Hacker News Reader

Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

I can't remember the last Gmail change that was actually an improvement.

In general Google's changes since the Google+ rollout have been 90% terrible. There's been a couple of changes to Youtube that are better (like the really big mode), but overall changes to all Google services have been bad. I feel like they've really lost the plot.

View on HN

I may be in the minority here, but I actually think most changes to the Gmail interface have been improvements.

My biggest gripe was when they did the overall visual refresh, which reduced the information density on my small laptop screen. Then they added a "Density" switcher, which made things alright again.

I actually like it when interfaces change. Even when I was super busy I wouldn't mind learning and adapting to changes interfaces. Oh well, I guess I just like change for its own sake.

You are definitely in the minority liking change for its own sake.

I enjoy change if it's at worst neutral in impacting functionality but when it makes the application/system/whatever harder to use then it's obviously bad.

New Compose is terrible and they're saying they'll get rid of old compose soon.

The new reply interface is terrible.

The new interface doesn't play well with the GChat boxes either. It used to be that the reply box was small enough that it was trivial to have it on the page at the same time as your GChat, but now the chat boxes will overlay the replay area if you have more than 1. They do this because they want us to be chatting via Google+. But nobody uses Google+. And rather than convincing me to start using Google+ what they're doing is convincing me to ditch GChat and GMail.

I love trying new things and I love learning new software but I've learned the new gmail UI and I don't like clicking 2-3X more for things I do pretty regularly. Like getting someone's email address.

I agree that for you it's 3 more clicks, but for the millions of other regular users, it's less useless info on the way.

People have to get that it's a product for many, not for all. You can agree with hiding emails or not, but a company as large as Google wouldn't hide it just for the sake of it. Obviously there was research and data that backed that change.

Bottom line is, if it was your company, you'd hide stuff to improve the experience of 90% of your customers at the cost of a few without another thought.

While that may be a good point, you also need to consider that Gmail is part of Google Apps for Business. I don't really mind the changes for my personal Gmail account since most of the emails that go through there are quite simple and these changes don't have any real impact on my workflow. But for my work account, it's a whole different story. Most of these changes make my experience quite annoying when dealing with business emails where I often need to copy email addresses, modify subjects, CC people, etc.

Breaking Gmail for business users doesn't seem like a good idea since they are the ones who are actually paying for the service.

It's an online web app. You can give different people different interfaces for the same data. You can even let them choose which interface they prefer. Your data-collection might tell you that 90% of users would be better off one way, but that's an argument for changing the defaults, not for alienating a chunk of your userbase. And if every change like this is upsetting 10% of your users...

Revolutionary idea! Why not use Thunderbird?

Or any other mail client?

Nobody wants to use Thunderbird just because it's faster than using the web interface, more functional, adds useful features, and keeps a backup of your email on your hard drive.

Unfortunately it involves running a program on a PC and the PC is dead. Nobody uses PCs any more. Didn't you get the memo? :-)

I'm with you. Asthetics actually have improved with many google services, quiet alot actually.

You hear complaints about Youtube's design evolution. They've improved much more than they've missed.

The latest YouTube itrration is just god awful for me. Title should be above the thing I'm watching, not below. Because of that, the video sits in the top corner of my screen. And. I. Hate. It. Maybe there is a way to fix that, but guess what. I can't be arsed to look for it. It's nice to have an overhaul of your UI every now and then, but screwing it upside down every other day just makes me stop using it. Facebook is so retarded now that every time I have to use it I want to scream in agony.

Gnome is a nice example. They did a dramatic change, but it was long overdue. I hated it at the start, thankfully Unity was such a pos that I gave it a shot and came about. Now I'm having trouble with Windows, since it feels clunky and inefficient now. But gnome did the change once. With some websites it feels like they just like to horse around making me guess and study their new gimmicky fud.

My opinions are opposite yours. (except facebook, which I do not use)

Youtube has a functional layout for my purposes, particularly in find videos of my subscriptions, after a user style modification or two, youtube can really shine.

but GNOME?

   Want dontzap off? "No one actually wants that!"
   Want compose keys? "No one actually wants that!"
   Want your computer to stay on when you close the lid? "No one actually wants that!"
   want to hide the top bar? "No one actually wants that!"
   want to move the top bar? "No one actually wants that!"

There were some good choices made, yes, but GNOME also chose to removing functionality. Then it chose to provide no alternatives because it threatened their brand. GNOME 3's motto should of being "No one actually wants that!"

For the laptop with closed lid, I have no idea what is the problem. It works out of the box for me.

I'm not exactly sure what does dontzap do, but apparently its X.org issue, not Gnome.

I agree they made some controversial changes. I don't really like the bottom tray. I don't like the lack of any meaningful customisation. Some really stupid shit was that they hid Power Off option for some time.

Then again, it is so good when it comes to my workflow I just roll with it. There are some prosthetics that helped me re-add some functionality - it was really annoying that background programs wouldn't show up in the top bar.

And my point kinda was that they did complete overhaul of UI, but then sticked to it (more or less). Layout isn't changing dramatically every few months.

a neophite? I shall explain!

GNOME has being going out of their way with the philosophy "less is more" Re. configuration.

So yes, the laptop lid does work out of the box, what doesn't work is when you're listening to music on your laptop and you close the lid. There is nothing you can do through gnome to stop this. You must install configuration programs.

Zap is a ridiculously useful key combo for X which signals X to kill itself and all the processes X spawned. On most distributions X will immediately restart fresh. The urge to restart on windows can often be fulfilled by a Zap in Linux. The keycombo can be unexpected though (ctrl+alt+backspace) so they disable by default, FINE. There is nothing you can do through GNOME to change this setting. You must configure X yourself.

Here's the thing, gnome 3 is still capable of configuring X for you, they just removed the interface to it. Check it out, this was gnome 3.4! [1] (from [2])

[1]: https://lh3.ggpht.com/-4mWWRyfGZlQ/T8kLHBv_WbI/AAAAAAAAATM/g... [2]: http://hacksr.blogspot.ca/2012/06/gnome-34-in-ubuntu-1204-an...

Don't get me started on Nautilus. You're using Gnome? Try uninstalling nautilus and using Nemo. It's a fork of the old Nautilus by the guys at Linux Mint.

> Don't get me started on Nautilus. You're using Gnome? Try uninstalling nautilus and using Nemo. It's a fork of the old Nautilus by the guys at Linux Mint.

I have Nautilus 2.32 pinned over here with an otherwise Xfce-y DE. The latter still doesn’t seem to have figured out how to deal with icons on the desktop in a decent way.

That's the rub isn't it? You may be in the minority and represent 10,000,000 users. Now who reading this wouldn't love to have a product with 10M active users?

If I had to coin it as a law I would say "The probability of an acceptable UX for a product is a function inverse square of the number of users of that product." Which is to say its impossible. Hence the need for the UX to be morphable.

Totally disagree. Android, Google Now, Knowledge Graph, Maps, Drive/Docs, Google+ itself, and the Play Store have all seen marked improvements since the rollout of Google+.

In Gmail, the new compose UI is an improvement in same ways -- for me it's an improvement overall, smart labels are an improvement, and email search has gotten significantly better.

Oh, and virtually every mobile application of theirs has gotten much better.

And don't forget Analytics. Google Analytics has seen a vast improvement in UI and usability.

I totally agree. The other day, subject line and e-mail address input field would not take text input straight from my keyboard. I had to copy/paste them from a notepad file, and strangely Ctrl-C/V would not work...rather I had to paste through right click menu. Such an annoyance to find the contact and then paste it. I am on a job hunting spree, and this single thing just put me over the top. Furthermore, I wanted to attach some images, so i dragged and dropped them, like I would do previously, but instead they were coming out as inline images. I could not find what I was doing wrong, so had to do it through the "attach images" icon.

I hate the +You thing too, I do not have a G+ account, but still that thing is there. Always. In the corner. Enticing me. Chastising me.

I used to use Google scholar frequently, but since they have removed this option from the tab bars, I seem to have removed it from my work flow. Another annoying thing is, the two similar bar options when on Google search page.

I am in process on moving to outlook.com...simply because I think MS is an enterprise company and more conservative of design changes. Otherwise, I would have to move to a desktop based client.

When I moved to gmail from Yahoo, it was such a bliss....it has been a bliss until some year ago. But I think, I should be more open with my choices now.

GMail changes can be mitigated by using a normal mail client via IMAP.

Obviously not an option for everybody, and not a 100% solution, but it helps a lot.

I'm also not liking recent changes at Google, so I'm in the process of transitioning away from GMail and the rest of their services for most stuff. Before too long I'll only be using it to login to sites using the "Login with GMail" buttons, and all my real email will go to a different account.

Except that using a mail client kills the main advantage of Gmail and why I started using it in the first place; consistent, clean interface and ubiquitous presence on all my devices.

Yeah I can install mail clients on all of my computers for Gmail, but if I'm gonna bother with a mail client I'd just use mail set up through one of my own domains on one of my own servers.

The gmail interface is so very far from clean in my experience. Apples offering stands in stark contrast, such that the irritations with it (I'm not blind, massive buttons, huge click areas, low information density, missing features) are bearable.

I was referring to the reasons I started using Gmail.

I started using Gmail when it was still invite only. At the time Gmail's interface was refreshingly clean.

Ah, got it. I joined in those days to - I still remember the email saying I was in arriving. Bye bye hotmail. For all my gmail complaints, I could do a lot worse.

Oh I know this one: when they let you ungroup an email exchange into separate emails.

Funny, I feel 100% opposite.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com