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What do you think made it horrible? I think it had a simple UI, which for many things worked very well. When I managed the Technical Support for a university u
by csydas 10y ago
What do you think made it horrible?
I think it had a simple UI, which for many things worked very well. When I managed the Technical Support for a university using Google Apps for Education, gchat's simple interface was kind of a blessing in that everyone on the campus had it, it was unobtrusive, automatically saved and searchable (though the search could have used some improvements), and you could make calls/video calls without leaving your email.
When it switched to hangouts, a lot of the simplicity left with it in favor of a more social experience; large user-pics on by default (at the beginning I don't think you could customize this either), the windows were significantly bigger, and the text box lost space to the emoji/add picture buttons.
It was a pretty simple, out of the way, and concise chat option with, as far as I could tell, nothing really hidden. What you saw is what you got.
- bpchaps 10y agoBecause this is how hangouts looks on a 4k monitor: https://imgur.com/lPkNnhR https://imgur.com/lPkNnhR This is its default size and behavior when in a browser: https://imgur.com/bXL1Ezn https://imgur.com/bXL1Ezn This. Is. Horrible. I have some very, very unkind words for the person or team or manager who decided to make hangouts show as few lines as possible. It didn't used to be this way.
- nnain 10y agoYou're mixing GChat with Hangout. GChat was(is) minimal and very useful.
- bpchaps 10y agoYou're right. Point still stands that google's design choices are god awful these days, though.
- tluyben2 10y agoPeople complain about that with Apple too 'these days'. So if the biggest mobile players and one of the biggest web players are bad at design/ux is it just the few people in the world who care about this kind of thing all being on HN or is there some objective measure for this? I'm asking because I don't see it and I know almost no-one who does, then again I am and know mostly hardcore techies (who prefer text only interfaces) or people who do not work in IT and both really do not see it.
- icebraining 10y agoI just give the conversation its own browser window, then I resize at will. Sure the defaults could be better, but it makes more sense to use the window manager anyway.