How to cope with the Gmail redesign | Hacker News Reader

How to cope with the Gmail redesign

jasoncrawford.org

273 pointsjasoncrawford167 comments

This article made me finally bite the bullet and convert. I've been using the new design for the last several hours. I happen to have a window open with the old design, so I know it's not merely my imagination that the new one is worse. Not enormously so, but definitely worse.

Read mails are more legible in the old version, because there is more contrast between black letters and the old light blue background than between black and the new gray.

It's also harder to parse the list of emails visually in the new design. In the old one, the 3D checkbox acted like a bullet point, and the name of the sender was closer to it. Now the heavy checkbox has been replaced by a faint square, and the sender's name is about 2x further away from it. So scanning my email is no longer like scanning a bulleted list. It's just rows of text.

That's a big deal functionally. There's a reason bulleted lists exist as a format, and removing the bullet points from the average bulleted list would make it significantly less legible.

It's a bummer to see Google making things work worse in order to make them look better (or worse still, more consistent). That's the sort of thing big companies do. Which I suppose Google now is. But they had at least been trying not to act like one before.

or worse still, more consistent

So you believe that consistency among UI screens should take a backseat to usefulness? I agree with this but I know there are a lot of people who believe the opposite - that consistency is more important to good design. And this isn't limited to big companies.

Consistency is only a means to an end. That end can be a net positive, but I think pg is alluding to consistency for the sake of Google's convenience, rather than the convenience of its users.

I'd argue that a consistently poor interface is preferable to an inconsistently well-designed interface. I can get used to a poorly-designed UI if I only have to learn how to do so once. It's when I have to learn different ways to do the same thing that it becomes annoying.

There's different kinds of consistency though. Make everything use the same palette? That's a kind of consistency.

Make everything use the same interaction design? That's a kind of consistency.

Years ago I had to use a piece of visualization software that was designed around consistency in the interaction model for the software. It sounded nice, but what it meant was that where there was intersection in the interaction models between visualizations it worked well, but where there were differences they either chose to just not implement that function, or bury it in some menu somewhere.

It was infuriating to know that a particular kind of visualization should offer a certain feature (like finding the average on an axis of a scatter plot), but because some other completely different visualization (a semantic graph) didn't have such a concept they just simply left it out.

This almost exactly matches not only my complaints, but the feedback I gave when Google claimed to be interested in such things.

Another thing I've observed is that non-expert users are utterly confused by the various actions not being visible (though greyed out) when documents are not selected—they simply assume that they will never exist and don't see them after a selection is made. I can't see any way in which the new design is as good as, let alone better than, the old.

It took me fully 5 minutes to figure out where the "create a filter" option was since I couldn't figure out the magical combination of what to select when to make it appear.

Very annoyed.

I think the reason is simpler - Larry Page is in charge now. His approach is to trust the designers not users. And that approach results in products designers like and users don't. See http://vimeo.com/29965463 for discussion on how things have changed in Google w.r.t design.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with designer-first UI. After all, none of the points pg pointed out are engineering related.

The problem here is that there is still a confusion between graphics designers and interaction designers. A lot of companies let the former do the job of the latter, and it shows.

What I am saying is that new Google design is not a pathology of a large company, but a result of a single executive decision. Before red primary buttons would have failed testing. Now this testing is simply not done. New way is faster.

An intriguing possibility is that Larry knows they are producing garbage, but thinks it will work out long term, like Android.

You seem to have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Google's product design, well beyond that of an average software engineer at Google like myself. I'm curious how you came to be in possession of such insight, since it apparently surpasses my own as a lowly Google employee.

In the new design, controls are links instead of buttons. It's harder to find them, as they stand out less.

Also, I miss the use of colors to delineate between elements of a different kind. In the new version, they only use light and dark.

Its a constant wonder how Google and other large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job. You'd think that Apple's successes might actually make them realise that great interfaces (especially if they can outdo the competition) are hugely valuable.

Some things about the new design are defensible, however others are definitely not. My particular pet hate is that all the things that are not mail services (but you can still access within gmail) are splattered around all corners of the screen. Chat is in one corner (along with 'gadgets' - whatever they are). G+ is in the opposite. And in a third (behind a button that is very unhelpfully named 'gmail') are contacts and tasks. Where is the sense in that???

>large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job

There are obviously a lot of unhappy users with legitimate gripes. But Google would probably be looking at the growth of Gmail to validate what ever the design department is doing. That growth is pretty impressive.

Growth? Gmail grew 3 or 4 years ago. I wouldn't recommend Gmail to anyone now, it's just another Hotmail type service, there's nothing special or good about Gmail anymore.

What really surprised me is how few of my friends get the 'conversation' view even in 2012. After too many awkward conversations and now their 'we've got absolutely no design skills and can't design for shit' redesign, I'm just shrugging when people say their hotmail account has been hacked for the 15th time.

I've been using gmail pretty exclusively for the past 4 years now, and haven't really had to much exposure to other services. But I've been extremely satisfied. Enough to stick around.

So just out of curiosity - what services would you recommend to an inquiring mind?

I use GMail myself extensively, but I can't say I'm happy with it any more. The new redesign brought the general feeling of dissatisfaction to a head.

Interesting, what do/would you recommend? I'm really curious because I honestly can't think of ONE email service that does email better than Gmail.

fastmail's non-free service, maybe? I got it a very long time ago, mainly for the .in email address. It's been no-frills, fast, and (mostly) reliable. I'm still not sure I'd recommend it to a gmail user, but its been a good email account to have.

Careful - don't rely on fastmail for XMPP. I switched to them based on them having that, since I used it a lot with Gmail. Then I found out that fastmail is running some super wobbly XMPP server which kicks you off any time you really get going really quickly in a conversation.

I've opened multiple tickets, and all they can say is "sorry" and "we know about it" and "we're working on it", but actual fixes still haven't come. Having a solid chat experience obviously is not high on their priority list.

Late reply, sorry. I never even knew they had the option of an XMPP server. For what it's worth, I find the mail experience to be both reasonable, and pretty much fat-free, which I guess is all I really need.

I moved my domain and imported all emails from Fastmail to Google Apps because of:

1) Deficient search, the more email you keep, the more you rely on search to find something from few days to few years ago. Incredibly painful with Fastmail.

2) Lack of calendar. It's just so more convenient to have your calendar integrated with email.

3) Lack of Exchange ActiveSync support (as in protocol). This protocol allows to sync email, calendar and contacts from the same account. All these things I want to be synced to my phone. Keeping contacts and calendar in Gmail (because it has ActiveSync support) and email in Fastmail was becoming more and more frustrating.

According to Google(obviously not an unbiased source) Gmail gained around 90M users between 2011 and 2012.

As a publicly traded company, their published estimates of gained users over the past year are probably extremely solid. I wouldn't worry about bias, they would be in heaps of trouble if they lied about these numbers.

Gmail is 3-4 times bigger now than it was then. I think it's approaching 300 million users now.

> But Google would probably be looking at the growth of Gmail to validate what ever the design department is doing.

If past performance is your primary way of to 'validate' anything, you obviously have a very poor understanding of the subject matter and are going to lag behind those who do.

I'm not entirely sure what you're stating here. Businesses shouldn't look at past performances in order to make judgements about future performance? And those who ignore it will have an edge?

No. Thats not at all what I said.

Then what did you say?

andrewfelix was prompting you to elaborate. Just replying "that's not what I said" is completely unproductive - this is meant to be a conversation, not a game of twenty questions. We shouldn't have to guess at your meaning.

Sorry. I thought about this, but it seemed obvious to me. Maybe it isn't. I'll give it a try.

Of course past performance of a product is a factor worth considering in determining the future success of someone in any field. However if you really want to excel at this field, past performance is not likely to be the _primary_ factor (though it could be a smaller factor) in how you 'validate' future worth.

For instance, I can easily measure the past performance of stocks on the stock exchange. However if I really want to succeed in trading shares, 'have the stocks of foobar gone up in the past' is not likely to be the primary way I validate whether foobar is worth investing in.

Hope that helps you :) I didn't mean to sound as indignant as perhaps I did.

With you now. I'd guessed that was what you meant, but wasn't sure.

... incidentally, I still find it strangely novel when disagreements on HN don't turn into Internet Arguments. Makes such a refreshing change from, well, the rest of the web. :)

Apple makes plenty of UI nightmares. Examples include Snow Leopard firewall configuration dialog, the leather versions of iCal/Contacts, the finder, etc.

Don't forget the apple.com online store - I can't even have multiple credit cards on my account.

Personally I really like the new design, despite the fact I have actually implemented most of the things mentioned in the article. However, I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation, and this doesn't include any of the stuff from the labs feature set.

> I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation

That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.

I'm not sure I understand. Most desktop email clients have _very_ limited customizability.

On the other hand, if you don't like one you can get any other that fits your bill.

You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out. But I join the chuckling at the notion that "this demonstrates gmail's flexibility". If it was really flexible and customizable, I would still have the old theme.

> You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out.

Gmail's IMAP works, though it's had a number of minor-but-irritating bugs for years (these bugs even affect the official applications too). I wish they'd fix them - I get that it's not in their interest to support nonstandard clients for which they receive no ad revenue, but that's no excuse here, because they still cause some of the same problems on the Android and Blackberry apps.

This article, dated February 2008 (four years ago!) is just as relevant today as it was then. The duplication of messages with broken synchronization is what bothers me the most, as I use offlineimap to handle my mail: http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-...

In my experience, they're usually far more customizable. Clients I've used include KMail on Linux, The Bat! on Windows and Mozilla's Thunderbird, all of which offer myriad options to customize the appearance and behavior of message list, message pane and folder lists, though the first two apps much more so than Thunderbird. You also get to modify things like toolbars much more freely, and OS/toolkit theming usually also beats the GMail theming system.

You could argue that GMail has a higher customization potential given the fact that you can muck around with the document client-side (though Thunderbird extensions are similar, and if you really go down that road: I can also change the source code of KMail and recompile it), but we're talking in-app options here.

And so I find the notion that "GMail has impressive configurability because it has the options described in the article" amusing. Somehow the world has forgotten just how sophisticated an experience a regular old desktop app running in the context of a regular old desktop environment can be.

I'd also argue that regular old desktop toolkits and libraries still require a lot less investment of effort to achieve such levels of sophistication than the web development environment does at the moment. Like I said, thought-provoking.

Also worth noting is that Thunderbird's layout can be thoroughly customized with a bit of JavaScript hacking via its extensions interface, just as Firefox can. While TB may not have tons of visual options by default, it can still get them via third-party extension.

Aye, that's what I was talking about with "Tb extensions are similar [in their capabilities] (to GreaseMonkey-style site hacks)".

Hmm, didn't see that part. Maybe you edited? Maybe I just skimmed it. Sorry. :)

I edited quite a bit (awful habit), but that part was in the original version :).

You're missing out on a ton of great Gmail features if you are using a desktop mail client. Integrated hangout/voice /text chat, phone, conversation view, the social pane with contextual information..the list goes on.

This isn't a rebuttal, but Outlook 2010 has most (if not all) of those things.

The only thing I'm aware of Outlook 2010 having from that list is the social networking pane.

Outlook has conversation view as well, and Microsoft Lync (formerly Office Communicator) integrates the rest of the feature set (yes you're vendor-locked, but you are with GMail too). In my opinion GMail executes better on most of these features, but they're not the only ones to offer them.

Not a fan, but Lync even allows XMPP access (if so configured), so all your GTalk buddies can message you from GMail (at least that should work - didn't try).

I wasn't aware of that.. will have to check it out! Thanks!

Why would I want that in my mail application?

Those features also only promote you to stay logged in on your gmail account at all times, and there have been numerous security issues with that approach.

I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail. Every time I see someone use gmail I cringe at how primitive and slow the workflow is.

>I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail

I can't speak for the 350M other people using Gmail. But here's why I use Gmail(some of these aren't exclusively Gmail):

- Conversation View

- Calendar Integration

- Very good Labelling/Grouping system

- Online Storage

- Browser access

- Very Powerful and effecient Search

- Great filter system

- Autosaves unfinished emails

- Integration with multiple third party tools including Attachments.me, dropbox, google docs, taskforce

I used to use Thunderbird, and it was great. But I had big 3 problems with it: 1) I never got comfortable with searching emails. 2)I couldn't access my email from other devices/computers etc 3)My emails starting chewing up a lot of HDD space.

I'm not arguing that gmail isn't good at what it does. But it is at an inherent (huge) disadvantage of being executed in the browser.

Just some comments. Thunderbird became dramatically better at searching a couple of years(?) ago. I frequently feel limited by search in gmail, I've assumed that there are advanced features lurking around somwhere but the UX is so bad I just don't.

I don't see how storage can be a problem. With gmail you hit the limit at <8 GB, that can hardly be a problem on a workstation. If anything it's an argument against gmail.

But, perhaps the most important one, I don't get why everyone seems to believe it's native or web, never both. Of course you have both... The question is why you'd want such a blunt tool for something as important as mail on your workstation. Yes, browser access is still awesome - that's why you have both.

And when you consider security it's borderline to irresponsible being logged in constantly in the browser and since I value instant notification that alone is a dealbreaker on my WS.

And if you're on a laptop with a bad connection relying on gmail or something similar is a sure way to get a heart attack.

if you are limited by search in gmail, you are doing it wrong. you are saying gmail is inferior to thunderbird for search? over google? c'mon. you also take issue with apps running in the browser, which is counter-culture. you are refusing to accept that there are specific advantages to the additional functionality we have gained in the browser, while claiming your machine is more secure than Google's data centers. sorry but you're not making a sound argument.

Read in what context I said that gmail search is inferior to thunderbird for search. But yes, how do you, without googling it up, search for a message in gmail from address x, sometime in the year of 2010, where the subject began with y and the content contained z.

Counter-culture? Few would argue that native apps doesn't have advantages over browser apps. The best you could say about a browser app is that it is "good enough". But obviously they suffer greatly from being in the browser just because all workstation operating systems are centered around native apps and not apps within the browser.

Which means that I can click on my mail-application in the taskbar/whatever but whereas in a browser I have to navigate through all my browser windows to find the one with mail in it, which doesn't even have to be in it's own window but hidden somewhere with lots of other tabs.

Again, I never said that my machine is more secure than googles data center servers. But any native application has security advantages over something run in the browser (and potentially drawbacks as well, but the inherent issue with being logged in on a web app doesn't exist in a native application).

-That search can be performed a couple ways, but the easiest would be via the search dropdown in gmail: http://i45.tinypic.com/e0lbnd.png

-No. You are not living in reality. Browser is the future. Your resistance is futile.

-Mine is always the first tab. It is also my home page. You are making really bad excuses why this doesn't work for you.

-No. It has security dis-advantages since your data is stored on your device, which doesn't have the same security layers as Google's data centers.

It all good advise, exactly to the point what I use except for the theme - I use "Soft gray" - it's works better with preview pane lab and gets rid of the huge red button.

I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really small. (I'm not usually one to complain just because things changed, I didn't like the mystery meat icons either, but I can get over something trivial like that.) It just doesn't work.

I couldn't really figure out where else to go, but OWA 2010 doesn't have these problems, so I went to Office 365 for my own domain (and forwarded Gmail). I never thought I'd pay for email but considering how vital mail is, having real support is a nice piece of mind.

I remember how awesome webmail seemed in 2003 (when I switched from Outlook to Gmail), but now that I've gone back to Outlook, I see all the awesome stuff that I was missing. This is really not to credit Outlook though, I'm sure Gmail (threading) influenced them greatly in the past 8 years. I know you can just use Outlook+Gmail, but sadly IMAP isn't nearly as good as Exchange.

Try http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

Thanks, I know about the basic HTML site. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me, though. The basic site is literally worse than the 2003 version.

I have always used the basic version of gmail. It works very well for me. The site design has not changed.

Thanks for this gem!

Did they forgot to change this view or G-Plusification will kill this as well?

It's for "slow connection[s]". It will be here for a while.

And older browsers. Try opening GMail in IE7.

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

agreed. for those of us who feel that gmail is a necessary evil this definitely helps ease the pain. I just wish I could pay for a commercial service or install a server-side app that had similar functionality.

the default settings in the new gmail design are really bad. at least the gmail team should have some kind of migration wizard that allows users to easily figure out to configure the settings to make the new design work as well as possible for them.

thanks again for the guide!

I use this regularly now, but I'm still dead set on moving back to having email in my workstation. Now, Google seem ruthless in their hunt for your information and this alone should be enough to make a decision. But it's a bigger problem than just that: you are at their mercy for any change they introduce, and they are a critical component of the internet for many if not most of us. Namely this interface change, or the availability of that simple html option. One could argue that the same can be said for any "cloud service" but email is typically a bit too critical to many of us. It definitely is for me. And they would push their integration plans whatever your opinion is and whatever the consensus is. This modus operandi seems to be the new standard at Google.

The last straw was a recent incident I had with my Android phone. So apparently in one of the recent updates of Google Talk they realised they could just log me into their one-and-only Google Account with gmail, etc. included. I had very carefully avoided Gmail's app (which they won't let you delete). I had refused to "sync" anything or add my Google account. Now, Google wouldn't let me log-out or delete my account.

I don't have any particularly compromising information in my phone. I don't have any "secret" numbers and the labels make sense just to me. I have it set up so if I lost it, it wouldn't be a big problem. But now I had my email forcibly open in my phone for anyone to see. Now I had to lock the screen and be extra-careful. Google doesn't let you delete your account from the phone easily. They provide this "option" but if you click on it they will let you know that you can only delete your account from the phone by doing a factory reset. Goodbye installed apps, settings, highscores, everything. So I did, and proceeded to create an account just for the phone.

Now, searches are getting painfully slow and they're quite poor compared to Thunderbird. But I'd still prefer gmail for the convenience of having it always available and always synced from anywhere, if only they weren't so insisting in upping their stakes and in forcing people into an all-or-nothing situation. I bet it makes business sense for them, it just doesn't make it for me.

I lost my youtube account when they stopped allowing independent accounts (had it locked to someone else's Google account and couldn't get this person to release it). I cannot afford to risk losing my main email account, so I'm taking preventive action while they still allow a relatively easy migration back to the desktop.

Given that email is vital to you, why did you expect you wouldn't pay for it?

You can use Exchange rather than Imap with Gmail.

I quite like the new design, and I've been using it since it was in "beta" a couple of months ago.

It certainly provided a couple of frustrating days before I got used to it, but I find it much more soft on the eyes - to me the old layout now looks pretty harsh; giving the impression of being just "functional".

A lot of non-technical folks I work (and live!) with find the new design much, much more pleasing. Bear in mind these are the folks that use hotmail, yahoo etc - so they really are after the "eye candy" more than the functionality; and with google's new social push I can assume this is now the target audience.

My only complaint would be about the icons; regardless of wether you've used Gmail before - you will get caught out; a few days ago it took me a good few minutes before I could find out how to get to my contacts.

I am absolutely furious how my account was forced today to the new theme - it's hideous.

I've tried several stylish options to no avail, I miss the old dark layout with high contrast buttons.

Even the dark theme has a bright white message pane for no reason.

It also runs very sluggishly compared to the old UI, not sure why.

Well this should give me the kick in the pants to get off gmail anyway.

It's slow because all the UI elements in the new themes have alpha transparency and rounded corners. It increases the amount of work your browser has to do to paint it tremendously (though GPU acceleration will help).

Rounded corners? AFAICT the defining characteristic of the new UI is that every single visual element is a rectangle with a pale grey 1px border. It's all so flat, ugh.

I designed the original Gmail UX and I have to admit I'd changed every pref in my accounts exactly as Jason did. Good call.

You did a great job. I didn't realize how quietly good the old design was till I looked at it side by side with the new one.

Aha! I must thank you for your original design. I have a question, though: did you intend for people to frequently click "select unstarred" (or similar) and [archive] at the top to cull the list? I used to use it that way to deal with the flood of mail coming in (prod lists, oncall pages, etc.) and it always just felt right. I've always wondered if that was intentional or just something I happened to land on.

When they pulled that out in 2010, that was the beginning of the end for me. "0.07% of people use select unstarred", apparently.

Flattered to hear that--thanks, Kevin.

Too bad they ruined it with this redesign. The old one was pleasant and unobtrusive and overall great.

The new one is making seriously consider leaving Gmail...

I have never been so frustrated with a UI redesign as I have been with Gmail and Analytics. Unfortunately, I was already using all of the settings pointed out in this post, and I still can't get comfortable with the new design. I can't separate how much of that frustration comes from the large degree of change and how much comes from my long history of use, but the frustration is huge.

I know that many Google employees were similarly frustrated when they were eating their dog food last august. Yet the new look was rolled out anyway.

So I can only assume that the company had solid UI data showing that their target group of users prefer the new design. And I can therefore only assume that the target group of users does not include users like me.

Consequently, there is an opportunity here for somebody to do email right for the people frustrated by the new gmail redesign. I would happily pay for an email interface that makes sense and doesn't change against my wishes... especially if it doesn't require switching to microsoft.

Until then, I will be very grateful to the person who pointed out the 'slow-connection' interface is still available.

Hm, it seems strange though that they're not keeping the old interface, which is what many people were using Gmail in the first place (even if their target group prefers the new interface.) Come to think of it, it's also kind of sad that HN users are obviously not their target group...

I really didn't like the new Analytics interface when they first rolled out the optional beta. I switched a few months ago to gain access to real-time measuring, and now I love it. For me at least, it just took some time to adjust.

My biggest new-Gmail-design pet-peeve is that the Display Density setting is only respected if your browser window is wide enough.

I prefer the "Comfortable" setting. I have a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, but I don't have my browser window maximized (it only takes up 65-75% of the screen width).

So, GMail has helpfully reduced my display density to "Cozy", ignoring my setting.

As far as I know, there's no way to "fix" this; it's a known issue but there's no workaround other than making my browser window wider.

It took my months of using the new design before I realized this. My impression before was simply that the design was “broken” on my desktop computer until one day I resized the window and discovered this issue.

Yes, many webapps do not take into account that modern screens are quite large enough to display multiple windows comfortably.

I'm obviously in minority here, but I don't stress too much about the design as long as unread messages are in bold text. But this might be due to me working mostly in terminals and text/code editors, where design never was a top priority.

The things I care about most in gmail are:

  1. reliability, speed and lots of space
  2. good spam filtering
  3. web view of various office documents (I used to cringe when someone sent me .doc or .xls, not anymore)
  4. fast search which also includes gtalk conversations (invaluable)

If one or two of these things goes away, then I'll probably switch.

I was so busy using gmail I barely noticed the transition. Which for me says everything. Great design shouldn't be noticed, it should just work.

Obviously this is just one anecdote. But for me gmail is still the indispensable tool it always was. For all its shortcomings it is an amazing product.

I'm finding this hard to believe. You didn't notice when the Send button went from the bottom of the message to the top? Maybe you meant that you noticed but didn't find it jarring enough to cause a lot of confusion?

I'm finding it hard to believe that you down-voted me for expressing a personal observation. Even after I expressly pointed out that it was an anecdote.

I didn't downvote you. Don't assume.

Your entire original reply was an assumption.

I confess I haven't really noticed any of the button changes. This is mainly because I am almost 100% keyboard in gmail, though. Send is a quaint tab-enter. :)

I can say every now and then I look for the buttons, but the only one I really ever find myself using is the refresh button, and that is simply if I wasn't already positioned on the keyboard.

/facepalm.

So you've got no qualification whatsoever talking about the new interface as you avoid it entirely.

What I love most is sometimes the important buttons are red and in the top left. But sometimes they are gray and in the bottom right.

Which will it be today? Flip a coin! Consistency is an alien word to the Google Design Team.

I'm not sure I follow. I don't avoid it. They just happened to have not changed the way I interact with it. I confess I did find my old theme a little more pleasant to deal with, but I'm already at the point where I don't remember it anymore.

I'm curious what "important buttons" you are referring to.

I'm also curious how folks that get this worked up over their email client don't go into shock when they get a new car. Consistency is not the norm in life. Seems it is really only a norm when it was dictated by function.

Not that I feel you shouldn't get worked up over what ever you want to get worked up over. I just don't understand it.

When you get a new car, that's because of a choice you are making or a consequence of your actions (such as if the previous one was totaled.) When a website that a person frequents which "seems to work fine the way it is" changes, people get worked up because they see the change as unnecessary.

Similarly, if you are a developer, you might feel the same way if the company you work at randomly decides to switch bug trackers or wikis, when the new ones aren't really any better than before.

I wonder if the anger could be redirected by the realisation that if they were running their own client software, they would be in control of the interface. To realise the dream of free software. But I suspect most of the "rage" will blow over in fifteen minutes.

I HATE HATE HATE the new design! I was dreading the day they took away the old look, but these tips go a long way to making gmail usable for me again. Thanks!

When I read this headline, I assumed Google had redesigned it again... didn't realise people were still using the old design.

Personally, the redesign pushed me back to Thunderbird and I ended up deleting thousands of emails. It was quite liberating.

I loved the new design. Much less clutter. A service I use every waking moment need not label everything. I like the direction of Google's design efforts.

The Google+ design will continue to evolve, I'm sure (it is not quite there yet).

Its not just GMAIL. Google analytics is painfully ugly. The first screen before showed a list of all the sites and traffic. Now it shows just the list of accounts. Its awful. There is no way anymore to use the classic design.

Also, once I am in google analytics it is just a UI mess. They cram every feature possible and make it unintelligible. They are ruining the UI for gmail,google search and google analytics.

I must be using wrong because I have to do so more clicks with the new Analytics design to see things I want, it's frustrating.

I also hate the new design, even after few hours I've spent trying to get used to it. With all the necessary settings (compact mode, text buttons etc.), the main flaw stays - theres no freaking border between message body and ads! C'mon Google, this is just too obvious. Wonder how users will switch to some other webmail or desktop clients, how many of them will install some ad-blockers, just because of this. You realise, Google, that this would mean actually less clicking on your ads? Speaking of intentional clicks here.

besides the default theme and the high contrast theme, all others are useless and look like the work of a 5 year old. Design has a function, namely to make things clear and give the user a good experience.

I agree. Really makes me wonder if all their themes have been made by developers (like me). 'Work of a 5 year old', exactly.

I know I was probably 1 of 10 people that actually used (and liked!) the Terminal theme with all green monospaced text... sadly that is now gone, and Terminal theme is now just a lame white on black with variable-width font. bummer :(

Yep. Only a blinking shell prompt remains, under "Google" (top left)

I use the following changes to the style sheet for some more colour contrast:

    /* Increase contrast on some arrows */
    .T-I-ax7.T-I-JE .T-I-J3 {
        opacity: 0.1 !important;
    }

    /* Make new chat highlight red instead of blue */
    .Hz .k, .Hz .n, .Hz .l {
        background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(192, 0, 0) !important;
    }

oh god, obfuscated CSS...

I doubt it was done on purpose. I think it's what minifying does to your CSS files.

I stopped using it and moved to Mail.app. I cannot stand in-page scrolling.

I can't imagine using gmail for high-volume email; I've used it at various times due to being lazy about setting up something better, but ugh.

mutt is so much better, using maildirs synced with imap (with mbsync or something). Totally customizable, per-folder triggers, and works in a terminal.

Yes, I can't understand why highly computer-literate people use GMail. There must be something very compelling about it because it's so popular, but no one's ever explained to me what it is. If anyone here wants to explain, I'd appreciate it!

I use mutt too, which I find incredibly flexible. The only downside I experience compared to GMail is that searching is not as powerful. Am I missing something?

I've never used mutt, but I depend on Gmail's conversation view (a smoother experience than going through messages one by one) and easy searching of gigabytes of email; a proportional font, auto-linkification, and built-in video chat don't hurt either.

Searching is the one thing I still need to figure out for mutt (I cheat now by sending a copy of everything to gmail just for search). Linkification is handled by the terminal program.

To be fair, Gmail search takes several seconds for a basic query now, so I'm considering switching to Mail.app, which has the all-important conversation view.

Using a web-service and raging when it gets redesigned or closed is pretty stupid. People who don't like when other people decide for them should use real email clients with a standard protocol such as IMAP.

bot sure if i follow you here, gmail uses IMAP, i never read my mails on the website, always in Mail (or sparrow, on osx)

Yes, of course, you can do that as well. As long as you don't depend on their server-side UI, you're not subject to unwanted UI changes.

Do you know an email client that handles conversations the way gmail does ?

You say that and get downvoted..

My email client is a shell built up carefully to my needs over years. Inhabiting it has shaped me in turn. I know that it won't change without my say, and if I move to another shell one day it will be my own choice. From this perspective it's so weird to see those who have flitted from shortlived flower to flower bemoaning their passing.

What concerns me more about the new design compared to the old original is the readability: now it is much worse. Why not offer the most popular old themes (adapted to the new layout) an option?

You can actually still use the old interface for a little while longer, even if you've been forced over to the redesign.

http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail

Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old one feels and looks so much better.

My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less intuitive than the old design.

Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave the old one as optional as it was during the past few months.

The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on cool new features.

The only cool new feature I'd like would be a flag to make Google stop fucking with the UI.

Thanks for the answer. Based on the discussion here, one especially cool new feature would be a 'classic' mode that would mimic the look and feel of the old design :)

It's not possible to please everyone when you do a UI change and have 300+ million users, but we do try to fix some issues people have with the new design (e.g. setting for text buttons, high contrast theme). Of course it has to look consistent with other products so there are some limitations. Our community manager wrote a much more eloquent answer to that topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get...

The link was an interesting read, and you make a valid point that some of the issues have been solved by features like the button texts.

Actually my point was exactly that everyone seems to have their own favorite thing they miss about the old design. So for me it would make more sense to build a mode (on top of the new codebase) that would mimic the old design instead of implementing fixes one-by-one. Then everyone who liked the old design better could just change one setting that is easy to find and be done instead of playing with bunch of individual settings in different menus to achieve the same thing. I think it would stop a lot of complaints even if it would not be perfect.

I understand that there might be very good reasons why it is not feasible, this is just my 2 cents.

Failed the actually does something test. A real pity.

My single largest complaint about the redesign?

When you search your messages, the buttons to go to the next page of search result are inexplicably only at the top of the results, not at the bottom.

Before I realized this design oversight, I spent a few minutes perplexedly scrolling to the bottom of search results, flabbergasted that those were all the results.

You can imagine my frustration at the design team when I finally realized: Oh, the pagination buttons are at the top...

This could be of interest to some of the readers. I'm the developer of Gmelius, a poly-browser extension that proposes a better and cleaner Gmail™ inbox, http://gmelius.com . The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

NB: As you will surely notice I'm currently redesigning the homepage... Feel free to leave me your comments/suggestions both on the extension and the new website.

Coincidentally, AskMetafilter has a good thread about fixing the redesign: http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-go...

I totally disagree, more blank space make it easier to read, the BIG problem of the redesign are icons that doesn't clearly mean what they do.

But hey, it's nice that you can revert a bit.

(but i must be satan, i also like FB timeline)

A year or two ago I got tired of my email UI changing every week, so I switched to the "plain HTML" view. It's not as fast or smooth or javascript-y but I don't think it's changed a bit in years.

There are 2 distinct threads woven through this discussion. One directly addressing Gmail's redesign which touches mainly on UX and implementation issues. The other being the more perennial debate between desktop vs. web mail clients. I wish HN allowed for comment collapsing at least which would make this and other conversations easier to follow just the threads that are of interest. (Reddit has this, not sure why HN doesn't)

You can talk IMAP/POP and SMTP, and you get to control your own user interface, or you can talk HTTP, HTML, and JS and abdicate control to someone else. I fell into that trap myself. I was a heavy user of Gmail for about four years, and when they started changing things and told me "only 0.07% of users use that feature we just removed", it was too late.

This mayhem ruined "the cloud" for me ... and I used to help run parts of it. Blah.

What UI do you use?

I probably going to use newest Thunderbird when I leave gmail.

Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com) is pretty solid.

For GUI clients, Thunderbird is the best I've seen, followed by Evolution (back when I used it, anyway).

Though if you're open to a ncurses-based client, I use mutt. The #1 reason I switched to it (instead of any other client) when the new Gmail design was released was because it opens almost instantaneously. It's a subtle thing, but not having to leave my inbox open all the time and being able to open it in a split second when I need to really helps my workflow.

Well, except that gmail.com offers much more customization than any desktop email client.

Well, except for emacs/gnus :-)

Their spam/filtering has gone down hill. It does a great job with the spam. Unfortunately, several people I communicate with a few times a day, half of their stuff goes straight to the trash and I don't see it. If I login to webmail I can see they have both an Inbox and Trash label on them but my phone and mail client to register the new mail and it doesn't show in the Inbox. I just want it to pick one.

Yup, I hit this too. I think they score things without SPF records as spam. Though this causes trouble because another company I use bounces mail if you use an SPF.

In the end, I'm still using Gmail and ditching the other company...but not recommending Gmail anymore because of the disruption.

Can you rephrase that? How do these messages get the trash label?

I go into the trash label inside Gmail. I click on a message that I didn't want to go straight to my trash. At the top where it shows the Trash label there is also an Inbox one with it.

As soon as I click the "x" on the label, I can see the email being downloaded by the mail client I use. It is of course displaying the Inbox and not Trash.

Forgot to mention how they get them.

Either someone has my login and is messing with me by somehow adding the Trash and Inbox label or there is a glitch in the system putting both labels on it. My guess is the glitch.

There is no glitch that just adds trash labels. Did you check if you have any filters set up that might be responsible?

I did. I cleared out a few filters even though I am 95% sure they wouldn't match the emails. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong though.

The main thing I find irritating is that it contains the Inbox label as well.

Any filter to send something to the trash says "Skip Inbox, Delete It".

Another trick I found is to go into Labs and enable the one that moves the in-browser chat box to the right side of the inbox. It's not as nice as before where it just stacked on the left side, but with the new design it wanted to show me one of the chat box or utility at-a-glance views like my Calendar, but not both. Now I get both again, at the inexpensive cost of horizontal screen estate.

I do not like the new redesign, and will have to implement these tips just to make it a little more usable. I wish Google wouldn't do sucky things like this. Also Googe seems to have the worst branding. Google+, really? You think that's more alluring than Facebook? Also, rebranding the android app marketplace as "Google Play"? That's just terrible.

I find it hard google took away customizing the theme. The classic theme 'Tree' is the only one that I feel a little good about.

I'd also add a tip to check out the Minimalist Suite http://minimalistsuite.com - It's Chrome extension for Gmail as well as other Google properties that allows you to customize the UI and remove of things you don't use. There are many that do this but this is the best IMHO.

I've always been using the Candy theme, and I like much better the way it looks with the new design. It's quite girly though, which unfortunately might exclude most of HN readers. But I agree that anything other than the compact display density option makes the experience much worse.

The android theme is quite good, better than the old one imo. Otherwise, I love the text label.

Just use thunderbird if you're on a desktop or laptop (ie. not an ios or android device, although I'm sure they have equivalents).

I recommend installing muttator, the equivalent of vimperator for thunderbird. It will make the time you spend with email much more efficient.

Sadly for me I dislike the High contrast theme as much as the new default one.

I'm using Google Apps and the "high contrast" theme is missing from the list.

Let me scroll the damn page and not just a viewport!!!

That's my only complain. Had to get it out of my chest. Move on.

Wow, tremendously better. I wasn't even aware of some of these like text for the buttons!

This reminds me of when people complained about the new facebook design.

I "coped" with it by switching to sparrow as my gmail frontend.

I don't like change.

That said, any browser-based alternatives?

I like zoho personally. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of gmail, but it's at least decent and supports custom domains in free option.

This is more like a "how to revert to 2006 GMail" list.

I mean, he even goes out of his way to turn off Priority Inbox and important markers. That has nothing to do with the redesign - it's just turning off year+ old features, which is what a good portion of the post is. Luckily for the author, options exist to turn off all the features that have been released in the past many years.

Of course, there's some apportioning of valid and invalid frustration with any redesign, and I won't invalidate any of that here. But this post just comes off as "make all the scary new stuff go away!"

Priority Inbox is Google'S broken idea of what is important to me and what is not: it's ugly, distracting, and worse than without it.

I tried Priority Inbox for a while when it first came out. It's an interesting feature and maybe it works for some people, but I decided I didn't need it.

It didn't matter until the redesign, though. In the new design, the "importance markers" are very similar in appearance to the stars, and they are right next to each other. It's hard to tell them apart at a glance. That's why I finally had to turn them off.

Thanks for the tips, I'd done most of these when they changed to the new theme, but the the icon button/web clip tips escaped me. Thanks for those! I couldn't find the high contrast theme, unfortunately.

As a random anecdotal data point, my inbox would be completely unusable without priority inbox. My email volume is way too high without it.

how can that theme be high contrast? it goes from black on white to black on gray!

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