17 ms·

Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

• pictur 8y ago
  material design new cancer
  • galfarragem 8y ago
    I never understood the fuss about material design. While it's decent on mobiles, it looks _terrible_ on desktops with low resolutions at least.
• savethefuture 8y ago
  Bye bye google
• dylanhassinger 8y ago
  i agree
• thecrumb 8y ago
  Amen. What really bugs me is it loads instantly in Chrome but in Firefox is does it's loading animation and refreshes once or twice usually taking a few seconds just to load the page.
  • kencausey 8y ago
    I just tested it in both Firefox and Chrome on an older Win7 system and my subjective judgement of the loading time was that it was essentially identical in each browser. Certainly the animation is shown in each.
    • babuskov 8y ago
      Is maybe the new Chrome login thing related to this. I'm starting to feel like new GMail and the Chrome auto-login thing are somehow connected. Maybe the whole GMail thing only tested with logged-in Chrome so they never noticed the problem.
  • jesseb 8y ago
    Yup, it's infuriating how long it takes to access my inbox with the new interface (just counted 6 seconds to a usable interface on my work machine), mostly due to the awful new splash screen. On top of that they added a bunch of padding, which reduces the information density (taking a page from Reddit's book). Gmail has been my last reservation on dropping Google entirely, and I think this is the last straw for me.
  • dceddia 8y ago
    Interesting. I usually use Chrome and I get the loading animation every time. The old one had an animation too, but this one takes 2-3x longer.
• btkramer9 8y ago
  My biggest complaint is that everything takes longer. Loading the page, searching, etc. Everything feels slower.
  • zzzcpan 8y ago
    Disable javascript and switch to basic html version. Personally basic html is the only reason I still tolerate gmail.
    • babuskov 8y ago
      I tried to do that. It is faster, but the font choice and color choice is awful. If you have a lot of e-mail, it's so hard to discern threads and read subjects. I feel like being forced to choose between two bad versions of GMail.
      • TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Could this be fixed for you with userstyles? It's not a proper solution, but basic HTML should be amendable to some quick quality-of-life styling.
        • mrieck 8y ago
          There are no tabs in basic HTML view. That pretty much makes it unusable to me.
• jerrac 8y ago
  Do you have any comparison screenshots? I've been using Thunderbird for years now, and haven't spent much time with the webui. I just looked at it, and it doesn't seem much different from what I remember. Maybe the roll out hasn't hit me yet?
  • dx87 8y ago
    I don't have screenshots, but the new UI looks like it was designed for touch screens. The actual mail messages take up maybe 50% of the screen in the middle, with different sized margins full of mostly huge, but some very tiny, buttons to press on each side. Some of the buttons don't even have descriptions, it's just an icon for another Google product. There's also a smattering of giant buttons and icons scattered across the page, with no consistency as to their size or alignment. It makes me think of someone creating their first website, where it started out OK, but they feel the need to keep adding features and filling in empty space so they just add more and more buttons and icons all over the page that are only sort of related to the main purpose of the page.
• boksiora 8y ago
  yes i hate it, its horrible, its too distracting from the content, too cluttered, please get back the old UI
• Boulth 8y ago
  I doubt anyone in power to change this would comment in here and do something about it. Even if, the sunk costs fallacy guarantees they will stick with the new UI.
• dewey 8y ago
  As much as the comments here are mostly leaning towards one side keep in mind that 99% of the users probably don't care and I'm sure they have the data to back this up.
  • forgot-my-pw 8y ago
    There's always resistance to new changes, but if we never change, we can't innovate. - just a user
    • seba_dos1 8y ago
      I'm usually an early adopter type. There are many new cool things that make me excited even if they're unstable and on bleeding edge. There are also new unusable things that make me want to go back. When I consider something to fit into the second group, that doesn't mean I'm opposed to changes and innovation.
    • kgwxd 8y ago
      I see no innovation in the new design. What's the opposite of innovate? Outnovate?
      • forgot-my-pw 8y ago
        If you haven't read about it, new features include: snooze, reminders, suggested response, offline gmail
  • sp332 8y ago
    I've been using GMail since 2004 and I'm not having any trouble, even in Firefox.
    • eiieirurjdndjd 8y ago
      Same. I’m actually at google but I’m not going to tell the gmail team about this post because 1. I don’t agree with it, and 2. Gmail team is already painfully aware that any given change will be unappealing to a subset of users. 3. They are probably already here, taking note, considering. Unfortunately we can’t all have a custom UI written exactly to our specifications. Gmail team has to try to do what they think is best for most users. For the rest, there are various gmail UI tweak extensions for Chrome and Firefox, or you can write your own userscript or use an IMAP client.
• throwaway5250 8y ago
  You probably shouldn't be using Gmail anyway, so consider it a feature. :-)
• subpixel 8y ago
  It's worse than 'new Reddit', and I need to look at it 100x more often every day.
  • cridenour 8y ago
    Then you're not redditing right.
  • expertentipp 8y ago
    https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com - once they shut it down my reddit addiction will be cured.
    • gtyras2mrs 8y ago
      I fear the next step after shutting down the old reddit option would be to severely cripple the API used by third-party apps to drive people to use their apps. When that happens, I will likely give up on reddit entirely.
• mrfredward 8y ago
  The auto-expanding sidebar drives me nuts. I don't want to use the entire width of my widescreen monitor for reading an email, but I do want quick access to my folders.
  • sp332 8y ago
    Hit the "hamburger" icon way up in the left corner next to the main Gmail logo.
    • mrfredward 8y ago
      Thanks. My brain has been trained to think of this behavior as "pinning", now I'll just have to get used to the hamburger.
      • sp332 8y ago
        Yeah the discoverability is terrible. Even knowing the feature existed, it took me four or five tries to find it again just before I commented.
• babuskov 8y ago
  In don't mind the way it looks, I can live with that. But it's sooo slow. Much slower that previous interface. It loads slow and it works slow. Switching between inbox and another folder use to be instantaneous, now I actually have to wait. Opening messages, deleting, everything is slow. And it looks like they removed the option to turn Undo off, so now I have to wait 5 seconds to my message to actually be sent. I'm so used to Google products being fast and feeling almost like a desktop application. This new interface feels like a web app from 2000's. Makes me want to go back to using Thunderbird for mail.
  • maimeowmeow 8y ago
    You cant keep tons of developers to make simple websites. Got to make things complex for job security for all levels.
  • ProZsolt 8y ago
    I'm currently using Inbox which is fast and clutterless. It will go away in a few months and I have to use a worst Gmail than I switched from.
• hawski 8y ago
  I don't mind the look that much, but it's painfully slow. When an application gains a animated splash screen I know that it's time has come. I'm using a Chromebook, so in a way a Google blessed device and it's annoyingly slow. I'm switching to basic HTML view. If it will disappear I will get off gmail for good.
  • cevn 8y ago
    Agreed. It is extremely slow, esp. on older computers to the point of being unusable. Another app reinvents the wheel and becomes useless.
    • manimal4today 8y ago
      Yeah my Commodore has issues with Gmail as well.
      • nsriv 8y ago
        Hey that's pretty funny, but I'm on a 2014 Thinkpad with an i7, and it's slow and stuttery for me as well.
  • stevenwoo 8y ago
    Thanks for confirmation, I'm on DSL so wasn't sure if it was just my super slow connection. Also, nice coincidence that those multiple ask hackernews questions about alternatives to gmail popping up before this release last week.
  • mercenario 8y ago
    To me it is annoying slow to open gmail, but the navigation is mostly very fast.
  • save_ferris 8y ago
    it's especially bad on Firefox. With that, and the fact that Google is killing Inbox, it feels like time to look for alternatives.
• awill 8y ago
  My problem is that often I click to read email and nothing happens. I need to refresh the whole page and click the email again. Happens in Chrome on both Mac and Linux.
• joshuawright11 8y ago
  Is it really that bad...? It looks about the same as the old with a material coat of paint.
  • amflare 8y ago
    The hover effects are atrocious.
    • what_ever 8y ago
      What do you use mouse for? Best feature of GMail is keyboard navigation.
    • RickS 8y ago
      This is definitely the one that bugs me most. So distracting! All the hovered rows jump out now, where before they just changed gray ever so slightly. This is a place where the metaphors of material design subtract more value than they add.
• mxpxrocks10 8y ago
  I'm enjoying it. All good from this end. I'm happy they keep reinvesting in it.
• philwelch 8y ago
  Maybe ten years ago, Gmail was good enough that the webmail view was the best email client, and for the first time in my life I stopped using IMAP. Now, I don’t really care about Gmail’s UI because I use IMAP. Apple Mail improved their UI just enough that Gmail’s regressions took it below the line. But I don’t really care, because Gmail’s spam filtering is still much better than Fastmail, which I know from having tried switching for a couple years.
• thsowers 8y ago
  I had to switch to using the basic HTML version, as the performance with the new UI is terrible, no matter how much power the machine has
• thrower123 8y ago
  I have one browser tab that hasn't been refreshed since before this travesty was dropped. I'm going to try to keep that one going as long as possible... The unnecessary animations irk me. I'm clocking 5-10 seconds to load and render my inbox, on a quad-core i7 with oodles of RAM and a fat network pipe. Whereas the basic view loads in 700 ms...
  • oliv__ 8y ago
    Lucky you! Don't turn off the computer!
  • justinlilly 8y ago
    Save all of the assets that are loaded? I suspect that if you published your asset bundle, others would figure out the greasemonkey script to let you just keep that UI until they change their APIs. :)
  • dangwu 8y ago
    I would assume that a huge majority of the load time is fetching data from Google's servers - not a CPU or memory intensive operation
    • seba_dos1 8y ago
      In case of basic HTML - yes. In case of new update - it's pretty CPU intensive (and GPU too, at least on my laptop's Haswell iGPU with hidpi screen).
    • Spooky23 8y ago
      Usually that’s <120ms. JavaScript is typically the most intensive op.
  • thrower123 8y ago
    By the time the new UI has loaded in and stopped churning, I'm up to 225 requests, pulling down over 5mb. Most of these seem to be tiny pngs for button icons... Why aren't these spritesheeted? Basic view is 9 requests for 24 kb...
• ColinWright 8y ago
  I do consulting work and am regularly given an account on the company's email system. More recently they're using GMail underneath, so now I've apparently got a dozen accounts on GMail. And GMail, bless it, when I login through the company's system clocks me through to a "Choose which account" system. My reaction is to open a new tab and login again, and it usually takes me straight through to the actual email without repeating the request for credentials. The whole thing feels clunky, slow, and confused underneath. I don't much care about the look, that comes and goes, fashions change, but the experience as a whole has become painful.
  • influx 8y ago
    Agreed so much, don't Google engineers have this same issue switching between work and personal e-mail or is Gmail not used internally?
    • zzzcpan 8y ago
      Dogfooding doesn't work in large corporations.
      • zbentley 8y ago
        Care to elaborate?
        • aesh2Xa1 8y ago
          It's an idiomatic term. It means to use the thing you produce yourself. So when, in the case of Gmail, it is slow and painful to use for yourself, you will fix it.
          • vickychijwani 8y ago
            I think the question wasn't "what is dogfooding" but rather "why do you say dogfooding doesn't work at large cos?"
    • 8y ago
• kroltan 8y ago
  Get Thunderbird (or any other standalone email app). Extremely traditional UI, and better responsiveness due to no frill JS and no tracking. Bonus, even read your emails offline! <s>Innovation!</s>
  • shadyrudy 8y ago
    And sort by sender.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      And search, in a way in which you can trust the search actually covered all your e-mails.
      • Boulth 8y ago
        Actually search is the worst feature of Thunderbird in my opinion and I use Thunderbird for years and think it's great otherwise. Search constantly doesn't find something even if I use the keyword thay was in the email (verified using Inbox) or poorly sorts them (relevance algorithm is really weak) or displays result threads in inconsistent manner (many emails are duplicated etc.)
  • Animats 8y ago
    I've been using Thunderbird on desktops and laptops, and K9 mail on Android, for years. Works fine. All you need is an IMAP server. Mine is hosted by Sonic and comes with my DSL service.
    • colanderman 8y ago
      I really wish I could recommend K9 to anyone, but the search functionality is beyond broken. (I used to use it for FastMail because their own app loads oxymoronically slowly, but I just couldn't deal with the broken search functionality.) Have you found a way to work around this?
  • RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 8y ago
• vemv 8y ago
  I hope they're not removing the revert option for Classic UI :( Having an API unable to support two clients (Classic and New) would be embarassing from an engineering POV. And from an UX POV, it really lacks empathy (or realism) to assume that the same exact UI will be useful/pleasant to literally 1 billion users. There are all kind of reasons why a given person might prefer UI a to b (a being older having nothing to do). As you reach more humans, you have to embrace diversity. The views from a handful of hipster designers in SF shouldn't irreversibly impact how the rest of the world interacts with their computers.
  • hello_asdf 8y ago
    I don't have revert option anymore.
    • vemv 8y ago
      I seem to still have it given I use G Suite.
      • bootloop 8y ago
        Same, have it for the G Suite account but not for the private account.
    • MrMember 8y ago
      Same, I reverted to the old UI a month ago or so but yesterday I was forced back to the new UI with no option to revert again.
      • maimeowmeow 8y ago
        Reload and quickly click html for the classic version.
        • jpindar 8y ago
          Thank you!
• nieksand 8y ago
  Google web UX has gotten horrific. I used to visit Google News multiple times per day. Then the UX went to hell there too. Each iteration became worse. After the latest changes, it became so unbearably hideous and clunky that I couldn't stand it anymore. I got mad every time I loaded the site. But years of keyboard memory still had me typing in the URL constantly, getting mad every time it loaded up. I finally black holed it in /etc/hosts to break the habit. Gmail is in a similar state now. The new UI is hideous and clunky. And on the engineering side, it takes multiple seconds to load up. I thought Googlers were supposed to be known for their engineering competence? Calendar? Bleh. It's still in a tolerable state, but visually the previous release was easier to work with. Bring back contrast. Bring back visual dividers. Stop with the clown buttons like the mega "Compose"... these are tools we use for years and we had our first-run experiences over a decade ago. Fire whoever is driving your god awful UX on web.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    What's worse, every other web shop will be copying this yet another Google UX "innovation" in short order. I'd say Google is in no smart part responsible for the website bloat and general degradation of UX, just by setting example.
    • pyman 8y ago
      Google is famous for producing terrible, unusable UIs. Google Wave, Analytics, Gmail, Notes, Drive, etc. The lack of consistency and common sense is unbelievable. The only reason why Android has a user-friendly UI is because Google copied the design from Apple in 2007.
  • Udik 8y ago
    > Fire whoever is driving your god awful UX on web. I have the feeling that UX specialists are actually the problem. When you employ people to work on UX and design, well, they will work on it, even if there is nothing to do. So you get periodic redesigns that improve nothing but justify the existence of a bunch of people whose purpose in life is to propose UX changes.
• zip1234 8y ago
  As others have said, performance is painful. I've also had problems where emails would just not display after clicking on them. It would spin and say 'loading'. I like the look of it but speed is part of a design and needs to be addressed.
• tinktank 8y ago
  Google people -- It doesn't work!! I will click a label only to get an empty window with no emails
• manigandham 8y ago
  It is very slow, especially on any lighter devices like small laptops. All the JS seems to be rather heavy for no real new features or benefits.
• delbel 8y ago
  GMail one day decided to no longer show my emails from my customers in my Inbox -- I have to search for them one-by-one. So every few hours I have to search for keywords. I also get gmail from another account, and he gets mine. At least it is not as bad as Skype. Woke up one day a week ago, hit Upgrade, and now Skype doesn't work -- whatsoever. Nothing I can do. Essentially if I didn't have experience as a level 3 support engineer, I'd be out of business.
  • seba_dos1 8y ago
    As much as I don't like the new GMail, this sounds like a bad filter rule and a classic case of PEBCAK.
• ydnaclementine 8y ago
  old, classic view lives under the gear
• whorleater 8y ago
  Basic HTML view for Gmail is still very usable
• copperx 8y ago
  Tangential, but does anybody here have a email app recommendation for Linux? Something that can replace browsing Gmail on a browser?
  • commoner 8y ago
    Thunderbird is the most popular choice and supports add-ons. For comprehensive alternatives to Microsoft Outlook, Evolution is well-integrated into GNOME, while KMail (part of Kontact) is well-integrated into KDE. Alternatively, Geary (GTK+ 3 based, adopted by GNOME), Pantheon Mail (Elementary's fork of Geary), Claws Mail (lightweight GTK+ 2 based), Sylpheed (lightweight GTK+ 2 based), Trojitá (lightweight Qt 5 based), Kube (Qt 5 based, integrates with Kolab Now), and Mutt (text-based) also work on Linux. All of these applications are free and open-source, and some of them also work on Windows and macOS. Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ Evolution: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution/ https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution/ KMail: https://www.kde.org/applications/internet/kmail/ https://www.kde.org/applications/internet/kmail/ Geary: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary Pantheon Mail: https://github.com/elementary/mail https://github.com/elementary/mail Claws Mail: https://www.claws-mail.org/ https://www.claws-mail.org/ Sylpheed: http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ Trojitá: http://trojita.flaska.net/ http://trojita.flaska.net/ Kube: https://kube-project.com/ https://kube-project.com/ Mutt: http://www.mutt.org/ http://www.mutt.org/
• TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Soon after Google made their Pacman doodle, we've had an article tallying up people-hours world-wide wasted by that little game. The article was in jest (AFAIR), but I wonder, how many people-hours worldwide this UI update will be wasting on a daily basis, by the virtue of being even slower than the last update.
• seba_dos1 8y ago
  It's so ugly and slow. I have switched to basic HTML view, it's way better (although it still could be faster, refreshing takes quite a lot of server time).
• expertentipp 8y ago
  The compatibility of web UIs with the touch events accidentally resulted with clean, stable, simple UIs. Apparently Google branched out the web and all these mouse over effects give me epilepsy. Mouse over menu on table/list row? I thought we went through this already.
• kermittd 8y ago
  It is terrible! Seems to be no way to change it back.
• IdontRememberIt 8y ago
  Same with youtube (when logged in). If it were not in Alphabet's portfolio, it would be buried on the last page of Google index due to horrible performance.
• coderintros 8y ago
  I almost never write comments here but I feel obliged to chime in: the new UI is sooooo incredibly slow and I'm scratching my head to figure out why it's gotten the green light.
• ddebernardy 8y ago
  I hate to be asking, but... what has changed exactly? As one who has only ever used Gmail with a mail client, I'm not seeing any obvious differences since the last time I had to log into the web interface to set a few rules, except an unusually colorful Compose button - which might have been there for a while for all I know.
• janitor61 8y ago
  I'm just happy that we finally get a "replied" icon to denote which emails I've replied to, been waiting for that feature for years now
• amriksohata 8y ago
  Horrible SPA loading page, I don't know what the obsession is with SPA pages they are just annoying
• mehblahwhatevs 8y ago
  Can someone on the new UI tell me how to get the calendar widget in the sidebar on the left? (below "Inbox", "Sent", "More", etc) I'm using an item from "Labs": > Google Calendar gadget > by Ben K and Garry B But Labs is gone in the new UI and this gadget isn't available under any of the new areas.
• codedokode 8y ago
  I remember earlier Google switched Doubleclick for Publishers to UI made with Dart and material design. It is awful and looks like a product of some low quality outsourcing company. It is slow to load (needs to load about 10 Mb to start), it works very slowly, all animations are laggy. I checked with Developer Tools, didnt't see anything resembling Dart in Gmail (and it is not as slow as DFP). But there is 2.8 Mb JS file and 1.3 Mb CSS file (loaded 3 times, don't know why). I am not sure if this is really necessary to display a list of 20 newest emails. Also, a hangouts widget loads additional 600 kb of JS and 600 Kb of CSS.
• hluska 8y ago
  At the risk of saying something unpopular, I like the new Gmail. I liked the previous Gmail too, so maybe I'm not the best judge. It is slightly slower, but I like the look and enjoy working in it. While I dream of doing it, I think it would be hard to PM something as popular as Gmail. Once you reach a nine figure user count, any change you make will be met with millions of unhappy people...
  • seba_dos1 8y ago
    I liked previous Gmail versions. I could see why people may dislike them, but they were fine for me and worked well (especially after setting up a dark theme and compact view density). Now it's so unbearably slow and ugly that I switched to HTML view and consider it an improvement.
    • hluska 8y ago
      That really stinks - I don't work for Google but I'm still sorry that's happening to you. I'm not using the most powerful machine (i7-8550U + 8gb of RAM) and I'm running Chrome 69 on Windows 10. It's a little slower than the previous version, but nothing I'd call unbearable. In fact if I'm being really honest, I'm not even sure if it is slower, or if I'm just saying that it is to fit in. :)
  • fermienrico 8y ago
    Please refrain from self judging what your response may be or may not be on HN. Just state what you think. I urge you to read FAQ on HN etiquette.
    • hluska 8y ago
      I have read the FAQ. The first item is to be civil and avoid snark. The third item is to assume good faith. You've responded to the worst possible interpretation of what I said. I can assure you that I wasn't prejudging how people would respond to me because frankly, when I worry about those things, my writing goes to hell. Instead, I was trying to be friendly and poke fun of myself.
• kvdr 8y ago
  Also, the new (now a few months old) Google finance UI as well. The charts are almost always broken, clicking on 1M will not show today's levels. And earlier I could just put a /FB or /GOOG in the URL to get to that page instantly, now the URL is some 100s of long char string (sorry, I am from C/C++ world so dont know the exact terms for these) Then there is the news events map to the chart, used to be cool to see what caused the dip/bump, but not there now.. I have since moved to Yahoo finance, but that has too much ads and autoplay videos.
• undoware 8y ago
  The new UX is beautiful, well-thought-out, consistent, and sporadically hangs for tens of seconds at a stretch on my 2017 16gb i7 MBP in both Chrome and Firefox. My theory is that network interruptions during pageload cause the balance of these problems, as one of the environments I'm most frequently in has low-quality wifi. Haven't had time to do profiling or even so much as crack Devtools on the problem, but I casually imagine that they are dynamically loading a lot of libs, so a broken pipe or a dropped packet or two would certainly immobilize the UI until TCP/HTTP had gone through the dance of either resending the packets in question, or teardown/setup. That said, the previous edition of Gmail -- possibly because it was lighter weight -- rarely misbehaved this way. I believe we are seeing with gmail some of the current limits of the SPA designs. So it's not Google's fault, per se, and we should expect more and more sites to begin to evince the same drawbacks as the SPA model ineluctably takes over. (It really is superior.) Eventually, problems in SPA will be resolved by improvements at the backend, on the wire, or by way of improvements to webpack, or the browsers themselves.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    So basically, "wait for Moore's law to catch up", web edition? Your network connection might be aggravating the issue, as quick look at the Network tab show it issues a metric crapton of small requests (on my machine lasting for more than a minute after opening the page). But I do have a decent enough pipe, and still get ridiculous load time + performance problems. And so seem other people commenting here about performance. The problems of today's SPAs are mostly self-inflicted.
• kgwxd 8y ago
  Ugg, everything was doing great with "flat design", I knew that wasn't going to last, designers have to justify their position every few years after all. I don't use Chrome often but I notices the bubbly round crap was making a come back. I wouldn't care about the gmail change, because I don't use the web interface often, but this company-wide redesign likely means everyone else will be following suit. Mozilla, if you're listening, please don't, you were always a cycle behind anyway, just stick with what you've got.
  • jackewiehose 8y ago
    > I knew that wasn't going to last, designers have to justify their position every few years after all Yes, I think no UI-designer job should exist full time in one product. At some time the design should be done. If not, you either screwed up or the design is already great and from now on you will screw up. Windows 8/10 is another example. From Windows 7 it just went downhill.
• psychometry 8y ago
  I just wish they would spend some time on the alternate themes that all look terrible and haven't been updated since they launched that feature.
  • chippy 8y ago
    All the themes, except "high contrast" just change the background image.
• chaddattilio 8y ago
  Has anyone liked a UI redesign of anything anywhere?
  • richev 8y ago
    I actually really liked it when Office 2007 introduced the ribbon, in particular when I understood the rationale behind it (which was covered at MIX08[0]). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4
• emperorfin 8y ago
  Here's how I had been using the old Gmail UI or HTML view for several years now. Simply login to your Gmail account. You should see a URL similar to https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/.. https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/... in your browser address bar, just simply change the mu to h and hit enter. You will be taken to the old UI or html view.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • babuskov 8y ago
    I don't have "mu", only "u" and changing it to "h" only gives me the old html interface. I can do the same in the settings. I had the option to switch back to "classic" a couple of days back, but now it's gone.
    • emperorfin 8y ago
      Changing mu to h works totally fine for me. You can even change from mu to x but I think x is for mobile only. Just to clear any confussion, I hope the classic interface you are talking about is same as the basic html view. You can switch between standard view and basic html view from the buttom of the page. There are links there. But here's a link from Google so try this: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui Make sure you are logged in before clicking on the link above. Let me know if I can still help.
      • babuskov 8y ago
        > I hope the classic interface you are talking about is same as the basic html view No. There's are 3 interfaces: html, previous UI and new UI forced on users now. New UI apparently contains some features from Inbox product, and is much slower. You could opt out to use the old UI (dubbed Classic by Gmail) until yesterday. Now I can only choose between new UI and html.
• transpy 8y ago
  When I realized I can't go back to normal UI, I immediatly downloaded Thunderbird and went back to e-mail clients. I won't bother with the new gmail. Fonts look horrible, it is slower and in the end there is less information density.
  • bootlooped 8y ago
    Did they take away the ability to use the old UI? I still have a menu item under settings that says "Go back to classic Gmail"
    • phnk 8y ago
      That menu item will vanish soon. Several users have reported it elsewhere in this thread (it has vanished for me too).
      • bootlooped 8y ago
        It is now gone for me too.
  • igetspam 8y ago
    The new font weights have such a stark contrast, it's hard to look at. It's enough that I'm finally starting to piece together the parts to leave gsuite for my personal domains.
• srean 8y ago
  I think we have come a full circle. I remember a time when search engines, web based emails and other such things were so painfully slow and cluttered. Then there was this upstart with a funny name and single box to type in your search term. I switched because the air was fresh there. There used to be a lot of noise about why don't they use that hot new eye candy, much like we have the same question asked about HN. Eventually they won. On the lookout for the next plot of fresh air.
  • Twirrim 8y ago
    I remember discussing with people about how significant some of Google's changes would be to their overall bandwidth and server needs. They used to periodically try tweak the design of their already fairly minimal landing page and shave several kilobytes off it. Back in those days even that small change would have been significant. These days they just don't seem to care any more.
• J_cst 8y ago
  For me (I'm in Italy) the best part was the request: " would you like to switch now or in two weeks?". I use the same with my kids: "would you like one portion of broccoli or two portions?". This approach gives the perception of being able to choose.
  • njarboe 8y ago
    Exactly. And without the standard x in the corner to just dismiss it. I don't want to update now or in 1 week (my options currently). If you are going to force me to do something, then just do it already and don't play these games.
  • tarboreus 8y ago
    It also fragments the discussion. If they did it all at once, people would rebel.
  • quickthrower2 8y ago
    "Make him an offer he can't refuse"
  • emerged 8y ago
    I kept just ignoring the option. That is apparently not an option, though.
  • WhiteSage 8y ago
    I was hoping they would use this feedback to roll back the change. No luck though...
  • colanderman 8y ago
    Patronizing dialogues like these just underscore the disdain Google shows for its users. Treat users like adults; respect them. If you (UI designer) think you know better: you don't, you're just cocky. If you can't think of another way to get users to accept your new design: it's probably because it sucks, and you shouldn't have made something no-one asked for in the first place. (Wait, are we talking about GMail, or Windows 10?)
• Jaruzel 8y ago
  Do the IMAP or SMTP/POP3 options still work in GMail? If so, maybe it's time for a proxy WebMail UI hosted on a tiny VPS that simply acts as the mail client for you, whilst gmail still does all the heavy lifting of spam filtering and trusted sending.
  • kgwxd 8y ago
    Standard protocols still work. Why not just use a proper email client instead of a VPS hosted web UI?
    • Jaruzel 8y ago
      Well I'm guessing people like the concept of a Web UI, on the basis they are using gmail in the first place. I'm a self hosted MS Exchange + Outlook user, so I'm being purely devils advocate here.
• throwaway43298 8y ago
  Xoogler here, but I guarantee: 1) This conversation (and complaints) already happened, repeatedly and in-depth, months ago on various internal lists 2) The response - the Decision is made, you're change averse/not a representative user 3) Whichever PMs/leads/designers involved had an OKR to do Something, so Something had to be done
  • igetspam 8y ago
    I do not miss those days. "You're change averse" was the most common accusation made against anyone who disagreed with changes. Change for the sake of change is rarely a good starting point but that never mattered. The web teams would come up with new and shiny way to do things and everyone would have to jump through hoops to get their properties updated. I'll never forget when PDB was replaced with P. I couldn't make heads or tails out of it and neither could most engineers I knew but hey, at least it was different.
  • babuskov 8y ago
    I fully understand this regarding the UI. But the new interface is much slower. I remember stories from years back when Google was beating everyone else in the search and webmail space that speed was one of the crucial components of their success. Have they lowered their standards or they just feel like they're too big to care?
  • colanderman 8y ago
    > you're change averse It's funny that that's used like it's a negative thing. No-one wants their tools to change out from under them. Shuffling stuff around for no reason subverts learned skill in using a tool, decreasing its usefulness. And the only purpose of a tool is to be useful. The fact that Google makeovers are that – makeovers – rather than incremental enhancements, tells me that they don't really have a purpose beyond looking good, or allowing some internal rearchitecting that is incompatible with the old design. If the changes are really productivity enhancements, why save them up to roll out as a distracting redesign?
• adreamingsoul 8y ago
  I've reverted back to using the Basic HTML view. But, I'm also working to migrate away from Gmail. Sad to see the demise of Google, but it seems all good things must come to an end.
• lbebber 8y ago
  I like it.
• bitL 8y ago
  I like the new look actually (except for confusing icons), but it's just slow and unreliable, can't recall needing to refresh so many times before because loading got stuck. That all on a top end i9 with 100MBit/s Internet connection in a city that has a large Google datacenter.
• SilasX 8y ago
  You can't honestly expect Gmail to support an old UI. New features are added to email all the time and it's far too complicated to develop too feature sets on two extremely dynamic code bases.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• yesenadam 8y ago
  I use the old html version, amazingly it's not even possible to bulk delete emails! Which is the one thing you'd want to do with email.
• ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  The new Gmail UI handles attachments differently: when you receive an email with an attachment, a summary of the attachment gets put in underneath the title of the email. The problem with this is that this is done dynamically on load, and there's a delay. So you can be scrolling through old emails, and then suddenly where everything is on the screen changes because new content finished loading in the middle of what you were looking at. Plus it makes the height of emails inconsistent, which is significantly harder to parse visually. It's kind of a small thing, but it honestly should not have passed UI review processes at all. Don't fucking load new content in the middle of what people are interacting with. It's 101 level stuff here. Edit: apparently there's a setting for "Default", "Comfortable", or "Compact", and that email account was on "Default" but should've been on "Compact", which is way better.
• xtracto 8y ago
  Two things: First, I myself miss the Q shortcut in Google Calendar, gone after the redesign. Second, I know for a fact that there are plenty of Google employees here. It is funny to see the radio silence. Somewhere within Google there is an email thread generating the HR compliant reply for this thread.
  • what_ever 8y ago
    Googler here - I refrain from commenting on any Google related threads. I have my own pro-Google biases having seen internally on how the company works and how decisions get made here. And most of the people on HN have their own biases against Google without having that context. I don't see myself being part of any constructive discussion related to Google here so I like to not waste my time. Also, I don't want to say anything silly and get that taken out of context. On GMail - I like the update. I find it better than the earlier UI. I use it work, I use it at home and I haven't noticed any slowness myself even when I am not on the Google network.
  • RichardCA 8y ago
    Overall I think Google did a good job here. I really like Material Design when it's done right (Android 9 was a design win as far as I'm concerned). I agree about the silence on the Calendar side. At present, Gmail has a thought-out theme function but Calendar has all the themeing stripped out. Gmail and Calendar should be consistent. I hope this is rectified at some point.
• swingline-747 8y ago
  Yet another opportunity for yet another Sparrow or Inbox app. Thanks, Alphabet!
• ieo838jdkd 8y ago
  Other than the big, rainbow compose button looking tacky, and the perform nose dive, the experience isn’t too different to me
• cshah4 8y ago
  The UI seems ok overall although definitely slower than before. I have another weird issue happening though with my second Gmail account on Chrome. Sometimes when I login, it refreshes during the flash screen of Gmail logo and logs me out automatically going back to the login page. Has that happened to anyone?
• fiatjaf 8y ago
  I've switched to basic HTML view. Looking for a new email client.
• AimForTheBushes 8y ago
  It makes me feel like I'm a child at a daycare center. What's a good alternative? I'm thinking of switching to iCloud as my primary but I don't know if I want to be completely ingrained into Apple's ecosystem.
  • x2f10 8y ago
    iCloud has its own benefits but the web UI is not one. iCloud is slower than Google's services and _does not work_ on a mobile browser. I had left my phone at home while visiting a friend. I was shocked to learn I could not view iCloud.com (and my e-mails) from my girlfriend's phone without signing in to the iPhone itself via settings. Look into Fastmail.com or Outlook Premium.
• Michie 8y ago
  Totally agree. I like the old gmail UI. It's more cleaner and easier to navigate. The new gmail UI is so cluttered. Full of unnecessary stuff. Hope they bring back the option to revert back to classic UI. Mine is missing already.
• jpindar 8y ago
  In addition to everything else, they've eliminated the different colored stars & icons. I liked those and used them to highlight mails I wanted to get back to. Now there's only starred and unstarred. (Be careful how you use 'important', as Google tries to learn from that and gets it wrong.)
  • aargh_aargh 8y ago
    They have? Doesn't seem so in my account. I've been using the green tick, red exclamation mark & co. for the better part of a decade since they've been in Labs. They still work for me. Should I be worried?
    • what_ever 8y ago
      I see them as well.
    • jpindar 8y ago
      Huh, I tried again and now they're working.
• player2121 8y ago
  It feels like google web-devs/disigners should start looking at the native apps to get an idea of what the user expectations for the web-app are going to be. If we look at microsoft web outlook, it is gradually becoming like its native counterpart (which is the best desktop email client on my opinion). They didn't have a good web expertise like google so it was too sluggish at the begning but it's getting better. If webassemply becomes a thing, MS will have a good chance to bring its dominance to the field of web apps. What's interesting is that I remember how devs and designers were frustrated when they were asked to build a web version of their desktop apps finding it too hard to fit into new constrains. Now, I wont be surprised if web-devs/designers feel frustrated too trying to build a desktop app with a mental model of HTML documents and page reloads which is what the new gmail UX looks like to me (the old one was not better, I just got used to it). If it was up to me, I would focus only on performance and accessibility. I would cut all animations and use much simpler (bare text if needed) ways to present information. Today when you can be fast on web, no need to compensate lack of it with too much content and animations.
• MilnerRoute 8y ago
  It still infuriates me when they make me watch that little cartoon Gmail logo while I'm waiting for my inbox to appear...
• sticazzi 8y ago
  Google has a lot of overpaid managers who need to do something to justify high salaries. So I imagine they sit down and then stare at Gmail, a great product that we all like, and then decide to make a lot of unnecessary changes that will make us stop using it. About a year ago I registered a domain to use for e-mail. Even though I currently use Google Suite because I like current (classic) Gmail version, if they really persist and discontinue classic version I will switch to another e-mail service.
  • calebh 8y ago
    Agreed. Why can't software devs just complete a project and then call it good? Perpetual change is unnecessary and a waste of effort.
• colemickens 8y ago
  Painfully slow. If you load the interface, it becomes "mostly" functional, but if you start trying to say, search your email: 1. The page will reset and reload, or, 2. Your keys will trigger a keyboard shortcut and then truly, good god damn luck because who knows how many pages of emails you'll archive with no way to undo (the toast that appears for 3 seconds is NOT sufficient, especially if you keep typing.) Hangouts, YouTube, and Gmail are embarrassing to use. And that's not even discussing what happens in Firefox where everything is somehow nearly twice as slow. edit: Oh, let me say, it's bad enough that if I'm on a laptop where I don't want to keep the bloated Gmail tab around in mem/cpu, I have reverted back to using the Web 1.0 / mobile-esque version of Gmail. (Which has it's own problems, attachments are broken, etc). Just a mess. I am actively trying to move away from Google. Unfortunately, I can't find anything that is half-as-good as Google Photos.
• shultays 8y ago
  Back button is broken until page is fully loaded. Once it is loaded, clicking back returns back to inbox (while reading a mail). However if the page is not fully loaded (loading circle is spinning) it goes back to previous browser page.
• valbaca 8y ago
  Click the little "settings" gear and "Send Feedback"
  • OJFord 8y ago
    Yeah it's the fastest feature in GMail - reaches /dev/null in mere ns.
• 3K7m7bUZyWA1KCD 8y ago
  I get constant UI freezes on Gmail (very alike to those I get on reddit), not sure if it's because of the adblocking software or because I'm using Firefox. On the other hand, youtube works flawlessly. It's mindblowing what is possible when a company has the resources to optimize their software.
• Twirrim 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, I got gmail over to the basic HTML view. Hard refresh of the page has it returning all my emails within 680ms at which point I can click on stuff. For some reason there's a bit of a delay on the favicon, but even then that's all loaded and usable in < 2 seconds. With the new UI I can sort of do something around the 15 second mark, it becomes completely useable by 30 seconds, but there's still a bunch of stuff happening over the network. It finally got quiet around the 1 1/2 minute mark. This is absolutely nuts.
• Number8 8y ago
  I don't use Gmail, I use GMX.com for my mail. But I also use Firefox klar as my browser and duckduckgo.com for my search engine. But what do I know.
• Jugurtha 8y ago
  If I may ask, is there a reason you are using Gmail in your browser instead of a mail client?
• d0m 8y ago
  Yeah.. new the UI feels like a new css had a bad merge with the previous one.
• Michielvv 8y ago
  I don't really mind the new design itself, but the new font looks too blurry to look at on my non-retina mac. ( I suspect the -moz-osx-font-smoothing:grayscale) and it is insanely slow. Luckily I can still revert back on GSuite for now.
• howrdrork 8y ago
  It’s still way better than outlook or protonmail imo
• mingaldrichgan 8y ago
  Someone mentioned the calendar widget but what seems to be missing from the new UI is the wonderful calendar integration where dates and times are turned into links that I can click on to create a calendar event directly from an email. That to me was the dealbreaker for switching to the new UI, and am disappointed to hear that they are removing the option to revert back to the classic UI.
• jtl999 8y ago
  The fonts are atrocious and give me a headache to look at. I already have damaged eyesight so that makes things worse as it is.
• aj7 8y ago
  Trick question: Where ARE your contacts, anyway?
• rahimnathwani 8y ago
  Why can't I easily use info from Gmail when adding contacts. For example, if an email's 'from' line includes the name and email address of the sender, I'd like to just tap (or right-click) it and have the option to 'add to contacts'. But instead I have to copy each piece separately into a new tab (painful on desktop, and even more annoying using the Android Contacts app). And why can't I tap a phone number and save that to contacts without several extra steps?
• blueadept111 8y ago
  I was using Gmail in 'classic' mode until today, when they force-upgraded to the new layout. In my opinion, even the "compact" mode is less compact. I don't like it. So as of today I'm forwarding all my email to protonmail. This was just the push I needed to start switching over.
• orliesaurus 8y ago
  "The creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit, had a rule: every interaction should be faster than 100ms. Why? Because 100ms is the threshold where interactions feel instantaneous" Took this from a company's website [0] who is trying to reinvent an email client. I have to agree, the new Gmail experience is definitely not something its original creator would be very proud of! [0] https://superhuman.com https://superhuman.com
• rajacombinator 8y ago
  Gotta keep those designers busy somehow! (Even if it’s making poor redesigns no one wanted...)
• drivingmenuts 8y ago
  It was too busy for me so I switched back to the older version. I just read need to read email. Keep it simple-er.
• dragon96 8y ago
  I don't understand how this qualifies as a "painful" or "horrific" update. It seems that most of the hate is either about (a) a slower loading screen or (b) worse design. The latter is debatable, but the former is just a ridiculous complaint. At worst, the load seems to be around 0.5 seconds slower on a mediocre internet connection, so if you can't spare an extra 5 seconds a day from refreshing Gmail 10 times a day, you should consider checking your email a little bit less often.
• selckin 8y ago
  My main issue is the keybinds, like before when you archived from the inbox it would go to the next one, or you could use 'j', 'k' to go the next one and it would open, now it does nothing after the next mail doesn't open when archiving this makes going through the inbox in the morning very frustrating
• mrcnkoba 8y ago
  I'm seriously considering switching away from gmail for two reasons: 1. Privacy concerns 2. The new and painfully slow Gmail UI I think I finally realized that there are no free things in live and you usually have to sacrifice something. Here it's privacy.
• eleitl 8y ago
  I've started using Thunderbird with Gmail again. This is the first step to moving the bulk of my email activity to my self-hosted mail server. And, of course, I'm also ditching Chrome for Firefox (and Tor Browser) as well. Well done, Google. You finally forced my hand.
• simon_acca 8y ago
  Practical tip for those that want a web based solution right now: install rainloop on a server and point it to gmail’s imap/smtp servers. Rainloop + an http server that handles tls in front of it can be installed fairly painlessly and quickly with docker. https://www.rainloop.net/ https://www.rainloop.net/
• provolone 8y ago
  Analytics, webmaster tools, gmail, google news - all of these sites are bloated. Meanwhile Google wants developers to use AMP because...
• countryqt30 8y ago
  GMail lost one of the few things that matters for an email client: be fast and usable.
• palimpsests 8y ago
  This comment and a few in this thread refer to the concept of "pain". If it is causing you actual (physical / emotional / psychological / spiritual) pain - why continue to inflict that on yourself? You are in charge of whether or not you choose to use Google, nobody else. However, I doubt that pain is the clearest or most precise way to express what is happening here. My guess is that a better word would be "frustrated" or "angry" - emotional reactions that are potentially uncomfortable (so, OK, a form of pain), depending on one's capacities and experience. Those reactions are completely and totally valid. I find it so funny how something so relatively trivial and ephemeral is turned into such a personal affront. Nobody is trying to inflict pain on you with their user interface desicions.
• Crontab 8y ago
  This reminds me of Flickr and Reddit; where they also got the UI right early on and then ruined it.
• jayalpha 8y ago
  Someone here still using Gmail? (besides a dummy account for android or something). Seriously?
• settings11 8y ago
  I use old HTML UI btw.
• TheAlchemist 8y ago
  This is really a disaster. I don't care that much for my personal email, however at work, it's definitely impacting. It's slow as most already noted. But I also find that it's much more mentally exhaustive - it's maybe a bit more beautiful and fancy, but it's not what I look for in work - I want things simple, well aligned and as readable as possible. I've tried for several days the new interface and it was really a big downgrade from the previous UI.
• stunt 8y ago
  Most of the Google products are annoyingly slow for me. (I'm using Firefox)