4 ms·

And I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. Gmail was perfect.

by blhack 14y ago

dredmorbius 14y ago
Good luck with that. SAAS means you're vulnerable to vendor change with every pageload. Though there are getting to be tools which allow you to reverse-engineer sites and design them how you want, but this is subject to a lot of churn keeping up with the SAAS vendor. Still lovin' my mutt.
- pyre 14y ago
  True, but it would be nice to augment Mutt with things like tags and conversations[1] without having convoluted setups involving hacks with external scripts. Another example, it would be really cool to be able to edit email as Markdown/Textile/reStructuredText and have it converted to a text+html (multipart/alternative) email, but currently there is no way to do that with Mutt without using some sort of sendmail wrapper that does this. [1] I realize that Gmail's threading isn't 'true' threading, but I'm talking about pulling in the entire thread even if it's not part of the current email folder.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Not pointing this out for any reason other than it might useful for some: http://sup.rubyforge.org/ http://sup.rubyforge.org/ More generally, though, I last used mutt in the late 90s so I have no clue but.. it doesn't allow for a vim-style of extension by third party addons?
    - xiaomai 14y ago
      I used sup for many years (and contributed some very minor patches). sup is no longer maintained and it's difficult to get running with ruby 1.9. Some good people that weren't happy with sup created notmuch (http://notmuchmail.org/ http://notmuchmail.org/) with similar goals. There is a mutt fork that uses morning called mutt-kz (https://github.com/karelzak/mutt-kz/wiki https://github.com/karelzak/mutt-kz/wiki). I'm not as satisfied with mutt-kz as I was with sup, but it's probably even better if you have invested a lot of time configuring mutt just so.
- skeletonjelly 14y ago
  On the flipside, SAAS means you can augment the interface using browser plugins (user scripts, CSS, etc)!
  - ohhnoodont 14y ago
    That's a characteristic of applications that run in a web browser and has nothing to do with SAAS architecture.
bijupunalor 14y ago
You can get back the old UI using "old gmail" userstyle (http://userstyles.org/styles/57755/the-return-of-old-gmail http://userstyles.org/styles/57755/the-return-of-old-gmail) and a few tweaks such as turning off chat. This only works in chrome or firefox. One complaint I've heard, a lot .. almost everyone thinks new gmail UI is butt ugly. But it's also very functional. My parents were long time yahoo-mail users, who switched a few months ago. They love never having to delete mail in order to tidy, terrific spam detection etc. My dad uses filters and archiving, but my mom has a huge inbox and only ever searches. This dichotomy between searching and labeling is an on-going debate in the family :)
aik 14y ago
>> Gmail was perfect. Comments about perfect technology keep popping up on hn. I would think that claiming any technology is "perfect" is a little self-defeating coming from a tech startup news site? The very core of what we all stand for here is advancing mankind (or making the world a better place) through whatever means we are capable (most often technology). Viewing existing technologies as "perfect" closes the mind to the possibilities of better solutions. I wonder how many times throughout history someone has claimed some piece of technology is perfect, and the same person 10 years later chuckles at the thought of having actually used the now-antiquated and clearly-inferior technology.
- alphakappa 14y ago
  You are probably being too abstract here. What you are saying is true as a general statement, but in Gmail's case, it's big draw was its simple, fast and clean interface that stood as a stark contrast to hotmail and yahoo. The storage it offered was bound to be matched by others soon, but the Ui design was something that could have used incremental feature improvements, not the drastic Web 2.0 treatment it received. Today's gmail interface is hard to use and is slow. Very arguably a far cry from the perfection it seemed to be in 2004.
  - aik 14y ago
    I agree it was good, and probably better in the past just because it was faster and less cluttered. But this attitude: >> I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. I don't agree with, and this is part of what I was addressing as well. I hope they do continue screwing with their interface design, but obviously I rather hope and pray that they improve it rather than make it slower and more cluttered. It doesn't make sense for me to happily use Google products and simultaneously fear that if they touch them they will make them worse. They are the owners of the product, so either I trust that they have some competency or I look elsewhere.
- balac 14y ago
  "Perfect", especially in terms of UI is extremely subjective. I personally prefer the new Gmail design.
RexRollman 14y ago
I understand how you feel, as I feel the same way about Gmail (and about Twitter too). If there is one bad thing about using someone else's platform, it's that they can change it whenever they want.

And I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. Gmail was perfect.

by blhack 14y ago

And I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. Gmail was perfect.

Good luck with that. SAAS means you're vulnerable to vendor change with every pageload. Though there are getting to be tools which allow you to reverse-engineer sites and design them how you want, but this is subject to a lot of churn keeping up with the SAAS vendor. Still lovin' my mutt.

pyre 14y ago
True, but it would be nice to augment Mutt with things like tags and conversations[1] without having convoluted setups involving hacks with external scripts. Another example, it would be really cool to be able to edit email as Markdown/Textile/reStructuredText and have it converted to a text+html (multipart/alternative) email, but currently there is no way to do that with Mutt without using some sort of sendmail wrapper that does this. [1] I realize that Gmail's threading isn't 'true' threading, but I'm talking about pulling in the entire thread even if it's not part of the current email folder.
- petercooper 14y ago
  Not pointing this out for any reason other than it might useful for some: http://sup.rubyforge.org/ http://sup.rubyforge.org/ More generally, though, I last used mutt in the late 90s so I have no clue but.. it doesn't allow for a vim-style of extension by third party addons?
  - xiaomai 14y ago
    I used sup for many years (and contributed some very minor patches). sup is no longer maintained and it's difficult to get running with ruby 1.9. Some good people that weren't happy with sup created notmuch (http://notmuchmail.org/ http://notmuchmail.org/) with similar goals. There is a mutt fork that uses morning called mutt-kz (https://github.com/karelzak/mutt-kz/wiki https://github.com/karelzak/mutt-kz/wiki). I'm not as satisfied with mutt-kz as I was with sup, but it's probably even better if you have invested a lot of time configuring mutt just so.
skeletonjelly 14y ago
On the flipside, SAAS means you can augment the interface using browser plugins (user scripts, CSS, etc)!
- ohhnoodont 14y ago
  That's a characteristic of applications that run in a web browser and has nothing to do with SAAS architecture.

bijupunalor 14y ago

You can get back the old UI using "old gmail" userstyle (http://userstyles.org/styles/57755/the-return-of-old-gmail http://userstyles.org/styles/57755/the-return-of-old-gmail) and a few tweaks such as turning off chat. This only works in chrome or firefox. One complaint I've heard, a lot .. almost everyone thinks new gmail UI is butt ugly. But it's also very functional. My parents were long time yahoo-mail users, who switched a few months ago. They love never having to delete mail in order to tidy, terrific spam detection etc. My dad uses filters and archiving, but my mom has a huge inbox and only ever searches. This dichotomy between searching and labeling is an on-going debate in the family :)

aik 14y ago

>> Gmail was perfect. Comments about perfect technology keep popping up on hn. I would think that claiming any technology is "perfect" is a little self-defeating coming from a tech startup news site? The very core of what we all stand for here is advancing mankind (or making the world a better place) through whatever means we are capable (most often technology). Viewing existing technologies as "perfect" closes the mind to the possibilities of better solutions. I wonder how many times throughout history someone has claimed some piece of technology is perfect, and the same person 10 years later chuckles at the thought of having actually used the now-antiquated and clearly-inferior technology.

alphakappa 14y ago
You are probably being too abstract here. What you are saying is true as a general statement, but in Gmail's case, it's big draw was its simple, fast and clean interface that stood as a stark contrast to hotmail and yahoo. The storage it offered was bound to be matched by others soon, but the Ui design was something that could have used incremental feature improvements, not the drastic Web 2.0 treatment it received. Today's gmail interface is hard to use and is slow. Very arguably a far cry from the perfection it seemed to be in 2004.
- aik 14y ago
  I agree it was good, and probably better in the past just because it was faster and less cluttered. But this attitude: >> I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. I don't agree with, and this is part of what I was addressing as well. I hope they do continue screwing with their interface design, but obviously I rather hope and pray that they improve it rather than make it slower and more cluttered. It doesn't make sense for me to happily use Google products and simultaneously fear that if they touch them they will make them worse. They are the owners of the product, so either I trust that they have some competency or I look elsewhere.
balac 14y ago
"Perfect", especially in terms of UI is extremely subjective. I personally prefer the new Gmail design.

RexRollman 14y ago

I understand how you feel, as I feel the same way about Gmail (and about Twitter too). If there is one bad thing about using someone else's platform, it's that they can change it whenever they want.