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"From the 'Classic' to 'Default' themes, the foreground to background brightness difference and the foreground to background color difference is reduced by 28%!
by nickb 18y ago
"From the 'Classic' to 'Default' themes, the foreground to background brightness difference and the foreground to background color difference is reduced by 28%!"
The author fails to realize that Google did this on purpose. This contrast reduction is for READ emails. Unread emails stand out really well (black on white). My guess is that designers did usability tests and found out that people are more interested in new, unread emails, than in read emails. So they made sure that you can easily find new, unread emails and the old, read, emails just get out of your way. And it does make a lot of sense to me... I'll give new theme a try.
- JoelSutherland 18y agoI see your point, but I am not sure I agree. My behavior may be atypical, but I tend to read new mail sequentially. Only when I am looking for a particular message do I scan the email listing. It is in this case that I would prefer to have increased contrast. Furthermore, I find it jarring to have such a dramatic difference in read vs. unread mail when scanning a list that contains both. Whether my experience and preferences match Gmail users as a whole is unknown.