Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose
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Two examples:
- maps: new interface is so terrible that I am actively looking for a replacement. It is painfully slow, search results are no longer displayed on the same page as the map (what?), and in general the minimalism has gone too far: the interface requires too much hunting.
- gmail: Previous/Next-message buttons flake out constantly (grayed out - clicking does nothing). New formatting options are hard to use and obnoxious.
And an old one that I ran in to again today:
- there is no (intuitive) way to copy a URL from google search results without all of the google redirect garbage. This fundamentally degrades the world-wide web. For example, I want to email a link to a pdf. If an in-browser pdf reader is not available, then the link downloads immediately and there is no way to get the de-obfuscated link. I clicked the "share" button in hopes that this might give me the link; but no, it wanted me to share on G+.
I wanted to copy/paste a link in a chat window but the google redirect url is so long it takes up the whole chat window and more! Instead of the domain.com/word I wanted.
Exactly what I wanted.
Anyway, for the longest time - even with a bare browser (no extensions) - YouTube wouldn't save certain settings (annotations disabled, video quality), even while I was logged in.
It's so nice of Google to give their users so much advance warning of incoming suckage. I guess that's part of the whole don't-be-evil mission statement. Kudos to them.
- google voice: selecting 'all' only selects displayed items (calls, missed calls, voicemails, etc) so to delete items, you have to click 'all', then 'delete' then 'all' again. If you have 1000 items in your history, it takes 100 clicks to delete them all. Compare that to gmail - you can select every single message not just those displayed.
Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this.
Try indenting by four spaces. Like this:
Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this.Oh. Duh. That's my CSS stylesheet. I'd gotten sick of seeing unwrapped long lines requiring horizontal scroll, I've got:
pre { white-space: normal; }
Even on my new i5 laptop, it's not quite as snappy as the old version.
Ah, so it's not because I've gotten dumber and my eyes have gone worse, they really removed it.
Bloody hell...
All that is still the move toward less and less control for the user, initiated by Apple. I hope Google can revert soon, now that it is actually Apple which is coping with Google.
When you have searched for a destination, click on the bottom right where it shows the commute type (car, bus, bicycle, walking) and estimated time. From there you'll find a list of three suggested routes (at least I do). When clicking on any of the the suggested routes, it'll show all of them in the map and you can also choose a route by clicking on it in the map.
Additionally, I get back from navigation to route view just by pressing the back button. Works just like it should?
Then one more complain: in the previous version I could get a metric scale from the labs, which I think is not there anymore. I think a map without a scale is a toy-map.
Plus, the switch between views (public transport, bike, traffic) being hidden in a hover menu that disappears when I make a search... Now I have to first think about enabling the mode I want before making my search. How is that a progress ?
When I got in to the beta, I thought it looked great, but after I tried to use it, I quickly reverted back to the old maps
I've filed it as a "commentary" (it doesn't allow bug reporting) through the feedback tool; if many of us do the same, maybe we'll get them to listen.
[EDIT] Oh, looks like I don't have the new version yet. Oops. Thanks for the correction.
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/vLT6DzwLd...
- in Google plus, you need to play maze to avoid the pop ups.
- contacts takes ages to load, when I usually use it only for a little tweak that should take 3 sec.
Steve Jobs could probably have forced consistency on Google's products without breaking them, but few CEOs have the taste Steve had.
[0] http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/06/on-ui-inconsistency-in-ios-5/
How do you know what anything does with graphical-only buttons, in Gmail compose UI, Android copy/paste UI, etc., without tapping everything at least once and potentially losing data?
As for Android, sure there is no undo, and I wasn't really speaking for Android, but I'd, again, be really surprised if the cut/copy/paste is statistically confusing. I'd only suggest the paste option only be offered in the context-menu above the selection and not also next to the cut/copy icons. I'd also argue that it's really unlikely I'd be doing anything with an Android device that isn't repeatable with little effort or would be undoable and before I possibly had to cut my teeth once or twice. I think iOS did a better job here, as Android offers no means of backing out a change.
More importantly, though, I love that you read 2 paragraphs and then blew your top ("what a load of crap" -- really?) over a parenthetical comment that was already qualified with a "probably."
From an acclaimed Apple-enthusiast: http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/themes
Ever seen the window controls for a full-screen iTunes 10? http://zapp0.staticworld.net/reviews/graphics/products/uploa...
More: http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/how-apples-contextual-menus...
May Jobs rest in peace, but iOS 5 didn't just materialize in a single day, and Jobs presented it, undoubtedly as the next-best sliced bread, at WWDC.
More importantly, though, I love that you read 1 paragraph and then blew your top ("belligerent" -- really?) over a comment. It's really tiring to hear about how "if only Jobs were here" or "Jobs would never let this happen!" pg should know better, and so, I won't hold his hand.
Pg said that forcing consistency tends to result in bad design decisions. Maybe jobs could do it, page can't.
To disprove that point, you'd need to show an example of forced consistency across apple platforms that degraded usability. Showing inconsistency isn't responding to the argument.
I really didn't want to compare Apple and Google or Page and Jobs; that's the point. We're not even comparing the same things, and you don't have to look far to find power users scorning The Apple Way. We can go on all day with issues pertaining to Apple's HIG -- forced consistency -- and the degrading of usability.
1. Pg says forced ui consistency tends to be bad. 2. Maaaybe a skilled design genius like jobs could do it (maybe), but most people shouldn't try.
His argument didn't turn on Jobs. It was a rhetorical flourish to bolster the idea. If even the best in the field (according to pg) couldn't do it well, then others should be wary.
The top-most comment is fair to point out bugs, but I don't see the correlation with Jobs and his genius, UI/UX brush. Are you suggesting mandates for consistent UI -- whatever that has to do with the article's discussion about the compose window -- creates more bugs? Makes Maps slow? They should fix those things, but it has nothing to do with UI / UX consistency nor Jobs.
Customers liked the consistent interaction model for about the first 20 minutes, until they wanted to do something that was natural, but specific, for the visualization they were working with. When it turned out the product didn't and wouldn't ever support that thing they wanted to do, the entire house of cards came falling down.
Eventually we got rid of the person responsible for that decision and the product progressed rapidly and customer satisfaction (and sales) went up exponentially.
Consistent design is a very hard thing to get right, and very easy to get wrong. I think Apple under Jobs knew how to use consistency as a basic scaffolding for an application, but the actual details could still be quite app specific. The framework kept users oriented, but didn't dictate the functions of the software.
Fwiw, this search for 'beautiful consistent look across products' doesn't seem to be confined to Google. Yahoo Groups had a decent interface till they introduced a completely broken, unusable new look named "Neo". Just thinking about how unusable this made using Groups, makes me angry.
A single search box. You type in POIs, the Map is constructed around the search results.
The old Google Maps (the tile based one) was based on the idea of a multi-pane map with gadgets and a side panel of 10 ranked search results, but the map was the same no matter the search (pre-rendered tiles). Search results had to be clicked on the map to get a popup to see what it was. The new Maps is based on the idea that the Map itself is the search result The POIs are rendered directly into the map, just like a specialized paper map. It is based on spatial based exploration and relevancy.
There's a difference between a design disaster and "I don't like this because it is different than what I was used to and I don't want to change" IMHO, the new maps is what Maps should have been all along.
So, I disagree, and I think the old way was both easier (because I knew it) AND simpler (less complex). What now?
And here is the difference between Google employees and their users. Google believes, and has told their employees, that when they change something, users will always hate it because it's different, and that there is a gestation period during which the majority will "get used to it."
That "gestation period" now seems infinite, and any change is allowed to remain because real user feedback is ignored.
Apple famously got ripped for Final Cut Pro X, for many of the same reasons people are ripping the new Maps (bunch of power user features removed)
I personally prefer the map to show the results. They are spotlighted and easy to see. The result box on the side used to annoy me because I'd have to keep moving the mouse and/or eyes from the list to the map and back. The new Maps consistently pops up the Infobox in the same place too.
You can't please everyone, but on mobile and touch devices, having a multi-pane interaction model is lame anyway. So really, the desktop is simply converging with the tablet.
You might be getting confused. There's a difference between the new design becoming the "new normal," and the new design being tolerated because there aren't any real alternatives to the product. After all, the only reason Facebook users stopped complaining about each redesign is because they realized Facebook doesn't care what users think. (But I bet when major advertisers complain behind closed doors, they listen.)
Google Maps is not like Facebook. While it is currently the dominant maps service, it is not the only one. Not only that, but it also cannot rely on a strong network effect to protect it like Facebook can; if all your friends are on Facebook, then being on MySpace is kind of dumb. Can you say the same about Google Maps?
Here's the idea: you can afford to make sweeping, disruptive design changes if and only if you have a virtually unbreakable monopoly in your market. This is why Microsoft could risk changing the MS Office interface back in 2007. Even if they had screwed up, what would people switch to? There wasn't a good enough alternative. Again though, can you say the same about Google Maps?
A new generation of users are coming online whose experience is predominately a mobile one, and on touch, sparse, touchable, explorable interfaces are the norm. If Google simply kept maps the way it has been for a decade, sooner or later, they'd find themselves criticized because it doesn't work like "Apple Maps".
In fact, people seem more willing to adopt radical new user paradigms if the form factor changes. If I change your desktop email, you'll get annoyed, but if I create a radically new out of the box mobile email experience, you'll be more amenable to learn it.
Or, you know, they could have changed them into something better, either incrementally or in one step, instead of the new broken design.
Sure, because what else are the users supposed to do? Return to MapQuest?
Meanwhile their hatred increases...
This is not uncommon from what I've read.
Another issue: there doesn't seem to be a way to go to your current location, which is especially annoying because Google Maps decides to show me the US at the beginning (I'm not in the US).
Of all the mantras from 37signals over the years, the one that I agree with and adhere to most is "context over consistency" for exactly this reason.
If you go to your downloads list you can right click and do "copy link address" (at least on chrome and firefox)
* Buffering was nerfed/broken some time ago. I can no longer watch 720p+ videos on youtube at all.
* Changing video quality now has a long and unavoidable delay, and often fails outright.
* Google are evidently uneasy about the profile name that I signed up with, and have been repeatedly nudging me to change it. I don't know how to reassure them about my choice.
* Advertising. Everywhere.
I agree with all the annoying points above!
The subscription feed is a mess. Before it was a grid and now it's in a list. The only reason why I know there are more videos uploaded than what's in my feed is because video authors title their videos in parts. So if I see "Part 3" I know that Part 2 and Part 1 are somewhere, just not in my feed.
Brillant.
I find the new Maps interface incredibly better than the old one. Search results appear directly on the map so you can see spatial relationships, easily highlighted and clickable. It invites exploration. No separate Google Earth plugin needed, seamlessly move from 2D to 3D, no separate Flash plugin for Street View. The way the map spotlights important roads and related places when you click on a particular POI helps with planning.
The only downside is it is slow, because it is a very complex web app, probably the most complex one ever written, but I'm sure they'll optimize it by the time it is ready for public consumption.
It is obvious that most of the old features like
multi-stop directions will return
I hope they manage to keep the "old" maps accessible after switching to the new, since the responsiveness is so low it negates all the new features.
gmail: It became slower and more bloated all the time, the interface changes looked nice but were, as many said, horrible UX. I know the lack of tags is a dealbreaker for many but as I can live without them, fastmail.fm [2] is a replacement that does pretty much everything else better and faster.
search: Yeah, the lack of easy linking is extremely annoying and has been for quite some time now. My problem is still that I need the bubble to get relevant results for me. Every time I try to use DDG [3] or other replacements, searches result in way too much noise over signal. And with those boxes on the right side google now has what was one of the best features of DDG.
At least calendar is still useable for now as I haven't found a replacement I really liked.
[1]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ [2]: http://fastmail.fm [3]: http://duckduckgo.com
1. Zoom buttons. Now I have to hold the phone in one hand while pinch in and out with another, instead of a tap with one finger.
2. Offline maps. I suppose it's part of the "cloud strategy".
3. Secondary streets at common zoom level. Now I have to really zoom in to see them. A tad out and they're gone. Sometimes it shows them just fine, though. Perhaps, it's a bug.
I can't for the life of me figure out how to show street view on android's google maps. I know it used to exist, but did they really take it out?
First of all, it's not as one-sided as people are making it out. I was also annoyed when it first came out, but there are some clear benefits. Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win for my email workload (CTO for a 30-person company).
There are some important philosophical reasons behind some of these changes that I strongly agree with:
First, the small window by default encourages short emails which is always good. The OA seems to glorify long-winded CEO screeds, but by definition the vast majority of emails are going to be short (and if they're not I don't want to work with you), so it's correct to optimize for the short case. The two levels of pop-out (the second of which the OA appears to be completely ignorant of) scale up and out quite nicely.
Second, the hidden headers and formatting options are encouraging simplicity in email. Most email should not have formatting, and arguably most emails don't have CCs, BCCs, or edited subjects either. Putting them behind one extra click is really not the huge usability nightmare people make out. It takes a little while to get used to and then you just subconsciously do the double click, it's not really any harder than finding them in a sea of icons, it's just that previously you were used to that sea of options. The optimization for the common case is done correctly.
For me the new design (after turning on compact view) is a moderate improvement that did nothing to dilute the core value of Gmail which are the labels, keyboard shortcuts/navigation, conversation view and search/filters. Running it inside Mailplane makes it even better.
There are definitely annoyances, but nothing that's even close to driving me to something like mutt, and forget about GUI clients, all of them feel like molasses compared to Gmail.
Agreed, for short emails (setting up mtgs, quick reviews) it works fine for the most part.
Personal preference wise - I feel more comfortable sending email when I'm able to see CC/BCC, text formatting, & attachments. Understand that not everyone feels the same way.
It was possible to do this before the changes rolled out. Shift-compose opened it (still does) in a new window, and you could work with it and your mailbox side-by-side.
If only someone had invented a windowing GUI.
My main issues, now I've set the default to fullish screen, is it's more like Outlook: editing the To/CC fields is annoying, and it wants you to always quote the entire email.
I await a Chrome extension to let me live in the past with people who knew how to use computers.
At work I have to use a mac, it's a PITA to manage multiple non fullscreen windows on it. There is also a fair amount of screen estate lost per window.
> First, the small window by default encourages short emails which is always good.
"Sorry mom, I intended to write you a longer message but gmail encourages me to keep it short."
> Putting them behind one extra click is really not the huge usability nightmare people make out.
Folks at Microsoft are nodding their heads and furiously tweeting this sentence.
> "Sorry mom, I intended to write you a longer message but gmail encourages me to keep it short."
The topic at hand is power emailing. Not people who write a message to their family once a week as the majority of their email.
> Folks at Microsoft are nodding their heads and furiously tweeting this sentence.
I don't even know where you get this. Having a minimal interface with the most used features present and others grouped under menus of some sort is an age-old proven UI convention. This is the exact opposite of what I think of when I think of Microsoft software or other bloated programs with toolbars and ribbons bursting at the seams. Citing Microsoft is just a way for you to justify your emotional reaction to my comment without adding any substance.
That use-case is completely valid. Unless you're going to argue that GMail is meant to be a'power emailing' tool, which I'd disagree with. Optimising for something that doesn't suit the majority of users is usually a mistake.
> Unless you're going to argue that GMail is meant to be a'power emailing' tool, which I'd disagree with.
Okay, so first of all, yes Google was in fact invented to be a power email tool because it was built by engineers for engineers.
But that's neither here nor there because obviously they are trying to improve it for the most common case which is the source of the much-reviled changes.
It's not normal people that are complaining about these changes. It's entrenched power emailers who had their workflow thrown off by change and whose muscle memory is leading them to believe that this redesign is a disaster. New users won't have any worse experience than they did before, I guarantee you that.
I'm trying to point out that the topic is wider than power emailing as these feature changes affect everyone. You don't get to choose which ones to adopt.
> "Okay, so first of all, yes Google was in fact invented to be a power email tool because it was built by engineers for engineers. ... obviously they are trying to improve it for the most common case"
It doesn't follow that Gmail was 'invented to be a power email tool'. Also, there's an assumption in there they're genuinely trying to improve for the common case. It could also be a range of internal pressures forcing changes that are actually detrimental for users. Companies fuck up like this all the time, so let's not pretend that Google is somehow exempt from that class of big-company-mistake.
And I'm arguing that Gmail's design decisions are made with a solid basis in the widest common use case despite all the self-righteous nerdrage piled upon the tired mantra that Google is horrible at design.
> It doesn't follow that Gmail was 'invented to be a power email tool'.
What do you mean it "doesn't follow"? I'm not justifying this as a logical argument, I'm repeating statements I've read from Gmail's creators in interviews over the years.
From my perspective the new compose modal window removes power from the user. Instead of having all of the formatting tools and options open and ready to go, you've got to expand the window the see them. You've got less screen real estate to work with and even on the reply window you have to click on the formatting icon to get the formatting tools even though there is plenty of room to just show the tools in the first place.
Making users click more to complete a task is not bad if there is a good reason to do so. Forcing users to click more because you hid important functionality to save room that is not used for something else doesn't make sense. You've added load to the task for virtually no gain.
I guess if short, rapid fire emails are the primary mode of usage for a user the new compose UI works great. I'd imagine the vast majority of gmail users do not send a high volume of emails per day, and the old compose UI worked fine while surfacing all of the functionality they needed.
By definition of the length of a day, if you are sending any serious volume of emails then most of them are going to be short.
Or you could type fast.
A PM tool makes it much easier IME for the team to keep track of, and on top of, messages relevant to their projects, and reference them later.
Email is the universal medium. If I need to search for some history, I start with email since it is the most common. Skype we use for private and urgent chat. Campfire we use for general development chat. Basecamp we use for archivable product decision making. All of those have their uses.
I can't begin to think why you believe all my short emails are better suited for chat, but without context it's extremely, extremely ignorant and wrong.
I can't begin to think why you think I've even suggested chat, but hey, jump to your conclusions.
All that remains is for me to thank you for being a patronising bastard, and leave it there.
I'm just returning the favor.
Agreed, write enough emails and you eventually learn that you're on borrowed time beyond the first half sentence.
PS - Seven paras? Tsk... :)
That's what window managers are for.
In the meantime, please leave alone people that use email to actually write something and go back to twitter and the likes.
I am not clear if Google truly believes the new compose is an improvement or if there is a behind the scenes reason that is making up for the decrease in usability. The new product is so obviously a step back (to me) that I am assuming it's the latter. Has anyone seen a write up that has an explanation other than "improved practicality?"
(Also, why hide the formatting bar...)
https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailt...
By right, I mean a clean, simple interface that you don't need to judiciously learn over dozens of hours of frustrating trial and error or by googling in support forums.
The old gmail UX was fine. In fact, compared to the new compose it was the bees knees. It takes humility to be able to realize that. But Jason wants to leave his mark - unfortunately the mark is an ugly smear.
Sorry to the OP, it's not your fault that you provided content the community likes and I have no personal issue with you.
Gmail had good UX, and people went to it for that. Now it has a few flaws. As people who care about UX, these flaws are worth discussing.
Some 'hackers' don't do UX, which is fine. So those people may find the topic boring. But many people here are making things, and find the UX direction of the leading web email client interesting. If only to see future trends in web site development. Other reasons this is interesting is to see how they are monetising their apps more, and how they are trying to make email a worse marketing channel.
Having worked at Google, it is understandable if you get annoyed when people bash your company. But that comes with being successful. So don't sweat it too much.
xo
I have to remember to expand it, then delete all the content I don't want to be included in the forward.
Other comments here have pointed other gui foibles, I agree with all the maps complaints, I'm on the beta for it and switch back to classic almost 70% of the time because I can't get something done in the new one.
And I won't repeat what I had to say about the absolute brokenness of the youtube interface.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314694
Even in search, lots of the nice sidebar utilities I used all the time like the search tools' time range are now buried two clicks deep. Searches give you quick options for web, images, maps, shopping and applications, but one I use several times a day, video, is buried.
The inability to default to replying in plaintext to HTML mails is annoying, but I can deal with that, too.
What I can't deal with is the broken UX for the fake HTML elements, which were previously native controls that worked fine.
The To field is now a magic list of clickable email addresses instead of a regular textbox. Great, but clicking and dragging to select no longer works, typing with a selection active does not delete it, and undo no longer works.
The From field (for use with multiple email addresses), which used to be a native <select>, is now... a HTML reimplementation with no additional functionality. It sort of works from the keyboard - you can press space to bring up the list, up/down to choose an item, and enter to select. But it's not quite the same (as OS X, at any rate): the list starts with no selection rather than the current item, you can't press space again to close the list, and you can't choose an item by typing. In fact, if you try to do a few things in the new compose, including typing on the list, the keystrokes pass through to the greyed-out main window and you perform random email actions.
These interactions are not inherently critical: I could easily learn to live without them in general. But they work for every other like control in the OS, and they used to work here, so naturally I have and will retain muscle memory for them; the result is infuriating.
I'm actually quite surprised nobody has made a user script to fix these and the other issues in the three weeks since my account was forced onto the new compose; Gmail's obfuscation makes this a little more annoying, but not too bad if you stick to modifying elements rather than directly interacting with the JavaScript. I'll probably end up writing one myself.
As for substantial criticism of gmail's new UX, why rehash what has been already discussed over and over again here and everywhere? just google for 50+ well thought out blog posts and comments to those blog posts and google forum discussions.
I'm sorry if you are a googler and feel the need 'to circle the wagons' out of misplaced loyalty. Or if you fail to see that it is pertinent to mention the person responsible for the changes out of a perverse sense of 'white knighting'.
Now please downvote this to prove how intelligent you are.
Click here to exit full-screen.
(Shift + click to compose in a new window.)
You can set full-screen as your default using
the More menu next to Discard.
Email anxiety is no fun, maybe a native client would be the best way to ensure your workflow is optimized?
I am checking out Airmail thanks to an older HN thread. Cheers!
That said, Outlook 365 is also bloody awful in terms of usability. Say I've sent an email to a list of people, there's no way (as far as I can tell, which is all that matters really) to then copy those email addresses. You have to literally click through each one and get the address individually.
no, they aren't. get over it. The new compose does a great job of framing your sent emails in the way your recipients are probably viewing them: quickly, and often from a small screen/window.
Thus, not enough of a money-maker to influence the direction of Gmail.
I can be replying to CC-style conversation and the way recipients are hidden now, I can easily make a mistake not removing key opponent when making comment to partners, a lot of money can be lost.
Email is extremely important for a lot of people.
I also do a real lot of personal emailing. I have family all over the country, and email is one way we keep in touch. I can spend over an hour composing an email to one of my family members, or one of my friends. If I wanted to communicate a shorter message, I'd use SMS, but if I'm telling a longer thought email is my go-to.
Thanks, just found the HN thread about email clients. Checking out Airmail now.
It drives me absolutely insane when a company makes an 'enhancement' and reduces usable window space. If I am writing a long email I want to be able to use the maximum amount of window space and not be crammed into something that is 25% of my monitor size.
https://mail.google.com/mail/h/
It approximates the first Ajax/DHTML interface that Gmail introduced when it launched in 2004.
If course if you have something like GPRS then basic HTML is just the thing.
EDIT: AAAAAAH SERIOUSLY HOW CAN YOU REGRESS SO BAD!
Thunderbird is the way to go!
While being a design-led company isn't necessarily a completely bad thing, you need those engineers and developers guiding the designers and keeping things in check. Unrestrained creativity can be a dangerous thing.
I feel the same way about the new compose popup. It's intrusive and distracting and I even emailed them about it sometime ago. I got some cookie cutter response about how Google are continually refining their products, blah blah.
I would use a third party email client, but email is crucial for me and if the chances of something going wrong between the connection of the client and Google's servers are higher than that of losing an email composed within the Gmail interface itself.
Besides, a CEO that can't focus on writing a message unless they don't have any other distraction on their screen should probably work on their focus skills.
Terrible argument. "Let's add more distractions to the screen, because the user should be able to focus anyway".
Also, Google broke the "Best Secret Gmail Feature" [1]. In the last few months, you can't select text and hit reply to quote it anymore. Grrr
[1] http://gizmodo.com/5963768/the-best-secret-gmail-feature-is-...
It's also my responsibility to ensure I can focus and work efficiently, agreed. Whether I can do that well with Gmail's new Compose is the issue.
Everyone regardless of profession has a "zone" where they are the most productive. If a CEO needs to write 10 long-form emails in a day they should definitely have the best environment and the best tools for the job. It can be the difference between spending 5 minutes composing an email vs. 30 minutes.
Also, they're holding it wrong. Right?
1. First of all the new Gmail inbox with the tabbed interface, it does not show you the number of unread mails in each of the tab, once you have opened a tab, the new mails count vanishes. There should at least be an option for enabling that.
2. Hangouts, it just sucks. Does not work reliably on a data connection, messages are received late. Can't discover online contacts on the UI easily. Makes it easier to chat but harder to find people to chat. I still don't get why did it replace a fully functional chat client with a half-baked piece of crap !?
I don't even want to get started about Google+, the connection model is very good, but the execution is very crappy. Why is Google forcing everyone onto Google+ ?
If Gmail is the whole screen, you can't actually open a "new window"; it would open back on the primary desktop, instead of within the app's screen. Maybe Windows+OSX need to refine their "app-desktop" solutions with some limited form of window management, so that every app isn't having to reinvent its own window management just to keep its windows visible...
Hrm, possibly Windows 8 does that; haven't used it. To do it on MacOS, you have to either click the strange icon in the top right, or hit the highly obvious key combination CMD-CTRL-F. Anecdotally, most people don't even seem to realise that the fullscreen thing exists, unless it's pointed out to them.
Also from the sourcecode on this blog: <!--No plagiarizing here. Thank you to SVBTLE and https://github.com/masukomi/kudos-->
Not sure how you want to deal with the repo owner, but I can stop using the code if you want.
Makes for a nice way to get quickly to a distraction-free compose window.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en
Pop the window out and maximize it if you don't like the new interface. If you hit d, it will open the compose window in a new tab, _the whole thing_, dedicated to your awesome email that you really need to concentrate on writing.
But as for the "hidden text formatting controls".
Don't use text formatting; send plain text email like a decent human being.
If you need to emphasize or:
1.e
2.nu
3.mer
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that's why we have markdown. No one wants to see your fancy fonts and fuchsia signature. Content, yo.
If it's that much of an issue, why not edit content in your favorite editor then paste it into gmail?
If you're on a mac, you can format to your heart's desire in textedit (full-screen-mode-obviously) then copy it all and paste into gmail and all your stupid font size changes and bold shit will still be there.
EDIT: minor changes, also imagine that the formatted stuff is the raw markdown, because I forgot that this does that.
Edit 2: it's cool to hate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY
Edit: I should note that the above is actually a genuine question.
Shift-clicking the 'search' button doesn't work on Google.com.
It does in pre-webkit Opera. One of the things I really miss in other browsers.
Anxiety over some feature?
If your anxiety doesn't come from the fact that you agree to the concept of the surveillance state (by using products like Gmail), then something is clearly wrong.
Apparently some UI-issue is a bigger threat to user-satisfaction.
Weird.
I'd say frightening.
This is HN. Readers are people who understand and produce technology. People who also understand the nefarious potential it holds, if abused.
The situation just doesn't compute.
I like the new version and wish they'd used it long ago, I want a large box to type my emails in, not a small rectangle.
It's what they've done to the editing that bugs me.
- It encourages top-posting. To bottom-post, you have to click the "..." button, and then remove the two blank lines at the top.
- Fast selection of text with shift-Pg{Up,Dn} no longer works.
- Firefox's "It's All Text" add-on, which lets you drop into a real editor to edit a textbox, no longer works with it.
My usage would be something like 80% very short emails, 5 lines or under with maybe a copy paste block. Occasionally I will want to add an attachment or a cc.
The speed and the ability to still see the email list works for me. I should also add the majority of my gmail use is done on a 27 inch screen.
If this is such a crucial tool for you, then you should be willing to pay a reasonable price for something you're happy with instead of just complaining about it online.
Once you enable them, you can easily check if you've forgotten by hitting ?, and within a month you won't have to touch your mouse (or navigate the UI) for anything save for the esoteric features.
Just don't take back my old stuff which I'm familiar with. Give us the choice, damn it.
I personally am using Gmail from OS X Mail via IMAP for a couple of years now. Once you get used to the software, you can focus on reading and writing the mail—there's no distraction caused by continuous UI evolution.
Obviously that doesn't do much to solve the problem of it squeezing them all onto one line when you focus out if you're paranoid about recipients.
The new interface they are using is massively better than Google's, I fell in love straight away, it's actually quite lovely and very fluid to use.
So this is simply a non issue!
I get the feeling that Google is ignoring user feedback for some of these types of thing so they can push users towards their corporate goals. Youtube badgering people to switch to their Google+ username is a good example. Clearly a lot of people don't want to do that, yet they persist.