11 ms·

How to cope with the Gmail redesign

273 points by jasoncrawford 15y ago

TamDenholm 15y ago
Personally I really like the new design, despite the fact I have actually implemented most of the things mentioned in the article. However, I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation, and this doesn't include any of the stuff from the labs feature set.
- sho_hn 15y ago
  > I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. Most desktop email clients have _very_ limited customizability.
    - hrktb 15y ago
      On the other hand, if you don't like one you can get any other that fits your bill.
      - Jach 15y ago
        You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out. But I join the chuckling at the notion that "this demonstrates gmail's flexibility". If it was really flexible and customizable, I would still have the old theme.
        chimeracoder 15y ago
        > You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out. Gmail's IMAP works, though it's had a number of minor-but-irritating bugs for years (these bugs even affect the official applications too). I wish they'd fix them - I get that it's not in their interest to support nonstandard clients for which they receive no ad revenue, but that's no excuse here, because they still cause some of the same problems on the Android and Blackberry apps. This article, dated February 2008 (four years ago!) is just as relevant today as it was then. The duplication of messages with broken synchronization is what bothers me the most, as I use offlineimap to handle my mail: http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-imap-implementation http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-...
    - sho_hn 15y ago
      In my experience, they're usually far more customizable. Clients I've used include KMail on Linux, The Bat! on Windows and Mozilla's Thunderbird, all of which offer myriad options to customize the appearance and behavior of message list, message pane and folder lists, though the first two apps much more so than Thunderbird. You also get to modify things like toolbars much more freely, and OS/toolkit theming usually also beats the GMail theming system. You could argue that GMail has a higher customization potential given the fact that you can muck around with the document client-side (though Thunderbird extensions are similar, and if you really go down that road: I can also change the source code of KMail and recompile it), but we're talking in-app options here. And so I find the notion that "GMail has impressive configurability because it has the options described in the article" amusing. Somehow the world has forgotten just how sophisticated an experience a regular old desktop app running in the context of a regular old desktop environment can be. I'd also argue that regular old desktop toolkits and libraries still require a lot less investment of effort to achieve such levels of sophistication than the web development environment does at the moment. Like I said, thought-provoking.
      - cookiecaper 15y ago
        Also worth noting is that Thunderbird's layout can be thoroughly customized with a bit of JavaScript hacking via its extensions interface, just as Firefox can. While TB may not have tons of visual options by default, it can still get them via third-party extension.
        sho_hn 15y ago
        Aye, that's what I was talking about with "Tb extensions are similar [in their capabilities] (to GreaseMonkey-style site hacks)".
        cookiecaper 15y ago
        Hmm, didn't see that part. Maybe you edited? Maybe I just skimmed it. Sorry. :)
  - ditojim 15y ago
    You're missing out on a ton of great Gmail features if you are using a desktop mail client. Integrated hangout/voice /text chat, phone, conversation view, the social pane with contextual information..the list goes on.
    - nopassrecover 15y ago
      This isn't a rebuttal, but Outlook 2010 has most (if not all) of those things.
      - Karunamon 15y ago
        The only thing I'm aware of Outlook 2010 having from that list is the social networking pane.
        nopassrecover 15y ago
        Outlook has conversation view as well, and Microsoft Lync (formerly Office Communicator) integrates the rest of the feature set (yes you're vendor-locked, but you are with GMail too). In my opinion GMail executes better on most of these features, but they're not the only ones to offer them.
        darklajid 15y ago
        Not a fan, but Lync even allows XMPP access (if so configured), so all your GTalk buddies can message you from GMail (at least that should work - didn't try).
        Karunamon 15y ago
        I wasn't aware of that.. will have to check it out! Thanks!
    - tjoff 15y ago
      Why would I want that in my mail application? Those features also only promote you to stay logged in on your gmail account at all times, and there have been numerous security issues with that approach. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail. Every time I see someone use gmail I cringe at how primitive and slow the workflow is.
- vl 15y ago
  It all good advise, exactly to the point what I use except for the theme - I use "Soft gray" - it's works better with preview pane lab and gets rid of the huge red button.
rachelbythebay 15y ago
You can talk IMAP/POP and SMTP, and you get to control your own user interface, or you can talk HTTP, HTML, and JS and abdicate control to someone else. I fell into that trap myself. I was a heavy user of Gmail for about four years, and when they started changing things and told me "only 0.07% of users use that feature we just removed", it was too late. This mayhem ruined "the cloud" for me ... and I used to help run parts of it. Blah.
- ck2 15y ago
  What UI do you use? I probably going to use newest Thunderbird when I leave gmail.
  - rabidsnail 15y ago
    Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com http://www.postbox-inc.com) is pretty solid.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    For GUI clients, Thunderbird is the best I've seen, followed by Evolution (back when I used it, anyway). Though if you're open to a ncurses-based client, I use mutt. The #1 reason I switched to it (instead of any other client) when the new Gmail design was released was because it opens almost instantaneously. It's a subtle thing, but not having to leave my inbox open all the time and being able to open it in a split second when I need to really helps my workflow.
- pbreit 15y ago
  Well, except that gmail.com offers much more customization than any desktop email client.
  - larsberg 15y ago
    Well, except for emacs/gnus :-)
ck2 15y ago
I am absolutely furious how my account was forced today to the new theme - it's hideous. I've tried several stylish options to no avail, I miss the old dark layout with high contrast buttons. Even the dark theme has a bright white message pane for no reason. It also runs very sluggishly compared to the old UI, not sure why. Well this should give me the kick in the pants to get off gmail anyway.
- kevingadd 15y ago
  It's slow because all the UI elements in the new themes have alpha transparency and rounded corners. It increases the amount of work your browser has to do to paint it tremendously (though GPU acceleration will help).
  - nnethercote 15y ago
    Rounded corners? AFAICT the defining characteristic of the new UI is that every single visual element is a rectangle with a pale grey 1px border. It's all so flat, ugh.
dirkdk 15y ago
besides the default theme and the high contrast theme, all others are useless and look like the work of a 5 year old. Design has a function, namely to make things clear and give the user a good experience.
- soulclap 15y ago
  I agree. Really makes me wonder if all their themes have been made by developers (like me). 'Work of a 5 year old', exactly.
ajtaylor 15y ago
I HATE HATE HATE the new design! I was dreading the day they took away the old look, but these tips go a long way to making gmail usable for me again. Thanks!
davux 15y ago
I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really small. (I'm not usually one to complain just because things changed, I didn't like the mystery meat icons either, but I can get over something trivial like that.) It just doesn't work. I couldn't really figure out where else to go, but OWA 2010 doesn't have these problems, so I went to Office 365 for my own domain (and forwarded Gmail). I never thought I'd pay for email but considering how vital mail is, having real support is a nice piece of mind. I remember how awesome webmail seemed in 2003 (when I switched from Outlook to Gmail), but now that I've gone back to Outlook, I see all the awesome stuff that I was missing. This is really not to credit Outlook though, I'm sure Gmail (threading) influenced them greatly in the past 8 years. I know you can just use Outlook+Gmail, but sadly IMAP isn't nearly as good as Exchange.
- eternalban 15y ago
  Try http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html
  - davux 15y ago
    Thanks, I know about the basic HTML site. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me, though. The basic site is literally worse than the 2003 version.
    - mattee 15y ago
      I have always used the basic version of gmail. It works very well for me. The site design has not changed.
  - chintan 15y ago
    Thanks for this gem! Did they forgot to change this view or G-Plusification will kill this as well?
dancesdrunk 15y ago
I quite like the new design, and I've been using it since it was in "beta" a couple of months ago. It certainly provided a couple of frustrating days before I got used to it, but I find it much more soft on the eyes - to me the old layout now looks pretty harsh; giving the impression of being just "functional". A lot of non-technical folks I work (and live!) with find the new design much, much more pleasing. Bear in mind these are the folks that use hotmail, yahoo etc - so they really are after the "eye candy" more than the functionality; and with google's new social push I can assume this is now the target audience. My only complaint would be about the icons; regardless of wether you've used Gmail before - you will get caught out; a few days ago it took me a good few minutes before I could find out how to get to my contacts.
- deleted 15y ago
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teach 15y ago
My biggest new-Gmail-design pet-peeve is that the Display Density setting is only respected if your browser window is wide enough. I prefer the "Comfortable" setting. I have a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, but I don't have my browser window maximized (it only takes up 65-75% of the screen width). So, GMail has helpfully reduced my display density to "Cozy", ignoring my setting. As far as I know, there's no way to "fix" this; it's a known issue but there's no workaround other than making my browser window wider.
- notJim 15y ago
  It took my months of using the new design before I realized this. My impression before was simply that the design was “broken” on my desktop computer until one day I resized the window and discovered this issue.
- no_more_death 15y ago
  Yes, many webapps do not take into account that modern screens are quite large enough to display multiple windows comfortably.
halayli 15y ago
I stopped using it and moved to Mail.app. I cannot stand in-page scrolling.
deleted 15y ago
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ken 15y ago
A year or two ago I got tired of my email UI changing every week, so I switched to the "plain HTML" view. It's not as fast or smooth or javascript-y but I don't think it's changed a bit in years.
Caligula 15y ago
Its not just GMAIL. Google analytics is painfully ugly. The first screen before showed a list of all the sites and traffic. Now it shows just the list of accounts. Its awful. There is no way anymore to use the classic design. Also, once I am in google analytics it is just a UI mess. They cram every feature possible and make it unintelligible. They are ruining the UI for gmail,google search and google analytics.
- conradfr 15y ago
  I must be using wrong because I have to do so more clicks with the new Analytics design to see things I want, it's frustrating.
soulclap 15y ago
I don't like change. That said, any browser-based alternatives?
- viraptor 15y ago
  I like zoho personally. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of gmail, but it's at least decent and supports custom domains in free option.
conradfr 15y ago
Sadly for me I dislike the High contrast theme as much as the new default one.
_feda_ 15y ago
Just use thunderbird if you're on a desktop or laptop (ie. not an ios or android device, although I'm sure they have equivalents). I recommend installing muttator, the equivalent of vimperator for thunderbird. It will make the time you spend with email much more efficient.
ticks 15y ago
When I read this headline, I assumed Google had redesigned it again... didn't realise people were still using the old design. Personally, the redesign pushed me back to Thunderbird and I ended up deleting thousands of emails. It was quite liberating.
adgar 15y ago
This is more like a "how to revert to 2006 GMail" list. I mean, he even goes out of his way to turn off Priority Inbox and important markers. That has nothing to do with the redesign - it's just turning off year+ old features, which is what a good portion of the post is. Luckily for the author, options exist to turn off all the features that have been released in the past many years. Of course, there's some apportioning of valid and invalid frustration with any redesign, and I won't invalidate any of that here. But this post just comes off as "make all the scary new stuff go away!"
- MaysonL 15y ago
  Priority Inbox is Google'S broken idea of what is important to me and what is not: it's ugly, distracting, and worse than without it.
- jasoncrawford 15y ago
  I tried Priority Inbox for a while when it first came out. It's an interesting feature and maybe it works for some people, but I decided I didn't need it. It didn't matter until the redesign, though. In the new design, the "importance markers" are very similar in appearance to the stars, and they are right next to each other. It's hard to tell them apart at a glance. That's why I finally had to turn them off.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Thanks for the tips, I'd done most of these when they changed to the new theme, but the the icon button/web clip tips escaped me. Thanks for those! I couldn't find the high contrast theme, unfortunately. As a random anecdotal data point, my inbox would be completely unusable without priority inbox. My email volume is way too high without it.
jlft 15y ago
What concerns me more about the new design compared to the old original is the readability: now it is much worse. Why not offer the most popular old themes (adapted to the new layout) an option?
andrewfelix 15y ago
I was so busy using gmail I barely noticed the transition. Which for me says everything. Great design shouldn't be noticed, it should just work. Obviously this is just one anecdote. But for me gmail is still the indispensable tool it always was. For all its shortcomings it is an amazing product.
- Jach 15y ago
  I'm finding this hard to believe. You didn't notice when the Send button went from the bottom of the message to the top? Maybe you meant that you noticed but didn't find it jarring enough to cause a lot of confusion?
  - andrewfelix 15y ago
    I'm finding it hard to believe that you down-voted me for expressing a personal observation. Even after I expressly pointed out that it was an anecdote.
    - Jach 15y ago
      I didn't downvote you. Don't assume.
      - andrewfelix 15y ago
        Your entire original reply was an assumption.
  - taeric 15y ago
    I confess I haven't really noticed any of the button changes. This is mainly because I am almost 100% keyboard in gmail, though. Send is a quaint tab-enter. :) I can say every now and then I look for the buttons, but the only one I really ever find myself using is the refresh button, and that is simply if I wasn't already positioned on the keyboard.
    - mattmanser 15y ago
twelvechairs 15y ago
Its a constant wonder how Google and other large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job. You'd think that Apple's successes might actually make them realise that great interfaces (especially if they can outdo the competition) are hugely valuable. Some things about the new design are defensible, however others are definitely not. My particular pet hate is that all the things that are not mail services (but you can still access within gmail) are splattered around all corners of the screen. Chat is in one corner (along with 'gadgets' - whatever they are). G+ is in the opposite. And in a third (behind a button that is very unhelpfully named 'gmail') are contacts and tasks. Where is the sense in that???
- andrewfelix 15y ago
  >large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job There are obviously a lot of unhappy users with legitimate gripes. But Google would probably be looking at the growth of Gmail to validate what ever the design department is doing. That growth is pretty impressive.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    Growth? Gmail grew 3 or 4 years ago. I wouldn't recommend Gmail to anyone now, it's just another Hotmail type service, there's nothing special or good about Gmail anymore. What really surprised me is how few of my friends get the 'conversation' view even in 2012. After too many awkward conversations and now their 'we've got absolutely no design skills and can't design for shit' redesign, I'm just shrugging when people say their hotmail account has been hacked for the 15th time.
    - AVTizzle 15y ago
      I've been using gmail pretty exclusively for the past 4 years now, and haven't really had to much exposure to other services. But I've been extremely satisfied. Enough to stick around. So just out of curiosity - what services would you recommend to an inquiring mind?
no_more_death 15y ago
I loved the new design. Much less clutter. A service I use every waking moment need not label everything. I like the direction of Google's design efforts. The Google+ design will continue to evolve, I'm sure (it is not quite there yet).
Jach 15y ago
Another trick I found is to go into Labs and enable the one that moves the in-browser chat box to the right side of the inbox. It's not as nice as before where it just stacked on the left side, but with the new design it wanted to show me one of the chat box or utility at-a-glance views like my Calendar, but not both. Now I get both again, at the inexpensive cost of horizontal screen estate.
kreitje 15y ago
Their spam/filtering has gone down hill. It does a great job with the spam. Unfortunately, several people I communicate with a few times a day, half of their stuff goes straight to the trash and I don't see it. If I login to webmail I can see they have both an Inbox and Trash label on them but my phone and mail client to register the new mail and it doesn't show in the Inbox. I just want it to pick one.
- waivej 15y ago
  Yup, I hit this too. I think they score things without SPF records as spam. Though this causes trouble because another company I use bounces mail if you use an SPF. In the end, I'm still using Gmail and ditching the other company...but not recommending Gmail anymore because of the disruption.
- Hurdy 15y ago
  Can you rephrase that? How do these messages get the trash label?
  - kreitje 15y ago
    I go into the trash label inside Gmail. I click on a message that I didn't want to go straight to my trash. At the top where it shows the Trash label there is also an Inbox one with it. As soon as I click the "x" on the label, I can see the email being downloaded by the mail client I use. It is of course displaying the Inbox and not Trash.
  - kreitje 15y ago
    Forgot to mention how they get them. Either someone has my login and is messing with me by somehow adding the Trash and Inbox label or there is a glitch in the system putting both labels on it. My guess is the glitch.
    - Hurdy 15y ago
      There is no glitch that just adds trash labels. Did you check if you have any filters set up that might be responsible?
jazzychad 15y ago
I know I was probably 1 of 10 people that actually used (and liked!) the Terminal theme with all green monospaced text... sadly that is now gone, and Terminal theme is now just a lame white on black with variable-width font. bummer :(
- ominous 15y ago
  Yep. Only a blinking shell prompt remains, under "Google" (top left)
mikebracco 15y ago
I'd also add a tip to check out the Minimalist Suite http://minimalistsuite.com http://minimalistsuite.com - It's Chrome extension for Gmail as well as other Google properties that allows you to customize the UI and remove of things you don't use. There are many that do this but this is the best IMHO.
lindablus 15y ago
The android theme is quite good, better than the old one imo. Otherwise, I love the text label.
Metapony 15y ago
I do not like the new redesign, and will have to implement these tips just to make it a little more usable. I wish Google wouldn't do sucky things like this. Also Googe seems to have the worst branding. Google+, really? You think that's more alluring than Facebook? Also, rebranding the android app marketplace as "Google Play"? That's just terrible.
xtacy 15y ago
I use the following changes to the style sheet for some more colour contrast: /* Increase contrast on some arrows */ .T-I-ax7.T-I-JE .T-I-J3 { opacity: 0.1 !important; } /* Make new chat highlight red instead of blue */ .Hz .k, .Hz .n, .Hz .l { background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(192, 0, 0) !important; }
- TazeTSchnitzel 15y ago
  oh god, obfuscated CSS...
  - xtacy 15y ago
    I doubt it was done on purpose. I think it's what minifying does to your CSS files.
abentspoon 15y ago
You can actually still use the old interface for a little while longer, even if you've been forced over to the redesign. http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail
- esc 15y ago
  Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old one feels and looks so much better. My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less intuitive than the old design. Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave the old one as optional as it was during the past few months.
  - Hurdy 15y ago
    The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on cool new features.
    - vidarh 15y ago
      The only cool new feature I'd like would be a flag to make Google stop fucking with the UI.
    - esc 15y ago
      Thanks for the answer. Based on the discussion here, one especially cool new feature would be a 'classic' mode that would mimic the look and feel of the old design :)
      - Hurdy 15y ago
        It's not possible to please everyone when you do a UI change and have 300+ million users, but we do try to fix some issues people have with the new design (e.g. setting for text buttons, high contrast theme). Of course it has to look consistent with other products so there are some limitations. Our community manager wrote a much more eloquent answer to that topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get_rid_of_the_new_look/c4eyaa8 http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get...
xpressyoo 15y ago
This could be of interest to some of the readers. I'm the developer of Gmelius, a poly-browser extension that proposes a better and cleaner Gmail™ inbox, http://gmelius.com http://gmelius.com . The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. NB: As you will surely notice I'm currently redesigning the homepage... Feel free to leave me your comments/suggestions both on the extension and the new website.
kfury 15y ago
I designed the original Gmail UX and I have to admit I'd changed every pref in my accounts exactly as Jason did. Good call.
- pg 15y ago
  You did a great job. I didn't realize how quietly good the old design was till I looked at it side by side with the new one.
- rachelbythebay 15y ago
  Aha! I must thank you for your original design. I have a question, though: did you intend for people to frequently click "select unstarred" (or similar) and [archive] at the top to cull the list? I used to use it that way to deal with the flood of mail coming in (prod lists, oncall pages, etc.) and it always just felt right. I've always wondered if that was intentional or just something I happened to land on. When they pulled that out in 2010, that was the beginning of the end for me. "0.07% of people use select unstarred", apparently.
- jasoncrawford 15y ago
  Flattered to hear that--thanks, Kevin.
- vidarh 15y ago
  Too bad they ruined it with this redesign. The old one was pleasant and unobtrusive and overall great. The new one is making seriously consider leaving Gmail...
shad0wfax 15y ago
I find it hard google took away customizing the theme. The classic theme 'Tree' is the only one that I feel a little good about.
pg 15y ago
This article made me finally bite the bullet and convert. I've been using the new design for the last several hours. I happen to have a window open with the old design, so I know it's not merely my imagination that the new one is worse. Not enormously so, but definitely worse. Read mails are more legible in the old version, because there is more contrast between black letters and the old light blue background than between black and the new gray. It's also harder to parse the list of emails visually in the new design. In the old one, the 3D checkbox acted like a bullet point, and the name of the sender was closer to it. Now the heavy checkbox has been replaced by a faint square, and the sender's name is about 2x further away from it. So scanning my email is no longer like scanning a bulleted list. It's just rows of text. That's a big deal functionally. There's a reason bulleted lists exist as a format, and removing the bullet points from the average bulleted list would make it significantly less legible. It's a bummer to see Google making things work worse in order to make them look better (or worse still, more consistent). That's the sort of thing big companies do. Which I suppose Google now is. But they had at least been trying not to act like one before.
- statictype 15y ago
  or worse still, more consistent So you believe that consistency among UI screens should take a backseat to usefulness? I agree with this but I know there are a lot of people who believe the opposite - that consistency is more important to good design. And this isn't limited to big companies.
  - damncabbage 15y ago
    Consistency is only a means to an end. That end can be a net positive, but I think pg is alluding to consistency for the sake of Google's convenience, rather than the convenience of its users.
  - j_baker 15y ago
    I'd argue that a consistently poor interface is preferable to an inconsistently well-designed interface. I can get used to a poorly-designed UI if I only have to learn how to do so once. It's when I have to learn different ways to do the same thing that it becomes annoying.
koevet 15y ago
I'm using Google Apps and the "high contrast" theme is missing from the list.
rdl 15y ago
I can't imagine using gmail for high-volume email; I've used it at various times due to being lazy about setting up something better, but ugh. mutt is so much better, using maildirs synced with imap (with mbsync or something). Totally customizable, per-folder triggers, and works in a terminal.
- tome 15y ago
  Yes, I can't understand why highly computer-literate people use GMail. There must be something very compelling about it because it's so popular, but no one's ever explained to me what it is. If anyone here wants to explain, I'd appreciate it! I use mutt too, which I find incredibly flexible. The only downside I experience compared to GMail is that searching is not as powerful. Am I missing something?
  - comex 15y ago
    I've never used mutt, but I depend on Gmail's conversation view (a smoother experience than going through messages one by one) and easy searching of gigabytes of email; a proportional font, auto-linkification, and built-in video chat don't hurt either.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Searching is the one thing I still need to figure out for mutt (I cheat now by sending a copy of everything to gmail just for search). Linkification is handled by the terminal program.
      - comex 15y ago
        To be fair, Gmail search takes several seconds for a basic query now, so I'm considering switching to Mail.app, which has the all-important conversation view.
niels 15y ago
This reminds me of when people complained about the new facebook design.
stock_toaster 15y ago
I "coped" with it by switching to sparrow as my gmail frontend.
jan_g 15y ago
I'm obviously in minority here, but I don't stress too much about the design as long as unread messages are in bold text. But this might be due to me working mostly in terminals and text/code editors, where design never was a top priority. The things I care about most in gmail are: 1. reliability, speed and lots of space 2. good spam filtering 3. web view of various office documents (I used to cringe when someone sent me .doc or .xls, not anymore) 4. fast search which also includes gtalk conversations (invaluable) If one or two of these things goes away, then I'll probably switch.
irpap 15y ago
I've always been using the Candy theme, and I like much better the way it looks with the new design. It's quite girly though, which unfortunately might exclude most of HN readers. But I agree that anything other than the compact display density option makes the experience much worse.
surgi 15y ago
I also hate the new design, even after few hours I've spent trying to get used to it. With all the necessary settings (compact mode, text buttons etc.), the main flaw stays - theres no freaking border between message body and ads! C'mon Google, this is just too obvious. Wonder how users will switch to some other webmail or desktop clients, how many of them will install some ad-blockers, just because of this. You realise, Google, that this would mean actually less clicking on your ads? Speaking of intentional clicks here.
joelthelion 15y ago
Using a web-service and raging when it gets redesigned or closed is pretty stupid. People who don't like when other people decide for them should use real email clients with a standard protocol such as IMAP.
- Rage 15y ago
  bot sure if i follow you here, gmail uses IMAP, i never read my mails on the website, always in Mail (or sparrow, on osx)
  - joelthelion 15y ago
    Yes, of course, you can do that as well. As long as you don't depend on their server-side UI, you're not subject to unwanted UI changes.
- otibom 15y ago
  Do you know an email client that handles conversations the way gmail does ?
- joeyh 15y ago
  You say that and get downvoted.. My email client is a shell built up carefully to my needs over years. Inhabiting it has shaped me in turn. I know that it won't change without my say, and if I move to another shell one day it will be my own choice. From this perspective it's so weird to see those who have flitted from shortlived flower to flower bemoaning their passing.
Rage 15y ago
I totally disagree, more blank space make it easier to read, the BIG problem of the redesign are icons that doesn't clearly mean what they do. But hey, it's nice that you can revert a bit. (but i must be satan, i also like FB timeline)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
kennethcwilbur 15y ago
I have never been so frustrated with a UI redesign as I have been with Gmail and Analytics. Unfortunately, I was already using all of the settings pointed out in this post, and I still can't get comfortable with the new design. I can't separate how much of that frustration comes from the large degree of change and how much comes from my long history of use, but the frustration is huge. I know that many Google employees were similarly frustrated when they were eating their dog food last august. Yet the new look was rolled out anyway. So I can only assume that the company had solid UI data showing that their target group of users prefer the new design. And I can therefore only assume that the target group of users does not include users like me. Consequently, there is an opportunity here for somebody to do email right for the people frustrated by the new gmail redesign. I would happily pay for an email interface that makes sense and doesn't change against my wishes... especially if it doesn't require switching to microsoft. Until then, I will be very grateful to the person who pointed out the 'slow-connection' interface is still available.
- sb 15y ago
  Hm, it seems strange though that they're not keeping the old interface, which is what many people were using Gmail in the first place (even if their target group prefers the new interface.) Come to think of it, it's also kind of sad that HN users are obviously not their target group...
- snowwrestler 15y ago
  I really didn't like the new Analytics interface when they first rolled out the optional beta. I switched a few months ago to gain access to real-time measuring, and now I love it. For me at least, it just took some time to adjust.
falling 15y ago
how can that theme be high contrast? it goes from black on white to black on gray!
isnotchicago 15y ago
Coincidentally, AskMetafilter has a good thread about fixing the redesign: http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone-Gmail-Im-looking-at-you http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-go...
dominik 15y ago
My single largest complaint about the redesign? When you search your messages, the buttons to go to the next page of search result are inexplicably only at the top of the results, not at the bottom. Before I realized this design oversight, I spent a few minutes perplexedly scrolling to the bottom of search results, flabbergasted that those were all the results. You can imagine my frustration at the design team when I finally realized: Oh, the pagination buttons are at the top...
Kilimanjaro 15y ago
Let me scroll the damn page and not just a viewport!!! That's my only complain. Had to get it out of my chest. Move on.
polynomial 15y ago
There are 2 distinct threads woven through this discussion. One directly addressing Gmail's redesign which touches mainly on UX and implementation issues. The other being the more perennial debate between desktop vs. web mail clients. I wish HN allowed for comment collapsing at least which would make this and other conversations easier to follow just the threads that are of interest. (Reddit has this, not sure why HN doesn't)
bane 15y ago
Wow, tremendously better. I wasn't even aware of some of these like text for the buttons!

273 points by jasoncrawford 15y ago

Personally I really like the new design, despite the fact I have actually implemented most of the things mentioned in the article. However, I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation, and this doesn't include any of the stuff from the labs feature set.

sho_hn 15y ago
> I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.
- pbreit 15y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Most desktop email clients have _very_ limited customizability.
  - hrktb 15y ago
    On the other hand, if you don't like one you can get any other that fits your bill.
    - Jach 15y ago
      You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out. But I join the chuckling at the notion that "this demonstrates gmail's flexibility". If it was really flexible and customizable, I would still have the old theme.
      - chimeracoder 15y ago
        > You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out. Gmail's IMAP works, though it's had a number of minor-but-irritating bugs for years (these bugs even affect the official applications too). I wish they'd fix them - I get that it's not in their interest to support nonstandard clients for which they receive no ad revenue, but that's no excuse here, because they still cause some of the same problems on the Android and Blackberry apps. This article, dated February 2008 (four years ago!) is just as relevant today as it was then. The duplication of messages with broken synchronization is what bothers me the most, as I use offlineimap to handle my mail: http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-imap-implementation http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-...
  - sho_hn 15y ago
    In my experience, they're usually far more customizable. Clients I've used include KMail on Linux, The Bat! on Windows and Mozilla's Thunderbird, all of which offer myriad options to customize the appearance and behavior of message list, message pane and folder lists, though the first two apps much more so than Thunderbird. You also get to modify things like toolbars much more freely, and OS/toolkit theming usually also beats the GMail theming system. You could argue that GMail has a higher customization potential given the fact that you can muck around with the document client-side (though Thunderbird extensions are similar, and if you really go down that road: I can also change the source code of KMail and recompile it), but we're talking in-app options here. And so I find the notion that "GMail has impressive configurability because it has the options described in the article" amusing. Somehow the world has forgotten just how sophisticated an experience a regular old desktop app running in the context of a regular old desktop environment can be. I'd also argue that regular old desktop toolkits and libraries still require a lot less investment of effort to achieve such levels of sophistication than the web development environment does at the moment. Like I said, thought-provoking.
    - cookiecaper 15y ago
      Also worth noting is that Thunderbird's layout can be thoroughly customized with a bit of JavaScript hacking via its extensions interface, just as Firefox can. While TB may not have tons of visual options by default, it can still get them via third-party extension.
      - sho_hn 15y ago
        Aye, that's what I was talking about with "Tb extensions are similar [in their capabilities] (to GreaseMonkey-style site hacks)".
        cookiecaper 15y ago
        Hmm, didn't see that part. Maybe you edited? Maybe I just skimmed it. Sorry. :)
- ditojim 15y ago
  You're missing out on a ton of great Gmail features if you are using a desktop mail client. Integrated hangout/voice /text chat, phone, conversation view, the social pane with contextual information..the list goes on.
  - nopassrecover 15y ago
    This isn't a rebuttal, but Outlook 2010 has most (if not all) of those things.
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      The only thing I'm aware of Outlook 2010 having from that list is the social networking pane.
      - nopassrecover 15y ago
        Outlook has conversation view as well, and Microsoft Lync (formerly Office Communicator) integrates the rest of the feature set (yes you're vendor-locked, but you are with GMail too). In my opinion GMail executes better on most of these features, but they're not the only ones to offer them.
        darklajid 15y ago
        Not a fan, but Lync even allows XMPP access (if so configured), so all your GTalk buddies can message you from GMail (at least that should work - didn't try).
        Karunamon 15y ago
        I wasn't aware of that.. will have to check it out! Thanks!
  - tjoff 15y ago
    Why would I want that in my mail application? Those features also only promote you to stay logged in on your gmail account at all times, and there have been numerous security issues with that approach. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail. Every time I see someone use gmail I cringe at how primitive and slow the workflow is.
vl 15y ago
It all good advise, exactly to the point what I use except for the theme - I use "Soft gray" - it's works better with preview pane lab and gets rid of the huge red button.

rachelbythebay 15y ago

You can talk IMAP/POP and SMTP, and you get to control your own user interface, or you can talk HTTP, HTML, and JS and abdicate control to someone else. I fell into that trap myself. I was a heavy user of Gmail for about four years, and when they started changing things and told me "only 0.07% of users use that feature we just removed", it was too late. This mayhem ruined "the cloud" for me ... and I used to help run parts of it. Blah.

ck2 15y ago
What UI do you use? I probably going to use newest Thunderbird when I leave gmail.
- rabidsnail 15y ago
  Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com http://www.postbox-inc.com) is pretty solid.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  For GUI clients, Thunderbird is the best I've seen, followed by Evolution (back when I used it, anyway). Though if you're open to a ncurses-based client, I use mutt. The #1 reason I switched to it (instead of any other client) when the new Gmail design was released was because it opens almost instantaneously. It's a subtle thing, but not having to leave my inbox open all the time and being able to open it in a split second when I need to really helps my workflow.
pbreit 15y ago
Well, except that gmail.com offers much more customization than any desktop email client.
- larsberg 15y ago
  Well, except for emacs/gnus :-)

ck2 15y ago

I am absolutely furious how my account was forced today to the new theme - it's hideous. I've tried several stylish options to no avail, I miss the old dark layout with high contrast buttons. Even the dark theme has a bright white message pane for no reason. It also runs very sluggishly compared to the old UI, not sure why. Well this should give me the kick in the pants to get off gmail anyway.

kevingadd 15y ago
It's slow because all the UI elements in the new themes have alpha transparency and rounded corners. It increases the amount of work your browser has to do to paint it tremendously (though GPU acceleration will help).
- nnethercote 15y ago
  Rounded corners? AFAICT the defining characteristic of the new UI is that every single visual element is a rectangle with a pale grey 1px border. It's all so flat, ugh.

dirkdk 15y ago

besides the default theme and the high contrast theme, all others are useless and look like the work of a 5 year old. Design has a function, namely to make things clear and give the user a good experience.

soulclap 15y ago
I agree. Really makes me wonder if all their themes have been made by developers (like me). 'Work of a 5 year old', exactly.

ajtaylor 15y ago

I HATE HATE HATE the new design! I was dreading the day they took away the old look, but these tips go a long way to making gmail usable for me again. Thanks!

davux 15y ago

I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really small. (I'm not usually one to complain just because things changed, I didn't like the mystery meat icons either, but I can get over something trivial like that.) It just doesn't work. I couldn't really figure out where else to go, but OWA 2010 doesn't have these problems, so I went to Office 365 for my own domain (and forwarded Gmail). I never thought I'd pay for email but considering how vital mail is, having real support is a nice piece of mind. I remember how awesome webmail seemed in 2003 (when I switched from Outlook to Gmail), but now that I've gone back to Outlook, I see all the awesome stuff that I was missing. This is really not to credit Outlook though, I'm sure Gmail (threading) influenced them greatly in the past 8 years. I know you can just use Outlook+Gmail, but sadly IMAP isn't nearly as good as Exchange.

eternalban 15y ago
Try http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html
- davux 15y ago
  Thanks, I know about the basic HTML site. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me, though. The basic site is literally worse than the 2003 version.
  - mattee 15y ago
    I have always used the basic version of gmail. It works very well for me. The site design has not changed.
- chintan 15y ago
  Thanks for this gem! Did they forgot to change this view or G-Plusification will kill this as well?

dancesdrunk 15y ago

I quite like the new design, and I've been using it since it was in "beta" a couple of months ago. It certainly provided a couple of frustrating days before I got used to it, but I find it much more soft on the eyes - to me the old layout now looks pretty harsh; giving the impression of being just "functional". A lot of non-technical folks I work (and live!) with find the new design much, much more pleasing. Bear in mind these are the folks that use hotmail, yahoo etc - so they really are after the "eye candy" more than the functionality; and with google's new social push I can assume this is now the target audience. My only complaint would be about the icons; regardless of wether you've used Gmail before - you will get caught out; a few days ago it took me a good few minutes before I could find out how to get to my contacts.

deleted 15y ago
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teach 15y ago

My biggest new-Gmail-design pet-peeve is that the Display Density setting is only respected if your browser window is wide enough. I prefer the "Comfortable" setting. I have a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, but I don't have my browser window maximized (it only takes up 65-75% of the screen width). So, GMail has helpfully reduced my display density to "Cozy", ignoring my setting. As far as I know, there's no way to "fix" this; it's a known issue but there's no workaround other than making my browser window wider.

notJim 15y ago
It took my months of using the new design before I realized this. My impression before was simply that the design was “broken” on my desktop computer until one day I resized the window and discovered this issue.
no_more_death 15y ago
Yes, many webapps do not take into account that modern screens are quite large enough to display multiple windows comfortably.

halayli 15y ago

I stopped using it and moved to Mail.app. I cannot stand in-page scrolling.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ken 15y ago

A year or two ago I got tired of my email UI changing every week, so I switched to the "plain HTML" view. It's not as fast or smooth or javascript-y but I don't think it's changed a bit in years.

Caligula 15y ago

Its not just GMAIL. Google analytics is painfully ugly. The first screen before showed a list of all the sites and traffic. Now it shows just the list of accounts. Its awful. There is no way anymore to use the classic design. Also, once I am in google analytics it is just a UI mess. They cram every feature possible and make it unintelligible. They are ruining the UI for gmail,google search and google analytics.

conradfr 15y ago
I must be using wrong because I have to do so more clicks with the new Analytics design to see things I want, it's frustrating.

soulclap 15y ago

I don't like change. That said, any browser-based alternatives?

viraptor 15y ago
I like zoho personally. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of gmail, but it's at least decent and supports custom domains in free option.

conradfr 15y ago

Sadly for me I dislike the High contrast theme as much as the new default one.

_feda_ 15y ago

Just use thunderbird if you're on a desktop or laptop (ie. not an ios or android device, although I'm sure they have equivalents). I recommend installing muttator, the equivalent of vimperator for thunderbird. It will make the time you spend with email much more efficient.

ticks 15y ago

When I read this headline, I assumed Google had redesigned it again... didn't realise people were still using the old design. Personally, the redesign pushed me back to Thunderbird and I ended up deleting thousands of emails. It was quite liberating.

adgar 15y ago

This is more like a "how to revert to 2006 GMail" list. I mean, he even goes out of his way to turn off Priority Inbox and important markers. That has nothing to do with the redesign - it's just turning off year+ old features, which is what a good portion of the post is. Luckily for the author, options exist to turn off all the features that have been released in the past many years. Of course, there's some apportioning of valid and invalid frustration with any redesign, and I won't invalidate any of that here. But this post just comes off as "make all the scary new stuff go away!"

MaysonL 15y ago
Priority Inbox is Google'S broken idea of what is important to me and what is not: it's ugly, distracting, and worse than without it.
jasoncrawford 15y ago
I tried Priority Inbox for a while when it first came out. It's an interesting feature and maybe it works for some people, but I decided I didn't need it. It didn't matter until the redesign, though. In the new design, the "importance markers" are very similar in appearance to the stars, and they are right next to each other. It's hard to tell them apart at a glance. That's why I finally had to turn them off.
- ericd 15y ago
  Thanks for the tips, I'd done most of these when they changed to the new theme, but the the icon button/web clip tips escaped me. Thanks for those! I couldn't find the high contrast theme, unfortunately. As a random anecdotal data point, my inbox would be completely unusable without priority inbox. My email volume is way too high without it.

jlft 15y ago

What concerns me more about the new design compared to the old original is the readability: now it is much worse. Why not offer the most popular old themes (adapted to the new layout) an option?

andrewfelix 15y ago

I was so busy using gmail I barely noticed the transition. Which for me says everything. Great design shouldn't be noticed, it should just work. Obviously this is just one anecdote. But for me gmail is still the indispensable tool it always was. For all its shortcomings it is an amazing product.

Jach 15y ago
I'm finding this hard to believe. You didn't notice when the Send button went from the bottom of the message to the top? Maybe you meant that you noticed but didn't find it jarring enough to cause a lot of confusion?
- andrewfelix 15y ago
  I'm finding it hard to believe that you down-voted me for expressing a personal observation. Even after I expressly pointed out that it was an anecdote.
  - Jach 15y ago
    I didn't downvote you. Don't assume.
    - andrewfelix 15y ago
      Your entire original reply was an assumption.
- taeric 15y ago
  I confess I haven't really noticed any of the button changes. This is mainly because I am almost 100% keyboard in gmail, though. Send is a quaint tab-enter. :) I can say every now and then I look for the buttons, but the only one I really ever find myself using is the refresh button, and that is simply if I wasn't already positioned on the keyboard.
  - mattmanser 15y ago

twelvechairs 15y ago

Its a constant wonder how Google and other large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job. You'd think that Apple's successes might actually make them realise that great interfaces (especially if they can outdo the competition) are hugely valuable. Some things about the new design are defensible, however others are definitely not. My particular pet hate is that all the things that are not mail services (but you can still access within gmail) are splattered around all corners of the screen. Chat is in one corner (along with 'gadgets' - whatever they are). G+ is in the opposite. And in a third (behind a button that is very unhelpfully named 'gmail') are contacts and tasks. Where is the sense in that???

andrewfelix 15y ago
>large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job There are obviously a lot of unhappy users with legitimate gripes. But Google would probably be looking at the growth of Gmail to validate what ever the design department is doing. That growth is pretty impressive.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  Growth? Gmail grew 3 or 4 years ago. I wouldn't recommend Gmail to anyone now, it's just another Hotmail type service, there's nothing special or good about Gmail anymore. What really surprised me is how few of my friends get the 'conversation' view even in 2012. After too many awkward conversations and now their 'we've got absolutely no design skills and can't design for shit' redesign, I'm just shrugging when people say their hotmail account has been hacked for the 15th time.
  - AVTizzle 15y ago
    I've been using gmail pretty exclusively for the past 4 years now, and haven't really had to much exposure to other services. But I've been extremely satisfied. Enough to stick around. So just out of curiosity - what services would you recommend to an inquiring mind?

no_more_death 15y ago

I loved the new design. Much less clutter. A service I use every waking moment need not label everything. I like the direction of Google's design efforts. The Google+ design will continue to evolve, I'm sure (it is not quite there yet).

Jach 15y ago

Another trick I found is to go into Labs and enable the one that moves the in-browser chat box to the right side of the inbox. It's not as nice as before where it just stacked on the left side, but with the new design it wanted to show me one of the chat box or utility at-a-glance views like my Calendar, but not both. Now I get both again, at the inexpensive cost of horizontal screen estate.

kreitje 15y ago

Their spam/filtering has gone down hill. It does a great job with the spam. Unfortunately, several people I communicate with a few times a day, half of their stuff goes straight to the trash and I don't see it. If I login to webmail I can see they have both an Inbox and Trash label on them but my phone and mail client to register the new mail and it doesn't show in the Inbox. I just want it to pick one.

waivej 15y ago
Yup, I hit this too. I think they score things without SPF records as spam. Though this causes trouble because another company I use bounces mail if you use an SPF. In the end, I'm still using Gmail and ditching the other company...but not recommending Gmail anymore because of the disruption.
Hurdy 15y ago
Can you rephrase that? How do these messages get the trash label?
- kreitje 15y ago
  I go into the trash label inside Gmail. I click on a message that I didn't want to go straight to my trash. At the top where it shows the Trash label there is also an Inbox one with it. As soon as I click the "x" on the label, I can see the email being downloaded by the mail client I use. It is of course displaying the Inbox and not Trash.
- kreitje 15y ago
  Forgot to mention how they get them. Either someone has my login and is messing with me by somehow adding the Trash and Inbox label or there is a glitch in the system putting both labels on it. My guess is the glitch.
  - Hurdy 15y ago
    There is no glitch that just adds trash labels. Did you check if you have any filters set up that might be responsible?

jazzychad 15y ago

I know I was probably 1 of 10 people that actually used (and liked!) the Terminal theme with all green monospaced text... sadly that is now gone, and Terminal theme is now just a lame white on black with variable-width font. bummer :(

ominous 15y ago
Yep. Only a blinking shell prompt remains, under "Google" (top left)

mikebracco 15y ago

I'd also add a tip to check out the Minimalist Suite http://minimalistsuite.com http://minimalistsuite.com - It's Chrome extension for Gmail as well as other Google properties that allows you to customize the UI and remove of things you don't use. There are many that do this but this is the best IMHO.

lindablus 15y ago

The android theme is quite good, better than the old one imo. Otherwise, I love the text label.

Metapony 15y ago

I do not like the new redesign, and will have to implement these tips just to make it a little more usable. I wish Google wouldn't do sucky things like this. Also Googe seems to have the worst branding. Google+, really? You think that's more alluring than Facebook? Also, rebranding the android app marketplace as "Google Play"? That's just terrible.

xtacy 15y ago

I use the following changes to the style sheet for some more colour contrast: /* Increase contrast on some arrows */ .T-I-ax7.T-I-JE .T-I-J3 { opacity: 0.1 !important; } /* Make new chat highlight red instead of blue */ .Hz .k, .Hz .n, .Hz .l { background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(192, 0, 0) !important; }

TazeTSchnitzel 15y ago
oh god, obfuscated CSS...
- xtacy 15y ago
  I doubt it was done on purpose. I think it's what minifying does to your CSS files.

abentspoon 15y ago

You can actually still use the old interface for a little while longer, even if you've been forced over to the redesign. http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail

esc 15y ago
Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old one feels and looks so much better. My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less intuitive than the old design. Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave the old one as optional as it was during the past few months.
- Hurdy 15y ago
  The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on cool new features.
  - vidarh 15y ago
    The only cool new feature I'd like would be a flag to make Google stop fucking with the UI.
  - esc 15y ago
    Thanks for the answer. Based on the discussion here, one especially cool new feature would be a 'classic' mode that would mimic the look and feel of the old design :)
    - Hurdy 15y ago
      It's not possible to please everyone when you do a UI change and have 300+ million users, but we do try to fix some issues people have with the new design (e.g. setting for text buttons, high contrast theme). Of course it has to look consistent with other products so there are some limitations. Our community manager wrote a much more eloquent answer to that topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get_rid_of_the_new_look/c4eyaa8 http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get...

xpressyoo 15y ago

This could be of interest to some of the readers. I'm the developer of Gmelius, a poly-browser extension that proposes a better and cleaner Gmail™ inbox, http://gmelius.com http://gmelius.com . The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. NB: As you will surely notice I'm currently redesigning the homepage... Feel free to leave me your comments/suggestions both on the extension and the new website.

kfury 15y ago

I designed the original Gmail UX and I have to admit I'd changed every pref in my accounts exactly as Jason did. Good call.

pg 15y ago
You did a great job. I didn't realize how quietly good the old design was till I looked at it side by side with the new one.
rachelbythebay 15y ago
Aha! I must thank you for your original design. I have a question, though: did you intend for people to frequently click "select unstarred" (or similar) and [archive] at the top to cull the list? I used to use it that way to deal with the flood of mail coming in (prod lists, oncall pages, etc.) and it always just felt right. I've always wondered if that was intentional or just something I happened to land on. When they pulled that out in 2010, that was the beginning of the end for me. "0.07% of people use select unstarred", apparently.
jasoncrawford 15y ago
Flattered to hear that--thanks, Kevin.
vidarh 15y ago
Too bad they ruined it with this redesign. The old one was pleasant and unobtrusive and overall great. The new one is making seriously consider leaving Gmail...

shad0wfax 15y ago

I find it hard google took away customizing the theme. The classic theme 'Tree' is the only one that I feel a little good about.

pg 15y ago

This article made me finally bite the bullet and convert. I've been using the new design for the last several hours. I happen to have a window open with the old design, so I know it's not merely my imagination that the new one is worse. Not enormously so, but definitely worse. Read mails are more legible in the old version, because there is more contrast between black letters and the old light blue background than between black and the new gray. It's also harder to parse the list of emails visually in the new design. In the old one, the 3D checkbox acted like a bullet point, and the name of the sender was closer to it. Now the heavy checkbox has been replaced by a faint square, and the sender's name is about 2x further away from it. So scanning my email is no longer like scanning a bulleted list. It's just rows of text. That's a big deal functionally. There's a reason bulleted lists exist as a format, and removing the bullet points from the average bulleted list would make it significantly less legible. It's a bummer to see Google making things work worse in order to make them look better (or worse still, more consistent). That's the sort of thing big companies do. Which I suppose Google now is. But they had at least been trying not to act like one before.

statictype 15y ago
or worse still, more consistent So you believe that consistency among UI screens should take a backseat to usefulness? I agree with this but I know there are a lot of people who believe the opposite - that consistency is more important to good design. And this isn't limited to big companies.
- damncabbage 15y ago
  Consistency is only a means to an end. That end can be a net positive, but I think pg is alluding to consistency for the sake of Google's convenience, rather than the convenience of its users.
- j_baker 15y ago
  I'd argue that a consistently poor interface is preferable to an inconsistently well-designed interface. I can get used to a poorly-designed UI if I only have to learn how to do so once. It's when I have to learn different ways to do the same thing that it becomes annoying.

koevet 15y ago

I'm using Google Apps and the "high contrast" theme is missing from the list.

rdl 15y ago

I can't imagine using gmail for high-volume email; I've used it at various times due to being lazy about setting up something better, but ugh. mutt is so much better, using maildirs synced with imap (with mbsync or something). Totally customizable, per-folder triggers, and works in a terminal.

tome 15y ago
Yes, I can't understand why highly computer-literate people use GMail. There must be something very compelling about it because it's so popular, but no one's ever explained to me what it is. If anyone here wants to explain, I'd appreciate it! I use mutt too, which I find incredibly flexible. The only downside I experience compared to GMail is that searching is not as powerful. Am I missing something?
- comex 15y ago
  I've never used mutt, but I depend on Gmail's conversation view (a smoother experience than going through messages one by one) and easy searching of gigabytes of email; a proportional font, auto-linkification, and built-in video chat don't hurt either.
  - rdl 15y ago
    Searching is the one thing I still need to figure out for mutt (I cheat now by sending a copy of everything to gmail just for search). Linkification is handled by the terminal program.
    - comex 15y ago
      To be fair, Gmail search takes several seconds for a basic query now, so I'm considering switching to Mail.app, which has the all-important conversation view.

niels 15y ago

This reminds me of when people complained about the new facebook design.

stock_toaster 15y ago

I "coped" with it by switching to sparrow as my gmail frontend.

jan_g 15y ago

I'm obviously in minority here, but I don't stress too much about the design as long as unread messages are in bold text. But this might be due to me working mostly in terminals and text/code editors, where design never was a top priority. The things I care about most in gmail are: 1. reliability, speed and lots of space 2. good spam filtering 3. web view of various office documents (I used to cringe when someone sent me .doc or .xls, not anymore) 4. fast search which also includes gtalk conversations (invaluable) If one or two of these things goes away, then I'll probably switch.

irpap 15y ago

I've always been using the Candy theme, and I like much better the way it looks with the new design. It's quite girly though, which unfortunately might exclude most of HN readers. But I agree that anything other than the compact display density option makes the experience much worse.

surgi 15y ago

I also hate the new design, even after few hours I've spent trying to get used to it. With all the necessary settings (compact mode, text buttons etc.), the main flaw stays - theres no freaking border between message body and ads! C'mon Google, this is just too obvious. Wonder how users will switch to some other webmail or desktop clients, how many of them will install some ad-blockers, just because of this. You realise, Google, that this would mean actually less clicking on your ads? Speaking of intentional clicks here.

joelthelion 15y ago

Using a web-service and raging when it gets redesigned or closed is pretty stupid. People who don't like when other people decide for them should use real email clients with a standard protocol such as IMAP.

Rage 15y ago
bot sure if i follow you here, gmail uses IMAP, i never read my mails on the website, always in Mail (or sparrow, on osx)
- joelthelion 15y ago
  Yes, of course, you can do that as well. As long as you don't depend on their server-side UI, you're not subject to unwanted UI changes.
otibom 15y ago
Do you know an email client that handles conversations the way gmail does ?
joeyh 15y ago
You say that and get downvoted.. My email client is a shell built up carefully to my needs over years. Inhabiting it has shaped me in turn. I know that it won't change without my say, and if I move to another shell one day it will be my own choice. From this perspective it's so weird to see those who have flitted from shortlived flower to flower bemoaning their passing.

Rage 15y ago

I totally disagree, more blank space make it easier to read, the BIG problem of the redesign are icons that doesn't clearly mean what they do. But hey, it's nice that you can revert a bit. (but i must be satan, i also like FB timeline)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

kennethcwilbur 15y ago

I have never been so frustrated with a UI redesign as I have been with Gmail and Analytics. Unfortunately, I was already using all of the settings pointed out in this post, and I still can't get comfortable with the new design. I can't separate how much of that frustration comes from the large degree of change and how much comes from my long history of use, but the frustration is huge. I know that many Google employees were similarly frustrated when they were eating their dog food last august. Yet the new look was rolled out anyway. So I can only assume that the company had solid UI data showing that their target group of users prefer the new design. And I can therefore only assume that the target group of users does not include users like me. Consequently, there is an opportunity here for somebody to do email right for the people frustrated by the new gmail redesign. I would happily pay for an email interface that makes sense and doesn't change against my wishes... especially if it doesn't require switching to microsoft. Until then, I will be very grateful to the person who pointed out the 'slow-connection' interface is still available.

sb 15y ago
Hm, it seems strange though that they're not keeping the old interface, which is what many people were using Gmail in the first place (even if their target group prefers the new interface.) Come to think of it, it's also kind of sad that HN users are obviously not their target group...
snowwrestler 15y ago
I really didn't like the new Analytics interface when they first rolled out the optional beta. I switched a few months ago to gain access to real-time measuring, and now I love it. For me at least, it just took some time to adjust.

falling 15y ago

how can that theme be high contrast? it goes from black on white to black on gray!

isnotchicago 15y ago

Coincidentally, AskMetafilter has a good thread about fixing the redesign: http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone-Gmail-Im-looking-at-you http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-go...

dominik 15y ago

My single largest complaint about the redesign? When you search your messages, the buttons to go to the next page of search result are inexplicably only at the top of the results, not at the bottom. Before I realized this design oversight, I spent a few minutes perplexedly scrolling to the bottom of search results, flabbergasted that those were all the results. You can imagine my frustration at the design team when I finally realized: Oh, the pagination buttons are at the top...

Kilimanjaro 15y ago

Let me scroll the damn page and not just a viewport!!! That's my only complain. Had to get it out of my chest. Move on.

polynomial 15y ago

There are 2 distinct threads woven through this discussion. One directly addressing Gmail's redesign which touches mainly on UX and implementation issues. The other being the more perennial debate between desktop vs. web mail clients. I wish HN allowed for comment collapsing at least which would make this and other conversations easier to follow just the threads that are of interest. (Reddit has this, not sure why HN doesn't)

bane 15y ago

Wow, tremendously better. I wasn't even aware of some of these like text for the buttons!