Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

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Saving a draft, opening the old email, and then reopening your draft wastes valuable minutes. The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger).

Minutes? I do sometimes wonder where the day goes...

Alternatively, Shift-click on compose (or press capital C to with keyboard shortcuts on), and you'll get an actual window that you can move and resize. With the chat mini-windows I frequently wish that I could adjust them, and often accidentally collapse them by clicking in what looks like a title bar.

Or if you already have a message open, just shift-click on Inbox to open a new window. Or not --- Google in their wisdom has disabled that to prevent confusing some poor soul with a broken shift key, praise be their servers. But C-n for a new window, ma-return, /search, C-w isn't that bad.

I like the idea of minimizing the address area, but don't understand the advantages of the new approach. Is it primarily for tablet compatibility? Or is the concept of windows still considered unteachable? And why are they decreasing support for traditional click modifiers?

I completely agree. We all have some sort of window manager that deals with handling multiple windows in a consistent way. We don't need every website reinventing window management in their own half-assed manner, that is utterly inconsistent with other sites and other applications.

I don't think the average user can really deal with multiple windows efficiently.

True. But I'm very skeptical that they'd be able to deal with a given websites' reinvention of multiple windows either (or even recognize it as such).

I hate hate HATE new windows. It reminds me of IE or MS outlook manage this particular problem. I like this idea of a smaller chat like window, it's really blurring the line between chat and email once again. (Like google did when they started chaining emails together. Remember when that wasn't even a thing! I do, cuz I was amazed when google started doing it.) I think google really gets me when it comes to how I like to communicate via email..

If I'm reading the wikipedia article correctly, Mutt was threading email in 1995.

Gmail's innovation wasn't threading, but conversation view - displaying all the messages in a thread (linearly)in a large scrollable region rather than one at a time.

haha touche. Granted... Mutt was terminal based....

> Mutt was terminal based

And it still is, as many satisfied users will tell you.

> We all have some sort of window manager that deals with handling multiple windows in a consistent way.

Don't you like having tabs in your browser or windows in Vim? I remember the same argument being made when tabs were introduced in web browsers and yet, most people aren't complaining now.

I like tabs, but thats because most window managers do a piss-poor job of actually managing windows. I can get a nice row of 20 or so tabs across the top of chrome and it's pretty easy to keep track of them all still. 20 windows on the windows task at will have you pulling your hair out. Mac OS and Ubuntu unity are pretty much useless with more than 5-6 windows. Maybe some obscure window managers have a more tab-like interface that can handle a lot of windows, but I'd say tabs are better not because we need two layers of window management, but because tabs are just better.

I do use and like tabs, but they tend to have better window manager integration, as they are more or less a way to consolidate the "old" multiple window paradigm into a different interface, so for example I can cycle through my Firefox Tabs with Ctrl+Tab. For me they streamline the "usual" mode of browsing, but slow down other tasks, e.g., if I want to display something side by side I have to first pop them out into windows and let the WM handle it.

But what Google is introducing seems to be similar to their Google Talk "windows" that are already available in Gmail. They come in two modes: Either I get a small Ajax-y popup on the bottom right of my browser window, which I cannot resize, move or see when Alt+Tabbing/Ctrl+Tabbing. I absolutely loathe this mode. The second mode is where they pop out an actual window. I like this mode, as I can interact with the chat window as with every other window on my desktop. My assessment above is based on this experience.

A few different web services are trying more and more to be "Online Operating Systems". I think GMail and Facebook have gotten to that point.

I agree. Plus the visual and mouse distance between the "Compose" button and the lower right corner Compose pane is far and uncomfortable. Ugh.

You can make a chat a separate window that is adjustable if you want. Just click on the pop out (arrow going up and to the right) button on the upper right of any chat window.

After watching my Mom use the computer, I understand why Google doesn't create a new window my default. She can't switch between windows in her normal workflow (she can't remember where they went or the keyboard shortcuts to switch between windows). It's not as if she's new to computers - she has been using a PC since the 80s when she used Autocad to draft. She just doesn't really understand how to use multiple windows in a workflow and doesn't want to remember keyboard shortcuts.

I think is an important rule in design - are you building something you can use, or something that your mom can? More people are in the latter camp, and if you can design something simple enough for your mom, it probably is useable by people like you.

> and you'll get an actual window that you can move and resize.

I'd do this all the time if it gave you a new tab rather than a new window. Who uses new browser windows these days?

That currently works as well. You can open Compose in a new tab with Control-click for Win/Linux or Cmd-click for Mac.

I rarely see the appeal of tabs, so generally use windows. They are great as temporary bookmarks, but not for working with multiple sources in parallel. I'm confused that this is not more common, other than that more and more sites break it. Similar to the "new" Google compose window, and unlike tabs, the main advantage is that you can see both source and compose at once without needed to switch back and forth.

I'll turn the question back at you: why don't people use new windows? Is it just backlash from terribly designed sites that automatically pop up new windows for everything?

> the main advantage is that you can see both source and compose at once without needed to switch back and forth.

Until you click back on the Reference window and your Compose window suddenly disappears into the z-order void of your windows manager. I find it much easier to flip between two tabs than two windows, especially with Chrome's excellent tab strip UX. I'm not interested in having to constantly move/resize windows to see both pages at once.

(A decent focus-follows-mouse (no autoraise) solution for OS X would be nice as well!)

You can open Compose in a new tab with Control-click for Win/Linux or Cmd-click for Mac.

You can also click on the Compose button normally, then click on the "In new window" icon, in the upper right hand corner.

Most web browsers then offer the ability to drag that new window back into your main browser window which turns it into a tab.

Kind of a hassle, but it does work, and someone might find this information useful...

ChromeOS does (or at least did) something interesting for GChat, where they would open up from the bottom of a browser window, and be persistent through every site that you visit.

I sometimes wish that I had this for emails & GChat from within vanilla Chrome.

Also CTRL+SHIFT click compose opens a new email in a new tab (at least on Chrome on my computer).

Or just ctrl-click, or middle-click.

Critically, though, middle-clicking the Compose button doesn't work (Chrome, OS X).

Do you know how annoying it is to have 5 gmail tabs open and have to constantly switch between them because you have email threads that you need open and then a compose window as well. And every time you switch you have to cycle through them to choose the right one? This is a daily occurrence. I hugely welcome this change.

Could you flesh this out so I can understand the benefit? Are you replying to each of the threads, and thus need 5 compose windows as well? I tend to stick with windows and rarely use tabs, so I certainly could be missing an essential use case.

One tab: an email with project build instructions.

One tab: an email with a homework assignment.

One tab: my inbox.

One tab: composing a reply to a recruiter.

Two tabs: Other emails from the recruiter I'm using to compose my reply to the recruiter.

The first three I'm fine with being separate tabs in Chrome. That's fully intentional. However, the last three tabs are all one task, and in my mind should be achievable in one window/tab.

Not saying I haven't been there, but that's a lot of multitasking. You could probably get the tasks done more efficiently if you worked on the homework assignment and recruiter emails in serial, and then set aside dedicated time to check your inbox.

The problem there is that you need to load an application 5 times rather than 1 time, and then opening up the separate emails in their own tab. Introducing another floaty thing that reinvents the wheel isn't the proper solution here.

Are you arguing for tabs inside the Gmail interface? It's the same functional equivalent, we're just quibbling about style then.

You've always had the option of compose in a new window, shift-click.

I just got done describing that that's not what I want, though I'm not sure I made myself very clear.

Different tabs, different windows, it's all the same thing. I want Gmail open exactly once for a single goal. My other post describes my use-cases more completely.

It seems to me that you're using gmail wrong. Focus on one thing at a time, switching between random things isn't going to help and if you do need to do that use the tabs. I just can't be too sympathetic to complaining about how hard it is to switch between tabs. Learn to use the keyboard shortcuts and focus on tasks sequentially rather than randomly chopping between different tasks.

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