I think this design is very good and better for heavy users compared to the previous one:
* The new way to reply to emails makes it a lot faster to reply in the common case. It makes emails more similars to chat conversations where you can reply with just one line or alike, that is a necessary shift today, otherwise no one will reply to emails soon as it is a killer of your time.
* The icons will tell you what they do if your pointer is over the icon, since there are a few icons after a week or so you know what every one is doing, and the fact they are very well "exposed" in the UI makes their use comfortable.
* New stars make more sense, less different types, more semantically shaped and colored.
* When the UI is set to "compact" is the perfect amount of information IMHO, if you receive a lot of emails. But you can change that depending on the amount of conversions you handle and on your tastes.
What I really don't like instead? Formatting is not retained on emails, it strips newlines, spaces and so forth in a random way. This is very very bad.
* The new way to reply to emails makes it a lot faster to reply in the common case. It makes emails more similars to chat conversations where you can reply with just one line or alike, that is a necessary shift today, otherwise no one will reply to emails soon as it is a killer of your time.
* The icons will tell you what they do if your pointer is over the icon, since there are a few icons after a week or so you know what every one is doing, and the fact they are very well "exposed" in the UI makes their use comfortable.
* New stars make more sense, less different types, more semantically shaped and colored.
* When the UI is set to "compact" is the perfect amount of information IMHO, if you receive a lot of emails. But you can change that depending on the amount of conversions you handle and on your tastes.
What I really don't like instead? Formatting is not retained on emails, it strips newlines, spaces and so forth in a random way. This is very very bad.