Graphic Euphoria

iGoogle gets an update and now i can check Gmail at work!

Land Here

Your browser homepage is more important than you think. The days of the old Google are long gone. You can personalise a homepage to include many optional extras such as email, RSS aggregators, calendars, ebay listings and even weather forecasts. Not only that but there are a multitude of similar solutions available. Live.com, yahoo, netvibes to name a few. I have experimented with netvibes and live.com but every time I find myself back with Google.

Why?

Well, these solutions are limited by two problems. Compatibility and speed. A huge percentage of the add-ons are made by independent programmers and as such they sometimes don’t include all the features you would expect, have compatibility issues and sometimes they are not maintained. The second issue occurs when you add many add-ons to your page thus increasing the load times. Some solutions offer a tab system which only load the visible add-ons but this can still be a problem. As a result I now only have three add-ons. Gmail, google calendar and a to-do list. Personally I have found anything else is worthless to me as I find it easier to go the site. The only other one I tried was the Google Reader add-on. Again, this simply did not perform well enough to stop me needing to view the actual web app. I now have a streamlined and efficient landing page. It shows me the information I need to know when I first start surfing and ONLY the information I would automatically check every time.

What’s changed

Google has updated iGoogle! Some would say it’s long over due, I would have to agree. The minimal Google look is surprisingly looking a little bit dated! (strange i know) It’s looking a lot more like netvibes, round corners and more effective tabbing. Check out the screenshot.. It gives it a more friendly feel. I much prefer it. There are practical benefits too; you have the option of viewing your add-on at full width and with the more developed add-ons you get much more functionality. The two which have impressed me the most is Gmail and Google Calendar. Click on the side nav and you basically get these two as fully functional sites. I now can cancel Gmail from forwarding all my mail to my work email account and can receive it right here in the browser, even though it is blocked. Fantastic. Good work Google. Thanks! (ps my iGoogle page has the radiohead theme)

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