Gmail Jazzes Things Up With Themes

In keeping with the barrage of add-ons coming from Labs, the Gmail team has announced that you can now dress up your account with a theme, adding a splash of color to your email.

Gmail engineer, Annie Chen, announced the new skins, as usual, via the Gmail Blog. Chen says that seeing as how users have been building unofficial extensions to “spice up” their inboxes, there was no reason why it shouldn’t be made an integral part of Gmail.

Skins for your Gmail are abundant and come in all shapes and sizes. From a finished chrome look to fun characters that keep you company, the themes are actually really, really pretty. There wasn’t anything wrong with the classic Google look before (they’ve tweaked it a little to make it look sharper), but the themes will more than likely tempt new users away from some of the more blah interfaces users deal with on other sites.

Microsoft recently gave its Hotmail mail service a makeover and, while the company says it’s faster and more efficient, it’s pretty much more of the same. Nothing interesting or colorful about it. Same boring colors aside, most users weren’t exactly impressed with the new look.

Complaints flooded in from people unable to to view their inbox or users who have seen their sent items disappear since the changes. Comments range from desperate:

“please help i cannot read my email. cannot get hold of a person to speak to. tried my internet security but they said it is not them i need somebody do something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

to disgusted:

“I must say, someone in your staff should think over the consequences of tinkering around just to get some silly little "Happy Faces" on our email. My whole system was messed up for days and I had no idea how to set it right. This has been going on for several years since the "Windows Live" started. Pity us poor Apple users, we are trying to use your service but spend most of our time working around your latest "improvement".”

Lets hope the Gmail themes don’t bring similar problems. Check them out in account settings. If you don’t see them yet, relax, they’re working on rolling it out over the next few days so it might take a while for themes to make its way to you.