Gmail has seen several visual updates over the year but the compose and reply screens have largely remained the same.

The company is now rolling out a major update which is designed to make it easy for the user to refer existing mails and keeping an eye on the inbox easy while composing.

It also allows you to have multiple compose windows open at the same time.

What they have done is turned into a chat like panel that opens at the bottom of the screen. You can open multiple compose windows, minimize them… it is slightly bigger than chat popups.

The company has also improved the compose box itself. You get the see photos of people when you are adding them in the to/cc/bcc boxes. You can drag and drop contacts between these three fields. There are also improvements to adding inline images in your emails.