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Customize Gmail's Buttons: Replace Icons With Text
- jes5199 15y agofinally! Those icons are indistinct and basically meaningless.
- streptomycin 15y agoThis feels like an admission of failure. A good UI wouldn't need an option like this.
- anothermachine 15y agoOr an admission that there is more than one kind of person in the world?
- jaysonelliot 15y agoGood usability doesn't try to change for different kinds of users, except in extreme cases such as expert systems. For most applications, it's best to find one approach that will work across the board. In this case, icons, although they may look nice, should always be accompanied by text. Giving users options is an admission of failure, because it means the UI designers weren't able to come up with a single consistent solution that works.
- chefsurfing 15y ago> In this case, icons, although they may look nice, should always be accompanied by text. So right. Icons are too ambiguous for across-the-board use as Google has been implementing.
- timothya 15y agoSeems just to be a simple customizable feature. Do you think that the different whitespace options in Gmail are also an "admission of failure"? To me, they just provide different options to suit different people's visual preferences.
- jes5199 15y agodoes anyone choose a whitespace option other than Compact?
- lzh-ng 15y agoThe whitespace options are especially grating to me. Gmail offers 3 options, all of which are poorly spaced. Configurability isn't a replacement for good design.
- polyfractal 15y agoI'm still on the "classic" theme, and throw a bitchfit over feedback every time they try to force me into the new themes. Some of my accounts have been switched over to the new themes with no "classic" option, while others still have it available. I'll use classic until they fix the new crap, or allow me to continue using classic indefinitely.
- chimeracoder 15y agoI just threw in the towel and switched to mutt. I'd been meaning to try it out for a while anyway, and this was exactly the opportunity I needed to motivate me. (For anyone who's curious to try it out- I couldn't be happier, and mutt + offlineimap + mairix has ended up being the perfect combination for me... far better than Gmail web was at its best).
- Craiggybear 15y agoI, too, use mutt. Its my idea of what an email client should be. Text based. What is wrong with words?
- dannyr 15y agoI see it as listening to users. But so what if it's admission of failure? What's wrong with that?
- ChuckMcM 15y agoThere was an apocryphal tale of the landscape architect being asked "These foot paths are perfect, how did you come up with that design?" And she answers, "We planted grass everywhere and then replaced where the grass had been flattened by people walking on it with foot paths."
- DannoHung 15y agoI had a professor once who explained how this can be problematic: What about the handicapped or elderly? Will they necessarily take the same paths? How does the ideal foot path change in winter months when there is snow? Is it just based on the first person who plowed ahead and started packing the snow down? In the spring, would the path be different if it rained often and you could walk underneath a tree? This is not to say that the story is without utility, but that it can't be a universal maxim.
- chimeracoder 15y agoThis is a perfect illustration of the how data is an important tool, and yet blindly relying on observable statistics can have problematic results.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- aprescott 15y agoLet's not talk about Google Apps users and this setting, shall we? :) Off-topic: fun to see that someone else got emails about Wave being sunsetted from the "Google Wage" sender.
- aprescott 15y agoWell, it seems I spoke too soon! When they first announced this on the official blog it wasn't available to me (an Apps user), but now it is.
- cleverjake 15y agoHrm, I prefer the new look (with icons), but it seems that most people I have read do not. Not sure if I am a minority or just a silent majority.
- jaysonelliot 15y agoIcons are mnemonics, not signposts. Once you know what a button does, an icon can be a great way to quickly recognize it again. On their own, though, they're terrible. They invite confusion, even after a user has learned what they mean. An icon in conjunction with text is a wonderful way to help users find things quickly. If I have to choose to design and interface with only an icon or only text, though, I'll go with text.
- scott_s 15y agoTheses icons, however, weren't as visually distinctive as others. I always had to pause for a moment to figure out which one was the spam button. I've changed back to text.
- meow 15y agoThey should have colored the spam button red. I fumble a lot with these new buttons. I don't understand why the designers are against color in the new interface. It's like watching a bad CGI movie or a video game with no details where every surface looks bland gray or dark...
- skeletonjelly 15y agoJust like Visual Studio 11. Who exactly is asking for all these monochromatic icons? Are there AB tests done that favour them?
- tristan_juricek 15y agoWhy not allow icons and text (a la nearly ever Mac toolbar I've used)? That would seem, to me, the easiest way to "skim" a toolbar. Icons can be smaller (like the document editor toolbar), but it doesn't seem like Gmail's really pushing the size limit.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- lzh-ng 15y agoWhen I'm designing, I usually start with black and white, then fold in color where it seems appropriate. The monochrome design of Gmail gives me the impression that the designers didn't bother to finish the job.
- oacgnol 15y agoAgreed. The icon buttons would have been fine had they colorized them in some manner. It's a lot easier to distinguish in that manner. I find myself confusing the "archive" and "move to" buttons far too often when working quickly.
- chintan 15y agos/Google Wage/Google Wave/
- lanstein 15y agoIt was wrong in the source email, was wondering if someone was going to catch this.
- Dysiode 15y agoNow all they need to do is make the settings page match the rest of the site. Notably putting the Save button at the top of the page after making everyone get used to not having to scroll around to find the Send button.
- twodayslate 15y agoWhy not have both? This seems much nicer looking: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dheionainndbbpoacpnopgmnihkcmnkl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dheionainndbbpoacp...
- happyrock 15y agoAll they need is to bring back the clickable Google logo for getting back to the Inbox.
- FratKabula 15y agoGoogle, is becoming more and more like Microsoft. If they can't decide, they're essentially dumping that decision on the user in the guise of a choice.