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I use a netbook for my gmail. This new UI is, once again, a big negative from me because of all the wasted "white space". I hate this love affair we have at t

by brador 15y ago

I use a netbook for my gmail. This new UI is, once again, a big negative from me because of all the wasted "white space". I hate this love affair we have at the moment with white space. To me, it's wasted space. I guess I just hate scrolling or maybe I should just move to Asia.

simondlr 15y ago
I use a normal 15inch laptop and that wasted white space was an issue for me. Hopefully with the new theme, the 'compact' theme is compact enough.
raldi 15y ago
At 0:17 in the video, they resize the browser window to netbook dimensions, and all the whitespace automatically disappears.
- jmilloy 15y ago
  That's so much nicer. I need to trick it into doing that all the time.
  - jmilloy 15y ago
    Oh. Just found the "Display Density" options.
    - ojilles 15y ago
      Took me ten minutes to realize that there are now 2 gear icons on the page. Was continually clicking the one in the "global header", but there is second one on the page where the Display Density options are located. How's that for bad UI design?
antics 15y ago
Inevitably when you develop web technology at scale you end up asking the question of whether you should degrade the experience of the common case to make it ~comfortable for, e.g., netbooks. Usually the answer, at least for a service like GMail, is to just ignore the netbooks. I actually think that's the right answer almost always, but I would absolutely love to hear the opposing view, as this is a position that I feel I don't fully understand.
- chadgeidel 15y ago
  It's basically just a styling issue though. Couldn't they just provide a "netbook style"? Consider that tablets are about the same size and tablets are probably going to be the "common case". Unless of course they are providing a specific "tablet style". Another poster indicated that the theme automatically resized based on window dimensions. I'm not seeing the new theme (merely the "Preview" theme in the list - there's a "Preview (Dense)" in the theme list as well).
  - Slackwise 15y ago
    > Couldn't they just provide a "netbook style"? How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all. > I'm not seeing the new theme When it rolls out to your account, you'll see a little black notification bar/box in the bottom-right asking you if you want to try the new theme.
    - FireBeyond 15y ago
      "How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all." Seems to me, "a couple of years ago". That's when any real innovation in CSS seemed to cease.* * I can hear people arguing already. By "innovation in CSS", I don't mean "cool, awesome tricks" like "being able to render strange bullets in pure CSS by bastardizing four divs, a span, and a dozen lines of stylesheet", or "a bargraph library that outputs pure CSS". Those are cool, awesome tricks, to be sure, hacks, but the very definition of "solving the wrong problem".
  - jamesgeck0 15y ago
    The theme does automatically resize. At the smallest size it's about as compact as the old theme. Another nice space saving measure is that you can minimize chat and widgets to little buttons in the bottom left. You can also force the theme to use the smallest size via an option in the menu. The new theme won't show up as a simple entry in the theme menu as it replaces all the old themes. Some have been remade or ported, but they're clearly running on the new theme engine. Alas, the Android theme no longer changes the Gmail UI font to Android Sans.
p9idf 15y ago
I had similar problems on my small screen with Google Voice. I found a Greasemonkey script which solves most of them. Once Google starts forcing me to use the new Gmail interface, I'll probably make something similar for Gmail. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114048 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114048
mbrzuzy 15y ago
We know that you use Gmail from a variety of screen sizes and devices, so now the spacing between elements on the screen will automatically change based on the kind of display you’re using. Looks like it will re-size elements automatically based on screensize.
qixxiq 15y ago
There is an option for 'display density' in the top right which is very neat. Compresses everything to fit way more emails per page.

by brador 15y ago

simondlr 15y ago

I use a normal 15inch laptop and that wasted white space was an issue for me. Hopefully with the new theme, the 'compact' theme is compact enough.

raldi 15y ago

At 0:17 in the video, they resize the browser window to netbook dimensions, and all the whitespace automatically disappears.

jmilloy 15y ago
That's so much nicer. I need to trick it into doing that all the time.
- jmilloy 15y ago
  Oh. Just found the "Display Density" options.
  - ojilles 15y ago
    Took me ten minutes to realize that there are now 2 gear icons on the page. Was continually clicking the one in the "global header", but there is second one on the page where the Display Density options are located. How's that for bad UI design?

antics 15y ago

Inevitably when you develop web technology at scale you end up asking the question of whether you should degrade the experience of the common case to make it ~comfortable for, e.g., netbooks. Usually the answer, at least for a service like GMail, is to just ignore the netbooks. I actually think that's the right answer almost always, but I would absolutely love to hear the opposing view, as this is a position that I feel I don't fully understand.

chadgeidel 15y ago
It's basically just a styling issue though. Couldn't they just provide a "netbook style"? Consider that tablets are about the same size and tablets are probably going to be the "common case". Unless of course they are providing a specific "tablet style". Another poster indicated that the theme automatically resized based on window dimensions. I'm not seeing the new theme (merely the "Preview" theme in the list - there's a "Preview (Dense)" in the theme list as well).
- Slackwise 15y ago
  > Couldn't they just provide a "netbook style"? How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all. > I'm not seeing the new theme When it rolls out to your account, you'll see a little black notification bar/box in the bottom-right asking you if you want to try the new theme.
  - FireBeyond 15y ago
    "How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all." Seems to me, "a couple of years ago". That's when any real innovation in CSS seemed to cease.* * I can hear people arguing already. By "innovation in CSS", I don't mean "cool, awesome tricks" like "being able to render strange bullets in pure CSS by bastardizing four divs, a span, and a dozen lines of stylesheet", or "a bargraph library that outputs pure CSS". Those are cool, awesome tricks, to be sure, hacks, but the very definition of "solving the wrong problem".
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  The theme does automatically resize. At the smallest size it's about as compact as the old theme. Another nice space saving measure is that you can minimize chat and widgets to little buttons in the bottom left. You can also force the theme to use the smallest size via an option in the menu. The new theme won't show up as a simple entry in the theme menu as it replaces all the old themes. Some have been remade or ported, but they're clearly running on the new theme engine. Alas, the Android theme no longer changes the Gmail UI font to Android Sans.

p9idf 15y ago

I had similar problems on my small screen with Google Voice. I found a Greasemonkey script which solves most of them. Once Google starts forcing me to use the new Gmail interface, I'll probably make something similar for Gmail. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114048 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114048

mbrzuzy 15y ago

We know that you use Gmail from a variety of screen sizes and devices, so now the spacing between elements on the screen will automatically change based on the kind of display you’re using. Looks like it will re-size elements automatically based on screensize.

qixxiq 15y ago

There is an option for 'display density' in the top right which is very neat. Compresses everything to fit way more emails per page.