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A former lead designer of Gmail fixes Gmail with a Chrome extension

253 points by georgecmu 8y ago

spking 8y ago
Direct link to extension discussed in the article: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify-gmail/pbmlfaiicoikhdbjagjbglnbfcbcojpj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify-gmail/pbm...
kevinalexbrown 8y ago
It's funny, I was thinking that Inbox did this nicely, and of course he did that too.
RenRav 8y ago
I'm going to admit I wasn't even aware of the current design, probably because other apps function well for my phone, and I've been using the basic HTML alternative on my desktop for many years. Neither of those examples actually look useful, the fix is definitely more easy on the eyes though. The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake, and yes it looks 'pretty' and 'light' in the flat minimalistic way, and otherwise you'd have this dense chunk of the screen. I still think having twice (or comparing to mine, even three times more) the emails displayed on a per row basis makes scanning for things easier at a glance. That fix actually resembles something I do to websites, ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements, siderails, wrappers, navbars, footers, etc. It's very cathartic spending a few seconds resculpting a website to reveal only the relevant content. And the end result always convinces me that less is more when it comes to web design, that regular text and simple formatting should be prioritized higher.
- philsnow 8y ago
  I also use the basic HTML view on desktop because 1) I don't want to leave the tab open with the modern UI since it inevitably uses up over a GB of ram by itself and 2) I don't want to close and reopen the tab with the modern UI since it takes O(10)s of seconds to be responsive. I remember getting access to gmail when it was in the invite-only phase and thinking that it was absolute magic, that this was the future, and that I'd never use anything else. It only took a huge pile of JS to undo that. I use basic HTML now for gmail and I've switched a lot of what I do to fastmail.
  - crazydiamond 8y ago
    Any way to get the dark/terminal theme on Basic HTML? I am not getting any theme option in Settings. I used to have the Terminal theme for years before the new GMail. Standard Gmail does allow for a dark background, would like that in Basic HTML.
    - scns 8y ago
      There is a Firefox plugin called "Dark Background Light text"
    - theclaw 8y ago
      You might be interested in the Dark Reader extension: https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/ It’s able to make pretty much any website dark themed.
    - kekebo 8y ago
      Not a Gmail user myself, in case there's really no setting for it there are some userstyles (to be used with the 'stylish' browser extension) that seem to put gmail into dark mode: https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=dark+gmail https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=dark+gmail
- yegle 8y ago
  What's the easiest way to get access to the basic HTML view? I used to be able to switch to basic HTML following the link in the footer, but it's gone now.
  - waterhouse 8y ago
    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/
- timpark 8y ago
  The amount of space that messages take up can be configured in Settings > Display density. The screenshots look like they're using "Comfortable". I use "Compact".
- sakisv 8y ago
  Is it possible to use keyboard shortcuts with the basic view? Or, does anyone know of any addons/extensions to bring them in?
  - sagebird 8y ago
    I think it is almost a non feature that gmail provide a choice of white space. As though a manager was too magnanimous in deciding so told his underlings— surprise! You’re all right! Let’s give the users a choice! Meanwhile the average user clicks whatever word they think is best and never looks at it again. Nothing solved. I really wish they just let the nerd who started gmail be a dictator for life. Don’t fuck with success.
- everyone 8y ago
  @RenRav Whats your workflow for 'ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements'? Sounds like a lot of work to me, but I do not work with the web.
  - chronogram 8y ago
    I’m not that user, but you can set a key bind to the uBlock element picker so you can quickly select and create rules all graphically. It’s like a scissor through a newspaper, not a lot of work at all!
  - RenRav 8y ago
    It's mostly something I do after discovering a useful site I'll likely be revisiting in the future, sites with appreciable content but are otherwise marred with poor visuals. When you've been doing it for years revisiting the same sites, I think it pays for itself in terms of delivering more presentable information. Addons for Firefox include Aardvark, (generic) Element Hiding Helpers, Lizard, Nuke Anything. You press whatever shortcut is assigned and highlight the element your cursor is over (or highlighted text/section), an interface pops up, you specify the domain filter (twitter.com), and filter by attribute (import-prompt), OK, and the rule "twitter.com##.import-prompt" now forever hides twitter's annoying import flex module. The addons for Firefox I've seen are mostly GUI-based. An exception is Nuke Anything, which I believe can be done through keyboard and context menu options.
- tomxor 8y ago
  > The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake Careful when complaining about spacing - when it comes to text, spacing is a functional decision, yes it will make it look pretty when done "right" but this is often also because it is more legible - function and aesthetic are the same when it comes to typography. Similarly others have complained about the spacing left and right (i.e it being excessively padded to be centered), but this is also for legibility - the very same reason newspapers have columns and not full width text.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    It's not for legibility. GMail has plenty of padding to be readable even when set to "compact" density. If there's any functional justification at all, it's about being touchscreen friendly, even if you don't have a touchscreen.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    the very same reason newspapers have columns and not full width text. Newspapers also do not have 6-inch margins on either side. Another irritation of mine is fixed-width sites. If I'm making my browser window wider, chances are I'm trying to widen the text, not expect it to stay in a narrow column in the middle with useless space on either side. If I wanted it narrow, I would've narrowed the window.
    - sunshinelackof 8y ago
      Typography often takes into consideration the width of the text explicitly and how it influences the style and tone of the document. While I don't imagine that everyone is doing this, it is a thing. The nearest analog I think of is maintaining the aspect ratio of an image. You might still understand the piece of media if it's not in its original format, but that was not the intent.
- userbinator 8y ago
  And the end result always convinces me that less is more when it comes to web design Careful with that phrase, as apparently a large number of designers think it means less content too!
techslave 8y ago
gotta love this guy: “I’m not the world’s best designer by any means” ... where’s that place the current gmail team then?
aytekin 8y ago
I do inbox zero so I am not usually looking at the email list, but to the actual emails. I also started using larger fonts as I am now 40. So, the amount of space the left and the top frames take up is quite a lot. I haven’t tried this but hopefully this can fix that. By the way, here are the tricks I do to do inbox zero on gmail: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290175 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290175
- graeme 8y ago
  Thank you! The "moving backwards up the list of emails" might be just the thing I need to clear out my email backlog and stay on top of things. I didn't know gmail could do that. You're being downvoted for being off topic perhaps, but in years of looking at threads like this I'd never seen that tip. And not using the UI at all is a viable approach. Incidentally I must be on an old UI, my gmail looks nothing like that. Either version looks harder to navigate than the classic one.
winningcontinue 8y ago
I'd actually use that clutter around gmail and I have my settings on for the densest text, so this isn't an extension for myself or everybody. That G-mail logo on the upper left on the screen needs to go though. He's right about that.
diNgUrAndI 8y ago
> he did a short stint at Facebook working on Messenger, before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works. Blockchain. Interesting.
- threeseed 8y ago
  Be hilarious if it relied on an algorithm that needs mining.
  - tromp 8y ago
    Quoting from the Nori whitepaper at https://nori.com/white-paper https://nori.com/white-paper : Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC): a digital asset, or electronic certificate, that is stored on the Ethereum blockchain in the Nori application. One CRC represents one tonne of CO2-equivalent heat trapping gas that has been removed from the atmosphere and stored in an industrial, terrestrial, subsurface, and/or aquatic reservoir.
agumonkey 8y ago
So very relaxing. A bit like the night time writer modes for editors. Also it's interesting to see this guy's history. Many of his ideas were great but failed to sustain themselves as-is. But he keeps coming back with other great ideas.. I hope he gets something out that gets a nice and long spot.
Ahmed90 8y ago
Pretty? Yes! Practical? No!
CalRobert 8y ago
Cool, but it would have been nice to see that effort go to improving a non-Google mail reader (Thunderbird, whatever) instead of furthering Chrome's dominance.
BrissyCoder 8y ago
I was on board with this guy until: "...before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works..."
- 0_gravitas 8y ago
  It's like a snippet from an xkcd comic
- chris_wot 8y ago
  Oh man, I thought the same thing! I though to myself "all that electricity needed to maintain the blockchain, and they want to handle climate change?!"
  - sneak 8y ago
    Not all blockchains use a lot of electricity. Electricity can also be generated in large quantities without changing the climate.
    - josteink 8y ago
      It’s a zero sum game. That electricity could have been used to replace polluting power-sources.
      - tasty_freeze 8y ago
        No, not if they expressly are finding a renewable source of electricity. Say they have enough rooftop space to install solar panels to cover their needs (don't nitpick that; just say it is true). Yes, this company could have bought the solar panels and then sold their electricity on the market, perhaps displacing some conventional energy source, but that isn't their business. Their business is this crypto market for carbon credits; they have a need for power, they fill that need with a renewable source.
- ramraj07 8y ago
  Jeez, I just googled their name and it's just page after page of blogspam written either by someone in their company or some block chain blog. "oh you mean I can buy carbon credits AND make money?"
therealmarv 8y ago
Interesting. Always had the feeling that Inbox could be the ONE interface to all (main) Google products but somebody had stopped the train on the way to this idea. Seems I was right about my feelings...
Keloran 8y ago
Are there any paid for chrome extensions ? I just seemed like an odd thing to keep emphasising “a free chrome extension” I thought they were all free
- galvin 8y ago
  Some are tied to paid services
wycy 8y ago
> “Go look at any desktop app and tell me how many have a huge fucking logo in the top left,” rants Leggett. “C’mon. It’s pure ego, pure bullshit. Drop the logo. Give me a break.” Sure, not many desktop apps have a huge top left logo, but almost all websites do. Acting like this is a unique failing of Gmail is strange to me.
- Ardren 8y ago
  It's also 109x40 pixels (at least on my system). No exactly a huge fucking logo.
  - cferr 8y ago
    I'm not on a machine I can access Gmail from right now, so I can't say if it appears the same size on my screen. However, just for perspective, HN's logo with name is ~122x22. I like that it stays at the top of the page and can go out of view with scrolling. Gmail's logo is always in view, taking screen space.
- colanderman 8y ago
  To compare, FastMail has no such logo. Just a big giant menu button that is easy to find and click, unlike the five different tiny menu buttons, only some of which are actually menus, hidden behind obscure icons and littered about GMail's interface.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Per usual web tradition, FastMail has a logo in top left corner, which opens the menu when clicked. Source: I have it open in another tab.
    - colanderman 8y ago
      Your FastMail is different than mine somehow. Mine just says "Mail" with a drop-down arrow in the upper-left corner. Note also that, in GMail, the logo isn't a menu. It is just a link to the page you are already on. There's a hamburger menu next to it, but that just opens the sidebar.
plibither8 8y ago
Here's the HN discussion of the extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558661
srfilipek 8y ago
> before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works Oh come on...
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Every time I hear “fixing X with blockchain” it gets dumber and dumber.
- josteink 8y ago
  I’m no native English speaker, but does “addressing” strictly have to mean fixing/solving something? Can it be employed to mean the opposite? As in, “addressing” things for the worse?
  - jumpkick 8y ago
    No
  - Riverheart 8y ago
    "Addressing a problem" is viewed the same way as fixing or attempting to fix a problem. I've not heard it used to imply making a problem worse.
  - TehCorwiz 8y ago
    The word “Addressing” has a connotation in this usage context that the subject is focusing their attention on what they see as broken or deficient. The trick is that it’s relative to the subject or speaker’s point of view.
  - dangerface 8y ago
    To address a problem is about intent rather than action. Usually it's an acknowledgement that a problem exists and a potential solution to that problem. You don't have to actually act on the problem or solve it just present a possible solution. For example I could address climate change with blockchain by suggesting that people don't use bitcoin. Even if I continue to use bitcoin this could be considered addressing the problem.
athenot 8y ago
I don't use gmail so I'm surprised at how low the (useful) information density is, in either version. Extrapolating from that screenshot, it looks like that window could hold about a dozen emails. I use the no-frills Mail.app on macOS and a window that's takes about half or two thirds of my screen, and fits 40 emails. In my case I also get to see the "To" address in the list, helping me quickly triage the emails that are not sent to me alone. Do people really prefer low density interfaces these days? Removing the visual clutter is certainly an improvement but desktop apps have the menu bar where they can put all the actions, whereas a web app is more limited: it's either a mess of buttons or hamburger buttons which often end up a bit clumsy.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  I think its some stupid side-effect of mobile environments, where for touch interaction, stuff needs to be big and hence low density of information. New version of gmail is so much worse for me on PC - lower density, much slower to work with on Firefox (I ain't switching to Chrome due to this, no thank you). Something akin to Microsoft putting that idiotic (sorry but I can't be polite with this specific topic) mobile-like interface into Windows 10 for desktops. Unifying what shouldn't be unified.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I blame mobile, and the desire to reuse design (and often code) between devices. Touch interfaces need big things because phone screens are small relative to fingers. On desktop, such interfaces are unbearable to me; I hate them to the point I actually installed Stylus extension and now hot-fix websites I visit frequently with quick CSS work, to increase information density (and by increase I mean double or triple).
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    Ironically, Inbox was a million times more mobile friendly than Gmail is. Turns out, tabs make for poor mobile experience.
- scrooched_moose 8y ago
rozhok 8y ago
Switched to plain HTML version after the redesign was rolled out and have no regrets about it.
GoblinSlayer 8y ago
>Michael Leggett is even more annoyed with Gmail than you are. Then why he doesn't give Google the boot?
- ejolto 8y ago
  He quit Google last year, he's working at a blockchain startup now.
drumttocs8 8y ago
Why move the "select all" checkbox away from the messages you're trying to select? Talk about bad UI...
racuna 8y ago
Gmail works awful on Firefox (slow, heavy memory usage, etc). Some things are fixed in the last releases of FF, but according of what I read recently, Google is doing this on purpose. Any addon or userscript recommended?
enobrev 8y ago
This change doesn't even touch Inbox. It removes the surrounding "chrome" and adjusts the whitespace. That's not nothing as it focuses the UI, but Inbox was far more than that. Not that I don't appreciate the time invested. The design was welcome, to be sure. But there were far more important features to getting email out of the way. Automatic, inline message grouping by travel, priority, sender, etc; Advanced snooze that included "snooze until delivery date" for packages; Infinite Snooze, which was great for bookmarks with notes; Big, clear done / delete buttons; No ads - not that I expected that to last. It's been long enough that I've begun to forget the other features since I switched back soon after the announcement, but moving back to gmail has been jarring. The old design is confusing, yes, but I can manage as I'd used it for a decade prior. The design was essential, but mostly icing.
megous 8y ago
To me fixing gmail would mean fixing in-message quoting, so that it actually works, and adding some option to discourage top-posting in e-mail conversations that obviously don't use this style of responding. Bonus points if the gmail webmail would re-flow quotations correctly and not break the lines inappropriately. Hiding some icons fixes nothing. It's just a style chnage.
wojcikstefan 8y ago
I'm curious if the HN crowd knows how one maintains such extensions sustainably... Just by glancing at it, I'd imagine that it's tightly coupled with the markup and styling of Gmail. If Gmail changes anything about its layout, the extension has to change, too. Does this mean that your extension is periodically broken (and you have to be available to fix it after every layout change/tweak) or is there a better way (e.g. some Gmail-specific APIs or some such)?
jfengel 8y ago
Most of this seems like a perpetual problem for UX designers. Feature creep doesn't (usually) happen in a vacuum. Each feature exists because somebody somewhere wanted it. OK, sometimes it happens because a mucky-muck wanted to roll out a new product release, for income or attention, but that's not GMail's line, since they make their income from ads rather than sales. I honestly can't tell you whether the decluttering here is better or worse for the average user. It's the kind of thing that's hard to measure, and the aesthetic judgment is subjective. I can say that desaturating some of the widgets looks nice: I myself have to constantly fight with my team who wants to draw attention to their new feature by giving it a color pop. But I myself don't feel that GMail's UX is so radically broken that it's worth the effort of installing a browser-specific extension, thus binding me to that browser and requiring me to re-install on every device.
pier25 8y ago
I tried the extension for a while and ended up removing it since it removes the top toolbar when seeing a single email. I hated the design of the new gmail when it came out, and now I tolerate it, but that toolbar is handy nonetheless.
fiatjaf 8y ago
I would prefer an alternative web client that talked to the Gmail API, because the normal UI is not only unusable, it's too heavy and slow and that extension doesn't fix these problems.

253 points by georgecmu 8y ago

Direct link to extension discussed in the article: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify-gmail/pbmlfaiicoikhdbjagjbglnbfcbcojpj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify-gmail/pbm...

kevinalexbrown 8y ago

It's funny, I was thinking that Inbox did this nicely, and of course he did that too.

RenRav 8y ago

I'm going to admit I wasn't even aware of the current design, probably because other apps function well for my phone, and I've been using the basic HTML alternative on my desktop for many years. Neither of those examples actually look useful, the fix is definitely more easy on the eyes though. The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake, and yes it looks 'pretty' and 'light' in the flat minimalistic way, and otherwise you'd have this dense chunk of the screen. I still think having twice (or comparing to mine, even three times more) the emails displayed on a per row basis makes scanning for things easier at a glance. That fix actually resembles something I do to websites, ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements, siderails, wrappers, navbars, footers, etc. It's very cathartic spending a few seconds resculpting a website to reveal only the relevant content. And the end result always convinces me that less is more when it comes to web design, that regular text and simple formatting should be prioritized higher.

philsnow 8y ago
I also use the basic HTML view on desktop because 1) I don't want to leave the tab open with the modern UI since it inevitably uses up over a GB of ram by itself and 2) I don't want to close and reopen the tab with the modern UI since it takes O(10)s of seconds to be responsive. I remember getting access to gmail when it was in the invite-only phase and thinking that it was absolute magic, that this was the future, and that I'd never use anything else. It only took a huge pile of JS to undo that. I use basic HTML now for gmail and I've switched a lot of what I do to fastmail.
- crazydiamond 8y ago
  Any way to get the dark/terminal theme on Basic HTML? I am not getting any theme option in Settings. I used to have the Terminal theme for years before the new GMail. Standard Gmail does allow for a dark background, would like that in Basic HTML.
  - scns 8y ago
    There is a Firefox plugin called "Dark Background Light text"
  - theclaw 8y ago
    You might be interested in the Dark Reader extension: https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/ It’s able to make pretty much any website dark themed.
  - kekebo 8y ago
    Not a Gmail user myself, in case there's really no setting for it there are some userstyles (to be used with the 'stylish' browser extension) that seem to put gmail into dark mode: https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=dark+gmail https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=dark+gmail
yegle 8y ago
What's the easiest way to get access to the basic HTML view? I used to be able to switch to basic HTML following the link in the footer, but it's gone now.
- waterhouse 8y ago
  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/
timpark 8y ago
The amount of space that messages take up can be configured in Settings > Display density. The screenshots look like they're using "Comfortable". I use "Compact".
sakisv 8y ago
Is it possible to use keyboard shortcuts with the basic view? Or, does anyone know of any addons/extensions to bring them in?
- sagebird 8y ago
  I think it is almost a non feature that gmail provide a choice of white space. As though a manager was too magnanimous in deciding so told his underlings— surprise! You’re all right! Let’s give the users a choice! Meanwhile the average user clicks whatever word they think is best and never looks at it again. Nothing solved. I really wish they just let the nerd who started gmail be a dictator for life. Don’t fuck with success.
everyone 8y ago
@RenRav Whats your workflow for 'ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements'? Sounds like a lot of work to me, but I do not work with the web.
- chronogram 8y ago
  I’m not that user, but you can set a key bind to the uBlock element picker so you can quickly select and create rules all graphically. It’s like a scissor through a newspaper, not a lot of work at all!
- RenRav 8y ago
  It's mostly something I do after discovering a useful site I'll likely be revisiting in the future, sites with appreciable content but are otherwise marred with poor visuals. When you've been doing it for years revisiting the same sites, I think it pays for itself in terms of delivering more presentable information. Addons for Firefox include Aardvark, (generic) Element Hiding Helpers, Lizard, Nuke Anything. You press whatever shortcut is assigned and highlight the element your cursor is over (or highlighted text/section), an interface pops up, you specify the domain filter (twitter.com), and filter by attribute (import-prompt), OK, and the rule "twitter.com##.import-prompt" now forever hides twitter's annoying import flex module. The addons for Firefox I've seen are mostly GUI-based. An exception is Nuke Anything, which I believe can be done through keyboard and context menu options.
tomxor 8y ago
> The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake Careful when complaining about spacing - when it comes to text, spacing is a functional decision, yes it will make it look pretty when done "right" but this is often also because it is more legible - function and aesthetic are the same when it comes to typography. Similarly others have complained about the spacing left and right (i.e it being excessively padded to be centered), but this is also for legibility - the very same reason newspapers have columns and not full width text.
- wtallis 8y ago
  It's not for legibility. GMail has plenty of padding to be readable even when set to "compact" density. If there's any functional justification at all, it's about being touchscreen friendly, even if you don't have a touchscreen.
- userbinator 8y ago
  the very same reason newspapers have columns and not full width text. Newspapers also do not have 6-inch margins on either side. Another irritation of mine is fixed-width sites. If I'm making my browser window wider, chances are I'm trying to widen the text, not expect it to stay in a narrow column in the middle with useless space on either side. If I wanted it narrow, I would've narrowed the window.
  - sunshinelackof 8y ago
    Typography often takes into consideration the width of the text explicitly and how it influences the style and tone of the document. While I don't imagine that everyone is doing this, it is a thing. The nearest analog I think of is maintaining the aspect ratio of an image. You might still understand the piece of media if it's not in its original format, but that was not the intent.
userbinator 8y ago
And the end result always convinces me that less is more when it comes to web design Careful with that phrase, as apparently a large number of designers think it means less content too!

techslave 8y ago

gotta love this guy: “I’m not the world’s best designer by any means” ... where’s that place the current gmail team then?

aytekin 8y ago

I do inbox zero so I am not usually looking at the email list, but to the actual emails. I also started using larger fonts as I am now 40. So, the amount of space the left and the top frames take up is quite a lot. I haven’t tried this but hopefully this can fix that. By the way, here are the tricks I do to do inbox zero on gmail: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290175 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290175

graeme 8y ago
Thank you! The "moving backwards up the list of emails" might be just the thing I need to clear out my email backlog and stay on top of things. I didn't know gmail could do that. You're being downvoted for being off topic perhaps, but in years of looking at threads like this I'd never seen that tip. And not using the UI at all is a viable approach. Incidentally I must be on an old UI, my gmail looks nothing like that. Either version looks harder to navigate than the classic one.

winningcontinue 8y ago

I'd actually use that clutter around gmail and I have my settings on for the densest text, so this isn't an extension for myself or everybody. That G-mail logo on the upper left on the screen needs to go though. He's right about that.

diNgUrAndI 8y ago

> he did a short stint at Facebook working on Messenger, before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works. Blockchain. Interesting.

threeseed 8y ago
Be hilarious if it relied on an algorithm that needs mining.
- tromp 8y ago
  Quoting from the Nori whitepaper at https://nori.com/white-paper https://nori.com/white-paper : Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC): a digital asset, or electronic certificate, that is stored on the Ethereum blockchain in the Nori application. One CRC represents one tonne of CO2-equivalent heat trapping gas that has been removed from the atmosphere and stored in an industrial, terrestrial, subsurface, and/or aquatic reservoir.

agumonkey 8y ago

So very relaxing. A bit like the night time writer modes for editors. Also it's interesting to see this guy's history. Many of his ideas were great but failed to sustain themselves as-is. But he keeps coming back with other great ideas.. I hope he gets something out that gets a nice and long spot.

Ahmed90 8y ago

Pretty? Yes! Practical? No!

CalRobert 8y ago

Cool, but it would have been nice to see that effort go to improving a non-Google mail reader (Thunderbird, whatever) instead of furthering Chrome's dominance.

BrissyCoder 8y ago

I was on board with this guy until: "...before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works..."

0_gravitas 8y ago
It's like a snippet from an xkcd comic
chris_wot 8y ago
Oh man, I thought the same thing! I though to myself "all that electricity needed to maintain the blockchain, and they want to handle climate change?!"
- sneak 8y ago
  Not all blockchains use a lot of electricity. Electricity can also be generated in large quantities without changing the climate.
  - josteink 8y ago
    It’s a zero sum game. That electricity could have been used to replace polluting power-sources.
    - tasty_freeze 8y ago
      No, not if they expressly are finding a renewable source of electricity. Say they have enough rooftop space to install solar panels to cover their needs (don't nitpick that; just say it is true). Yes, this company could have bought the solar panels and then sold their electricity on the market, perhaps displacing some conventional energy source, but that isn't their business. Their business is this crypto market for carbon credits; they have a need for power, they fill that need with a renewable source.
ramraj07 8y ago
Jeez, I just googled their name and it's just page after page of blogspam written either by someone in their company or some block chain blog. "oh you mean I can buy carbon credits AND make money?"

therealmarv 8y ago

Interesting. Always had the feeling that Inbox could be the ONE interface to all (main) Google products but somebody had stopped the train on the way to this idea. Seems I was right about my feelings...

Keloran 8y ago

Are there any paid for chrome extensions ? I just seemed like an odd thing to keep emphasising “a free chrome extension” I thought they were all free

galvin 8y ago
Some are tied to paid services

wycy 8y ago

> “Go look at any desktop app and tell me how many have a huge fucking logo in the top left,” rants Leggett. “C’mon. It’s pure ego, pure bullshit. Drop the logo. Give me a break.” Sure, not many desktop apps have a huge top left logo, but almost all websites do. Acting like this is a unique failing of Gmail is strange to me.

Ardren 8y ago
It's also 109x40 pixels (at least on my system). No exactly a huge fucking logo.
- cferr 8y ago
  I'm not on a machine I can access Gmail from right now, so I can't say if it appears the same size on my screen. However, just for perspective, HN's logo with name is ~122x22. I like that it stays at the top of the page and can go out of view with scrolling. Gmail's logo is always in view, taking screen space.
colanderman 8y ago
To compare, FastMail has no such logo. Just a big giant menu button that is easy to find and click, unlike the five different tiny menu buttons, only some of which are actually menus, hidden behind obscure icons and littered about GMail's interface.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Per usual web tradition, FastMail has a logo in top left corner, which opens the menu when clicked. Source: I have it open in another tab.
  - colanderman 8y ago
    Your FastMail is different than mine somehow. Mine just says "Mail" with a drop-down arrow in the upper-left corner. Note also that, in GMail, the logo isn't a menu. It is just a link to the page you are already on. There's a hamburger menu next to it, but that just opens the sidebar.

plibither8 8y ago

Here's the HN discussion of the extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558661

srfilipek 8y ago

> before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works Oh come on...

village-idiot 8y ago
Every time I hear “fixing X with blockchain” it gets dumber and dumber.
josteink 8y ago
I’m no native English speaker, but does “addressing” strictly have to mean fixing/solving something? Can it be employed to mean the opposite? As in, “addressing” things for the worse?
- jumpkick 8y ago
  No
- Riverheart 8y ago
  "Addressing a problem" is viewed the same way as fixing or attempting to fix a problem. I've not heard it used to imply making a problem worse.
- TehCorwiz 8y ago
  The word “Addressing” has a connotation in this usage context that the subject is focusing their attention on what they see as broken or deficient. The trick is that it’s relative to the subject or speaker’s point of view.
- dangerface 8y ago
  To address a problem is about intent rather than action. Usually it's an acknowledgement that a problem exists and a potential solution to that problem. You don't have to actually act on the problem or solve it just present a possible solution. For example I could address climate change with blockchain by suggesting that people don't use bitcoin. Even if I continue to use bitcoin this could be considered addressing the problem.

athenot 8y ago

I don't use gmail so I'm surprised at how low the (useful) information density is, in either version. Extrapolating from that screenshot, it looks like that window could hold about a dozen emails. I use the no-frills Mail.app on macOS and a window that's takes about half or two thirds of my screen, and fits 40 emails. In my case I also get to see the "To" address in the list, helping me quickly triage the emails that are not sent to me alone. Do people really prefer low density interfaces these days? Removing the visual clutter is certainly an improvement but desktop apps have the menu bar where they can put all the actions, whereas a web app is more limited: it's either a mess of buttons or hamburger buttons which often end up a bit clumsy.

saiya-jin 8y ago
I think its some stupid side-effect of mobile environments, where for touch interaction, stuff needs to be big and hence low density of information. New version of gmail is so much worse for me on PC - lower density, much slower to work with on Firefox (I ain't switching to Chrome due to this, no thank you). Something akin to Microsoft putting that idiotic (sorry but I can't be polite with this specific topic) mobile-like interface into Windows 10 for desktops. Unifying what shouldn't be unified.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
I blame mobile, and the desire to reuse design (and often code) between devices. Touch interfaces need big things because phone screens are small relative to fingers. On desktop, such interfaces are unbearable to me; I hate them to the point I actually installed Stylus extension and now hot-fix websites I visit frequently with quick CSS work, to increase information density (and by increase I mean double or triple).
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Ironically, Inbox was a million times more mobile friendly than Gmail is. Turns out, tabs make for poor mobile experience.
scrooched_moose 8y ago

rozhok 8y ago

Switched to plain HTML version after the redesign was rolled out and have no regrets about it.

GoblinSlayer 8y ago

>Michael Leggett is even more annoyed with Gmail than you are. Then why he doesn't give Google the boot?

ejolto 8y ago
He quit Google last year, he's working at a blockchain startup now.

drumttocs8 8y ago

Why move the "select all" checkbox away from the messages you're trying to select? Talk about bad UI...

racuna 8y ago

Gmail works awful on Firefox (slow, heavy memory usage, etc). Some things are fixed in the last releases of FF, but according of what I read recently, Google is doing this on purpose. Any addon or userscript recommended?

enobrev 8y ago

This change doesn't even touch Inbox. It removes the surrounding "chrome" and adjusts the whitespace. That's not nothing as it focuses the UI, but Inbox was far more than that. Not that I don't appreciate the time invested. The design was welcome, to be sure. But there were far more important features to getting email out of the way. Automatic, inline message grouping by travel, priority, sender, etc; Advanced snooze that included "snooze until delivery date" for packages; Infinite Snooze, which was great for bookmarks with notes; Big, clear done / delete buttons; No ads - not that I expected that to last. It's been long enough that I've begun to forget the other features since I switched back soon after the announcement, but moving back to gmail has been jarring. The old design is confusing, yes, but I can manage as I'd used it for a decade prior. The design was essential, but mostly icing.

megous 8y ago

To me fixing gmail would mean fixing in-message quoting, so that it actually works, and adding some option to discourage top-posting in e-mail conversations that obviously don't use this style of responding. Bonus points if the gmail webmail would re-flow quotations correctly and not break the lines inappropriately. Hiding some icons fixes nothing. It's just a style chnage.

wojcikstefan 8y ago

I'm curious if the HN crowd knows how one maintains such extensions sustainably... Just by glancing at it, I'd imagine that it's tightly coupled with the markup and styling of Gmail. If Gmail changes anything about its layout, the extension has to change, too. Does this mean that your extension is periodically broken (and you have to be available to fix it after every layout change/tweak) or is there a better way (e.g. some Gmail-specific APIs or some such)?

jfengel 8y ago

Most of this seems like a perpetual problem for UX designers. Feature creep doesn't (usually) happen in a vacuum. Each feature exists because somebody somewhere wanted it. OK, sometimes it happens because a mucky-muck wanted to roll out a new product release, for income or attention, but that's not GMail's line, since they make their income from ads rather than sales. I honestly can't tell you whether the decluttering here is better or worse for the average user. It's the kind of thing that's hard to measure, and the aesthetic judgment is subjective. I can say that desaturating some of the widgets looks nice: I myself have to constantly fight with my team who wants to draw attention to their new feature by giving it a color pop. But I myself don't feel that GMail's UX is so radically broken that it's worth the effort of installing a browser-specific extension, thus binding me to that browser and requiring me to re-install on every device.

pier25 8y ago

I tried the extension for a while and ended up removing it since it removes the top toolbar when seeing a single email. I hated the design of the new gmail when it came out, and now I tolerate it, but that toolbar is handy nonetheless.

fiatjaf 8y ago

I would prefer an alternative web client that talked to the Gmail API, because the normal UI is not only unusable, it's too heavy and slow and that extension doesn't fix these problems.