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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

Here's another total usability fail: Tab sends the e-mail you're currently writing instead of indenting text. Everywhere else tab indents text, and when you write an e-mail in gmail you'd expect it to act consistently with how it's used everywhere else.

Start writing in gmail, hit tab to indent some text. Congratulations you've now sent half an e-mail to you boss....

I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea.

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Nitpicker's corner: it doesn't actually send the email, it focuses the send button.

I don't think it's nitpicking. It's the difference between the standard way web forms work and Gmail overriding a known behavior to do something else.

That said, after you hit tab, you'll probably type a word and hit space, which will then click the button and send off the message.

I had no idea what he was talking about until the replies. You and grandparent are wrong. Standard behavior on web forms is tab moves you to the next element.

You are expecting gmail to act like a desktop app, and maybe you could make the argument that it should, but that's a different issue.

We can definitely make the case that it used to and that it doesn't anymore. Sending an email isn't like filling in several text boxes on a web form, it's composing/editing a lengthy message that often has proper formatting like indentation.

I actually use tab -> enter to send and I find it quite convenient. Why are people complaining about this when we've all tacitly admitted top posting?

IMO bigger problems are that email ought to be plain text by default and replies ought to go in the bottom (with three dots on the top if necessary).

Sorry if I made anyone mad. Now you know how I felt reading this post.

Ctrl + Enter is much more efficient for me.

How long has Gmail supported Ctrl + Enter? I agree. It is pretty sweet. Now I can go back and forth between Outlook and Gmail!

Ctrl-Enter is the one keyboard shortcut I wish I could disable. It is my most common mis-hit, usually when pasting something into an email and then hitting enter to advance to the next line. I also miss the ability to tab within the compose box, but on the web I pretty much always assume Tab is not going to indent text I'm typing.

If you're replying to an email you can quickly press Ctrl+a, Ctrl+end to go to the bottom, for all your bottom-posting needs.

The standard way that web forms have worked forever is that tab moves focus to the next element.

Yes that is true. But what is the standard way to insert a tab?

On the web, it's copying a tab from somewhere else and pasting it into your web field... or at least that's how I do it :|

And web apps are supposed to replace desktop apps...

Not if I can avoid it they are not!

One easy solution to this (and many other general email mishaps) is to enable Gmail's undo button for sending email: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1284885?hl=en

That's a workaround of sorts, not a solution.

It solves the problem for the most part, which is what's important here. We're not building a rocket.

This shouldn't BE a problem in the first place... and that's just the problem.

and there shouldn't be corruption in government. Why is that relevant? Problems either exist or they don't.

Yes, problems in the new Gmail are relevant to an article on problems in the new Gmail.

we aren't dealing with the age-old failings of human nature -- it's a simple problem some engineer could fix in a day.

It 'solves' the problem in the same way that "save frequently keep backups" 'solves' the "my OS crashes every 10 minutes" problem.

I believe you only have a short period of time in order to use that. So not really a problem solver.

> That's a workaround of sorts, not a solution.

Now that I reread it and some of the responses, I think he's just arguing over the use of the word "solution", not saying he doesn't like the workaround which is what I originally thought. It depends on how you read it.

I don't understand why 15-second "undo send" isn't default behavior.

I think it probably costs Google a little bit to queue up your email for a send action 30 seconds from now instead of sending it off immediately. I bet it would actually cost them money to just enable it for everyone - I'm sure the percentage of users who even explore Labs is very small.

I can't imagine the cost would be significant, relative to the overall cost of running GMail. And it's not like they generally try to run GMail on the cheap.

Perhaps they're concerned that seeing an 'undo' button would confuse people about how e-mail works, and they'd get a lot of requests to 'undo' messages that had really been sent. Or perhaps there are enough cases where people really want the message to go instantly that even 30 seconds delay would annoy them.

Then do it client-side?

you send an email, then immediately close the tab. Does your e-mail get sent?

I think that they deal with this problem. Doesn't a modal dialog popup if an email is being slow to send (and you hit the close button on the tab)?

the answer is yes.

The question is how, if it's client-side?

This actually started as turning a bug into a feature. The gmail servers delayed sending the email for about 5 seconds normally, all they did was add a cancel button.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/gmail-labs-rolls-out-undo...

> Everywhere else tab indents text

Everywhere else that's an explicit text editor indents text.

This comment field? Hitting tab goes to the reply button.

The default behavior for "Tab" on the web is to move to the next element on the Tab order.

The default behavior for Tab in rich text editors has been to insert a tabstop for quite some time. I think this is just a casualty of goog.editor.Editor's unconventional default behavior, which is to tab out of the field. If that is truly an oversight (not overriding this behavior), it says a lot about how the Gmail project is being run these days, because previously they did override this.

Just wanted to add it is goog.editor.Field, not goog.editor.Editor. When I wrote that, I told myself "don't call it goog.editor.Editor," a typo I often make in my code. I guess it's like when people look at something and then crash their car into it. Sorry about that.

Is it really unconventional though? Tab for navigation is the default behavior for HTML form inputs and contenteditable. I can't think of a website that I use that has input boxes that have tab do indent actually.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a widely used rich text editor, be it TinyMCE, CKEditor, YUI Editor or ExtJS' HtmlEditor that doesn't map the Tab key to insert a tabstop or a number of non-breaking spaces. goog.editor.Field is absolutely in the minority in that regard.

There are good design reasons for this. The goog.editor package is designed to be modular. This tab-to-indent behavior is instead provided by the goog.editor.plugins.SpacesTabHandler plugin.

As I mention before, I find it questionable that the GMail developers elected to omit this plugin. I'm not suggesting that there are some fools on the project who can't read an API. Rather, it strongly indicates that GMail is catering less and less to any approximation of the "power user", and assuming that most emails could just as well be composed in a <textarea>.

I'm not sure if it's because they are demo versions (and my experiences echoes esrauch's), but every rich text editor you listed except YUI Editor actually does _not_ map the Tab key to insert a tabstop or spaces.

[1]: http://ckeditor.com/demo [2]: http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/basic.php [3]: http://try.sencha.com/extjs/4.1.1/docs/Ext.form.field.HtmlEd...

This is not default behavior for TinyMCE (http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/full.php) or cKEditor (http://ckeditor.com/demo)

But old Gmail did override this.

Indeed. All other text fields in your browsers do this, why should gmail be any different?

I agree that it would be nice to have some way to force insert a tab, but it's hardly surprising that it works the way that it does.

The Send button is located above/before the email body. One would not expect that focus is moved to one of the previous elements instead of the immediate next element.

Actually. If tabs are set up properly, then when you press tab you should move to the next relevant field.

I wouldn't call it a total fail. Tab moves focus to the next input element on almost all web forms, in this case the send button. It allows you to send the message without moving your mouse in a fashion consistent with how we use web forms, much like how I can submit this comment with tab+enter.

> Tab moves focus to the next input element on almost all web forms,

In almost all software, not just web forms. It's only text editors that don't use this.

This is false. Not only Tab doesn't automatically send the email but Google has not overwrittern anything. This is the default behaviour on a web page. Pressing Tab selects the next interactive element on a web page (a link, form elemnts etc.) and pressing space/enter activates it. I'm guessing you press tab expecting to indent something, write a word and then press space to begin the next one which actually sends the message. This is how forms on a webpage work and AFAIR this is how the compose function in gmail always worked. I think i have seen a couple of WYSIWYG text editors that "capture" the tab keypress and actually ident the text but this is far from the norm.

I often write emails in Google Documents then copy and paste to Gmail to get around these quirks.

The problem with that is that Google Docs and Gmail have completely different default styles and features. The bulleted lists are not compatible and bold font gets all messed up when you try to edit it (like the normal and bold switch).

Boooooooooooooooo.

I love it that way. They are not supposed to break normal behavior by changing how tab works normally in a browser. I use Tab and Shift+Tab all time.

I have to bring another ruse to surface: I could not find where the "cached" option went when they changed the search interface. Right now, it is buried inside another drop down menu near the website name, and guess what, it is the only one option. Why cannot they have it the previous way? Just mention it right next to the result. Crazy UI to me, guess the G+ designer they hired is working out good for them, and am sure they have 11 use cases for justifying this.

Another big big problem is the "Quick VIew" option for the pdf or doc files in search results. Earlier, if I did not want to download it, I could just use "quick view" option. But they took it away, and now I have to be logged into my gmail account and it takes to google drive, so as to let me simply view the document. Crazy. And this is why i turned to mozilla, their pdf.js is still lacking...but I will support it such as it will be up to par or even better someday.

Tab+Return sends email.

Thanks - I didn't notice that. After having mistakenly sent a few embarrassing half e-mails I've stopped using tab altogether in gmail for fear of doing it again. When I indent text it's spaces instead of tab - unlike anywhere else.

This proves the point that it's terrible UI though...

The to: field is always the last one I fill out to prevent half-baked thoughts from escaping.

I highly recommend turning on the "Undo Send" extension in the Labs part of settings. It lets you choose to undo settings for ~5 seconds after you press send. It has saved my bacon countless times, not because I hit send accidentally, but because I realize I want to add one more thing or recipient to an email.

Heh. Imagining this UX patch 25 years ago:

"I highly recommend turning on the 'Undo Irradiate' feature on the Therac-25. It lets you undo irradiation settings for a patient for ~5 seconds after you press irradiate. It has saved my patients countless times, not because the UI tricks me into irradiating patients with the wrong settings, but because I realize I want to add one more dose."

Yes, because sending an email by accident is just like irradiating a cancer patient to death.

Obviously, they've made it easy to send emails (pressing tab then enter) but that means that some folks send them by accident. But that's an acceptable trade, because it doesn't kill people.

For me, the now-hidden formatting options was the biggest annoyance. I use quote/indent/lists a lot. Now I am slowly getting used to the new UI because I have no choice. I have new compose enabled on the @gmail account, although old compose is still active in Google Apps account somehow.

Also, as @tomkarlo suggested, use undo_send, that is a life-saver. I set it to max possible- 30 seconds.

It's messy that they replaced these conventions but I understand that gmail is not targeted at the geek population exclusively anymore. Also, I like minimalistic user interfaces and geeks should be able to adapt. Here is a mapping for gmail:

Tab -> Ctrl + ]

Shift + Tab -> Ctrl + [

Quote -> Ctrl + Shift + 9

(They are also helpfully annotated in the formatting menu in case you forget.)

These shortcuts don't work for me.

Not that I'd ever use them. On my AZERTY keyboard Ctrl + ] translates to Ctrl + Alt + shift + ). I always have to press shift to enter digits so I'm not sure how the last one is even supposed to work in theory.

I also don't seem to have a formatting menu. Are you sure you're not using a Google Labs feature?

Also Tab+Space.

Yes, I think people are more likely to hit Tab+Space instead of Return.

I actually never tab in my emails. I use line breaks instead and have learned to do tab enter for sending emails.

For me, it's a big time saver to do that instead of having to move my cursor to the send button. I didn't realise it was causing problems for other people.

At least they added Alt+Enter to send the email now. That's been the Outlook default since the start of time.

Now I can use the same commands at work and at home. Perfect.

Oh man is that why I keep accidentally sending half written emails!?

Does any web mail not do this? And did Gmail ever not do this?

Yahoo mail has tab-style tabs. And I think it's still considerably more popular than gmail. Gmail has some huge advantages, but they're all business-y stuff, like free POP. Yahoo's interface is perfectly good.

The irony of discussing good UI in hacker news

HN's UI works fine. Unlike Gmail's....

Use spaces.

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