL solution, check out the help document accessible from the Google support knowledgebase.

Note that only Google Web Search is available via SSL; other products, such as Google Images and Google Maps images are not currently available via SSL. If you are using SSL, these properties can not be displayed in the left pane.

So go on, head on over there and give it a try!

Google's Pacman tribute

Fans of the retro classic Pacman will be rewarded when visiting Google.com today. To mark the 30th year anniversary of Pacman’s release, the Google team have created their first playable doodle.

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for U.S. distribution by Midway, first in Japan 22nd Published in May 1980. Immensely popular in the United States from its original version to the present day, Pac-Man is universally regarded as a classic medium, virtually synonymous with video games in 1980 and an icon of popular culture.

The Google Doodle tradition was started in 1998 when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created a doodle for Burning Man Festival. The doodle was designed by Brin and Page to inform users in-case of the server crashing during their absence.

Google Doodles following this event were designed by an outside contractor, until Larry and Sergey asked the then-intern Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day in 2000. Hwang has been responsible for designing Google Doodles since.