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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

Given how obnoxious the new compose it, it is getting hard to trust them to do the right thing with Gmail.

Just FWIW, I love the new Gmail compose as well. It is indeed useful to be able to go through and consult previous emails without doing the back and forth for writing one mail. And I really love Gmail for all the small convenience things they keep on doing, like including a 'Track Package' button in the 'product shipping' email's subject itself ! As far as I know, they were the first to do many innovative things, like drag and drop to attach files! They shouldn't stop trying new things.

I like it too. I can write multiple emails at once, and a chat box will never be in the way of the composer. Maybe there should be a "snap back into page" button thing, but people seem to forget that there is a pop out button if you want a more mono-tasking email style.

Additionally, with this interface, it could be more integrated with hangouts and cross google's services (maybe easier send email pop up on andriod tablets?).

I think that's a fundamental difference in working style. I never write multiple emails at once, nor have I wanted to. To me that is clutter.

The "pop out" choice is a poor one since it turns Compose into 3 operations: Press compose, press the pop-out button, press maximize on the new window.

(as for the chat box, I use Minimalist, and my Gmail UI is trimmed of anything extraneous).

Just hit "d" -- first have shortcuts enabled.

Yes, I found that out in this thread. It's still a worse experience, though, as it's much slower.

it also gives me the ability to have more than one compose window open side by side.

the in-page-pop-up composer is just a lame substitute for people that don't know how to click "Compose" with the middle button (or pressing the modifier key of choice). Well, you don't even have to know that, just open a new tab and type gmail<Ctrl+Enter> and you can reference your other emails while writing.

the problem with google launch for that feature is that they DID NOT give the choice.

So, people that is not slow and know how to use tabs effectively, got their writing space crippled. and it became a pain to actually see the email i wanted under the in-page-popup composer. because you know, some people have 10inch screens.

at least now they made it available to go back to the old format. ...that will give me a few more months to look to a gmail alternative.

As far as I know, they were the first to do many innovative things, like drag and drop to attach files!

The interesting truth is that Zenter was the first. I know because they demoed it to me in 2007 shortly before Google acquired them.

Well, if Google acquired them that makes it half (okay, much less than half half) right.

Have to interject here on the off chance that some gmail engineers are paying attention. That's nice that you like it, but forcing the new compose on users is just plain inexcusable. It breaks a number of things for me that I actually use in my work on a daily basis.

Here are just 4 things that it breaks for me (note: copied from elsewhere):

1) When you hit "forward", it hides the subject box, even though the majority of the time when I hit forward I want to delete the "Fwd:" from the subject line. Especially when sending a form email. This resulted in a couple of embarrassing emails before I changed back to the old compose.

2) I often want to create a big list of emails that I want to review before hitting send. The new compose replaces each email address I type with the persons name! For a lot of people I do business with, I have both their business and personal email address. But now I can't tell which one I'm about to email. What the hell Google?

3) Attachments are now an object within the email. But often I want to forward something with an attachment, but clear out the text in the email. Well now when I do select-all, it deletes the attachment also.

4) The compose email doesn't cover my screen, even when I pop it out as its own window. When I'm drafting an email, I don't want to be able to see distractions. If other emails pop up while I'm editing it, that can make me lose my train of thought. Worse, there are no options that I can set to change this.

Meh, fwiw I love the new compose.

I much prefer the new Compose, it unobtrusively let me create an email whilst browsing through my history.

I too prefer the new compose, my only gripe is the unnecessary collapsing of attaching things other than files on the hard drive. The thing I attach most often is an image at a web address, to do so I have to hover the +, click "insert photo", select the web address option, paste in the web address and then click ok. Far too many steps.

Agreed here, same with me. I might end up writing a greasemonkey script for the same soon (quickly insert image via url). If someone is more motivated than me, feel free to do it and share :).

You inspired me. Here's a first, hacky, iteration to at least remove one step

    (function showMenuInterval() {
         Array.prototype.forEach.apply(document.querySelectorAll('[aria-label="Insert more menu"]'), [function(menu) { menu.style.display='none'; }]);   
         Array.prototype.forEach.apply(document.querySelectorAll('.aZ > .wL.wM'), [function (menu) { menu.classList.add('wN'); menu.classList.remove('wM'); menu.style.width = '186px'; }]);
         setTimeout(showMenuInterval, 50);
    }());

yeah the toolbar is annoying, I have to navigate 2 menus to quote some text.

I'm guessing it's optimized for non-power users, but it should at least be customizable, or better yet learn which icons are most used and bring them to the main toolbar.

I think these are completely intentional. Additional steps made for the few that use that stuff, and hiding out the complexity for the big majority that doesn't want that.

I don't think they would ever create anything without a decent reasoning behind it. May not be your reasoning, but there is one.

I have wanted that exactly zero times. But I wouldn't object to the the new compose if you could maximize it without popping it out into a new window, and make that the default. The problem is not the new features, but the functionality they removed.

I'm neutral about it, overall. I find the window ridiculously small (or ridiculously big if you maximise it), and I hate the hidden formatting bar - I use formatting a lot, so the extra click to reveal it and then the hassle of it covering content is a pain.

So how about making the window sizeable, and remember the user's preference? And maybe when it's over a certain size the formatting bar gets permanent screen space.

Enable keyboard shortcuts and then press "d" to open a new tab full of Compose.

Thanks! Did not know about that.

Nice, thank you. I dislike new compose, but am finding big advantages as well because its forced me to learn keyboard shortcuts.

Now if only there was a shortcut for 'reply/forward in new tab' or I could change the default size for cmd+r reply in new window or gmail remembered the dimensions I last resized the new window to.

Opinions can vary. I love the new compose.

Agreed. But I for one, can't stand it. I don't like composing emails on top of other things in the background. I find it jarring. For similar reasons, I also don't like the reply mode where you are editing within a conversation.

I guess I like viewing messages in the context of a conversation, but not composing them that way. I just wish that I had the option of composing things separately.

C'est la vie.

Have you given the 'd' keyboard shortcut a go?

Ah.. Thank you so much... Now to figure out how to adjust my user scripts to trigger that from the Compose button too...

I love the new Compose too.

I have two displays, my secondary with my email browser on it is to the right of me. With the new compose, writing emails is confined to the utter right most corner of my work area.

As you might have guessed, I hate the new compose...

Going to add that I love the new compose. What makes you say that it's obnoxious?

I think some people might think that there is too much clutter in the "background" with that list of emails and all. But, this is not so much a problem if you have a cleared CSS-edited pretty unread/important/read gmail like mine.

I don't want the visual clutter of having other stuff behind the message I'm writing, and I want to use the full screen, or close to it. The new compose forced me to "pop out" the window and maximize it, leaving compose to be 3 operations.

As several people have pointed out there's actually a keyboard shortcut that does what I want ("d") I didn't know about, so now I'm at least slightly less grumpy about it.

I've switched back to the Basic Html interface, and found it surprisingly good.

How did you manage this? I tried to switch to Basic HTML after the new compose box rolled out, but couldn't find the setting for it anywhere.

Append &ui=html to the querystring.

It's an unadulterated Gmail 1.0 html-only UI. Very 2004.

Personally, if I try to use it for more than 30 seconds I want to die. But YMMV.

I love the new compose also.

I think it's a little unfair to overly judge them over one mistake. Also, I didn't like the original redesign, but they've toned it down since then and brought it back so they do seem to be corrective.

There was also the previous design change as you note, which I hated enough to install Minimalist to change the appearance. By now my Gmail looks nothing like the standard Gmail.

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