The new Gmail layout makes Hotmail look more and more appealing. The separation of content and chat frames makes scrolling down the friends list in chat difficult and the extremely large spacing between emails means less work can be done. Why on earth would Google permit something like this from happening, and not provide a way to revert to the old Gmail look? Hopefully this is not a sign of what is to come with Google products, otherwise I would wager on Microsoft and Apple…
If you haven’t switched yet, DONT DO IT! See prompt message below (which is interesting because they way they phrase it is confusing). Select the “continue to the old look”, which really should have been “continue WITH the old look”. Something seems fishy and if you choose the new look you will be in loads of mental anguish over something so dramatically worse it will make your eyes bleed.
If you’ve already made the mistake like I did of switching to the new look, I’m sorry for you. Hopefully very soon Google will enable a revert functionality to start using a functional email client again.