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Show HN: Gmail Classic – CSS for Reverting Gmail's New Look
- andrew_ 8y agoI present an Open Source, versioned, linted set of CSS rules for reverting Gmail to the theme that was so forcefully taken away from us. Change is hard, and sometimes change rubs like coarse sandpaper. I wasn't and still am not a fan of the new design, so I put this together after not finding a well-rounded complete solution. And that's what this aims to be. There are surely quirks that haven't been adjusted, and if you see some, please open an Issue (preferably with a screenshot) so this can be improved.
- __float 8y agoDo you have a screenshot? There's a fair bit of obscure CSS here; how long has it been working for? I would guess the autogenerated class names change from time to time.
- andrew_ 8y agoI've uploaded a screenshot here: https://imgur.com/VaNpYhq https://imgur.com/VaNpYhq. And I'll be updating the README in a few with a screenshot. I've been plugging at this set of CSS for about a month now. And you'd think the classNames would change, but they're nearly identical to the old. Very few changes between the old look and the new. Speculating, I'd say that Google killed the old, classic theme so they didn't have to maintain CSS for new features.
- tyingq 8y agoMaking it a standalone chrome extension might be helpful, then your css changes over time will auto-update. Edit: I went ahead and made one, did a quick test by loading it unpacked, seems to work. https://github.com/tyingq/gmail-classic https://github.com/tyingq/gmail-classic All yours if you want it.
- andrew_ 8y agoReally appreciate it! I'll definitely use that. Will get that up on the Chrome Web Store this evening.
- cimmanom 8y agoOh, man, I want this for Firefox.
- tyingq 8y agoIt may just work. The differences in extensions are pretty minor: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
- andrew_ 8y agoExtension has been published. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmail-classic-theme/cokholnilkppcchlfepienmlbafkjplj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmail-classic-them.... Cheers!
- thinkingemote 8y agoNice I thought about doing something similar, to at least make borders between things stand out better. Some screenshots in the reader would be nice.
- andrew_ 8y agoI'll have a screenshot up shortly :)
- BenFrantzDale 8y agoImpressive. Personally I preferred the version before this, in which Compose wasn’t “pay-attention-to-me red”.
- burfog 8y agoI have a hard time understanding that one. When I want to compose, I look for a normal button in a normal place. I can't get used to a red button. My mind filters it out, like an ad. I pretty much don't see it. Every time, there is a sort of disoriented and bewildered search to find a compose button. Was it supposed to have the opposite effect?
- prometheuspk 8y agoNow that Inbox is ending, anyone know of other clients with the Pinning and snoozing capability?
- plttn 8y agoGmail now has snoozing, you could probably use stars and filters to get 95% of the way to pinning.
- vortico 8y agoI think of "Gmail Classic" as what they call "Basic HTML". https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?ctx=gmail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?ctx=gmail (click Basic HTML version of Gmail). I've been using that style for years.
- xfitm3 8y agoThank you for this. Now, all we need is to bring back the View Image button in Google image search.
- jedberg 8y agohttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image/jpcmhcelnjdmblfmjabdeclccemkghjk?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image/jpcmhce...
- xfitm3 8y agoI have this, but the recent UI refresh broke it. https://github.com/bijij/ViewImage/issues/166 https://github.com/bijij/ViewImage/issues/166
- SpliffnCola 8y agoMy experience is anecdotal of course but what is broken about it for you? It is working fine for me on Firefox 63.0.3 (64-bit) using ViewImage 2.1
- fireattack 8y agoLikely you are not on "new UI" yet, just like the dev of this extension. (Myself don't even know there will be a new UI either.)
- SpliffnCola 8y agoThat makes a lot of sense. I forgot about the A/B testing Google does. Edit: I noticed that Chrome defaults to using the new design even while logged in. Logged in on Firefox though I’m not seeing the new design . Not sure if that helps anyone having trouble with the extension.
- sehugg 8y agoI can handle the new design, but on my (albeit underpowered) Chromebook, new Gmail takes ~30 seconds from initial page load to starting a reply to a thread. This is not progress.
- mrweasel 8y agoI have a new MacBook Pro, and while it doesn't take 30 seconds, there's still a ridicules slow load time for Gmail now. If you live in Gmail all day it may be completely fine, but if you just check your emails every now and then during the day, it's pretty frustrating. You almost get the feeling that something is broken when you load Gmail at this point. The Gmail interface is... fine I suppose, but I'd much prefer a native client. Sadly the best you can hope for these days is Apple Mail, and that's also just "fine".
- vbezhenar 8y ago3 seconds to load interface, almost instant transitions to mail and reply. Windows, Google Chrome.
- mattnewton 8y agoI suspect this has more to do with network speed than platform or browser time spent parsing / executing js.
- GhostVII 8y agoI would rather have some CSS to make the basic HTML Gmail look like the classic Gmail. Adding CSS to the new Gmail doesn't make it any faster, which is my biggest problem with it. The basic HTML version runs really fast, but it could use a bit of CSS to make it look a bit nicer and add a little more whitespace (at least on my 4k monitor it's somewhat cramped).
- phreack 8y agoThis would be a great option. Maybe Google could get on that, but they're more likely to axe the basic Html version considering their latest trends.
- sova 8y agoI shudder to think it! And shudder again at the 70% likelihood you are prescient with your comment
- misterman0 8y agoFor the first time in many years I've stumbled upon a word I have never ever heard before, not in a movie, not in any literature, nowhere. Thank you. It seems HN has utility after all.
- josteink 8y ago> not in any literature It would seem you are way over due as far as reading Frank Herbert’s Dune-series goes.
- TheAceOfHearts 8y agoA bit off-topic, but Dune also gave us this magnificent quote: > I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.
- ramenmeal 8y agoWas just implementing some email features on our application and we noticed that what we call "Friendly Reply To" doesn't work in desktop gmail. Setting the Reply-to field to "John Doe <john.doe@gmail.com>" won't show "John Doe" in the to section when you click reply. It will show "john.doe@gmail.com". What's odd is that google inbox, and gmail for android and iOS both will show "John Doe". Bug? Or opinion by Google?
- momonga 8y agoMaybe it’s more of a security feature? What if phishing emails had a bogus email for the Reply-To name, E.g., “service@paypal.com <hacker@evil.com>”
- wrayjustin 8y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18452992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18452992
- ramenmeal 8y agoThat was my first thought, but if that's the case, then why is it implemented in the mobile apps?
- anoncake 8y agoDifferent people implementing them?
- djsumdog 8y agoIt's interesting how back when programs actually ran on your machine, you could just use an older version. I knew people who never upgraded Winamp. Today we do know this is problematic (due to security updates mostly) but when it comes to web applications we don't have a choice. Don't like the new look, well tough. If the application has an API (like Reddit) you could write your own or use a better client. I could say that about Gmail/IMAP but their IMAP implementation is shitty and broken. I moved entirely off gmail to self hosted in 2012 and I'm glad I did so I don't have to deal with their interface. When I need webmail, I've got roundcube and it's still nice and fast.
- Arnt 8y agoWhat precisely is shitty and broken about gmail's IMAP implementation? Gmail's IMAP implementation implements three RFCs I wrote; I haven't noticed anything wrong in those areas. Are my RFCs unusual or am I overlooking something?
- frutiger 8y agoNot the GP poster, but the most frustrating thing for me is that GMail labels are implemented as IMAP mailboxes instead of IMAP flags.
- Arnt 8y agoYou might be more frustrated if they'd done it the other way; IMAP clients have a terrible habit of downloading the entire mailbox. If they were to expose all mail in one mailbox with flags as the usual case, users with such clients and a lot of mail would suffer.
- michaelmior 8y agoI'm sure that's true, but I assume that many of these clients either wouldn't have been written this way or would have adapted by now if Gmail did things differently.
- petilon 8y agoTo me, Gmail Classic is this original look: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/priority1.png https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/priority1.... I loved the "Original Classic". Every update since has worsened the look & feel. When Steve Jobs passed away, the whole software industry took a gigantic step backwards in design. There are lots of great designers in the world (have a look at https://dribbble.com/ https://dribbble.com/ ) but the people who hire designers often can't tell a great designer from a mediocre one, and that's how we end up with the not-so-great design of the current generation of software, including those from Google and even Apple.
- xvf22 8y agoSteve also had his hand in plenty of awful design decisions with the skeuomorphic turn OSX took [0] being one of them. [0] https://www.fastcompany.com/1670760/will-apples-tacky-software-design-philosophy-cause-a-revolt https://www.fastcompany.com/1670760/will-apples-tacky-softwa...
- petilon 8y agoI see skeuomorphism as an excellent idea. The human mind is built to build models... We are constantly building models of the world and predicting how that world will work. When you have a digital world that has no rules where every time you do something it behaves in a new and different way it's surprising... and it is also really stressful. Your mind can't build any models. That makes it hard. Everything is an adventure. But when you are trying to get something done you don't want an adventure, right? We want things to behave in a predictable way. It'd be like, sometimes I put something on the table it doesn't sit there, it flies up to the ceiling. Skeuomorphic design helps users make mental models. The above paragraph is actually a from Google talk on Material Design! They understood the theory well, but their implementation is lacking.
- aplummer 8y agoYou might like the book "The design of everyday things" if you haven't read it already. I find bauhaus design and understanding affordances etc much more interesting than abstract and non functional design. As another note, usability testing with irregular computer users with a skeuomorphic design vs a "flat UI" produces such crazy results in favour of skeuomorphism.
- runn1ng 8y agoI don't have a problem with the new design, it looks pretty much the same as the old one BUT IT'S SO SLOW
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- brian_herman 8y agoCan we go even further with this CSS? I'm talking like about 2006 without javascript and stuff.
- codeulike 8y agoJust use Gmail Basic Html mode: https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h
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- darpa_escapee 8y agoCool! Naming might be a problem, however. Companies get litigious when you use their trademarks/brand, even when modifying things on the client side. Slack came after an HN user for using "Slack" in their GitHub repo that hosted a client-side script for Slack.
- fx1994 8y agoForcing new and slow look forced me to move away from Gmail to private mail and Roundcube, works fine and fast.
- coolgoose 8y agoMy problem isn't with the design, but with the fact that it's blocking every step of the way and being a buggy crap that not even the beta was.
- winrid 8y agoThe old terminal theme was great. Wish they new one had the same amount of effort put into it.
- londons_explore 8y agoDoes google offer sufficient mail API's to be able to write ones own frontend? If the storage, searching and tagging of mail are all handled by the backend, building the web frontend seems like it could be 'hobby project' sized.
- moocowtruck 8y agoreally appreciate this, but i really hoped google would bring the old interface back..new one is so slow and not very user friendly... this is the first time in a very long time I've though...wow i need a different email provider.
- squarefoot 8y agoI didn't realize how bad the gmail interface has become until I had to help some relatives with their accounts. I use gmail with a client (claws mail, formerly sylpheed) since day one when it was invite only, and never had an issue. That's like 13 years. To me being forced to use the web interface -including the much better old one- would be a huge step backwards; there's simply no contest on what's more powerful and fast to use.
- michaelmrose 8y agoI migrated to mu offlineimap, emacs and mu4e for my gmail. I'm quite satisfied.
- zhte415 8y agoI'm sure a lot of A/B testing has gone into the changes a lot of others are complaining about. Given GMail's mix of users, a subset of whom are probably power users that are open to 'discoverable' features, would it not be sensible for GMail to allow an option, an option that a vocal minority of power users do seemingly want, to be selected and allow these users to retain these features they were used to. Adding 3rd party hacks doesn't seem optimal. A/B testing is like voting: It results in dissatisfaction for an often large proportion of those affected. Using techniques like multivoting that don't result in a single answer for everyone just seems like a better idea given these audiences are sufficiently large enough to support.
- edwinyzh 8y agoActually I like the UI of the first version of Gmail web better.
- sim- 8y agoHas anybody noticed the new Gmail feels way less responsive as well? Composing a new email is affected (just hold down a key with a fast repeat speed and it will not update for long periods), but also the prelight when hovering the mouse over messages an an index is way more chunky than it used to be. "perf top" shows some Chrome functions responsible -- probably something resulting in too much recalculation? Amusingly, it is way smoother in Firefox. Related, can paste large amounts of data in sheets with Firefox, but Chrome grinds and hits some O(n^2) type of issue after so many rows.
- jiveturkey 8y agothis is cool and all but what’s the point. it will bit rot soon enough, despite current laudable intentions. the only way to signal to google that they are making the wrong choice is to stop using the web UI, not to skin it. eg with the recent Chrome signin gaffe lots of people switched to FF and google had to react. If there were no options I’d be more generous but there are plenty of mail clients one can switch to. plenty.