One of the most visible changes in Gmail 2.0 was the new contact manager with better search options and more flexible exporting. You might have noticed that the contacts list doesn't load instantly and that's because Gmail opens a separate web page in an iframe.
Google has recently updated the stand-alone contacts page by adding a logo and a more prominent search box. Unfortunately, the URL is not user-friendly: http://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager.
The page should be useful if you have a Google account that is not connected to a Gmail address and you would like to access your list of contacts from services like Google Docs or Google Reader.
{ Thanks, Tony. }