20 ms·

I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

• Blinkky 13y ago
  I wouldn't consider myself a gmail power user, but I do use it as my every day email. I love the new updates. Most of the things that gmail makes hard (and when the author says hard he means an extra click) are things that are rarely, if ever, done by me. This is exactly how I think email should function, make the stuff you use most easy. The author mentions things like "It's hard to delete my signature." I've never done that, and if you find yourself deleting your signature all the time you might want to figure out a different work-flow / change your signature. Most of the time when I'm trying to send an email I want to get in and out of the editor as fast as possible. I feel like the new gmail is streamlined for that exact purpose.
  • sp332 13y ago
    When Gmail first launched, they made a big deal of the fact that their user testing revealed ~11 different types of user with distinct workflows. They made sure the Gmail interface supported all those workflows well. It seems like the new interface is going after just one or two, and making life harder for everyone else. I think I will switch back to a desktop email client for day-to-day use and only use the web interface when I'm on a different computer.
    • msrpotus 13y ago
      Do you have a link? Curious to see what kind of user I am (I also generally like the new interface; seems perfectly fine for me).
      • sp332 13y ago
        Hm, looks like I misremembered and there were only 6 types. The exact types are proprietary info but the original author gives a few examples here: https://www.quora.com/Gmail/What-are-the-six-types-of-email-users-identified-by-Google/answer/Kevin-Fox https://www.quora.com/Gmail/What-are-the-six-types-of-email-...
      • bornhuetter 13y ago
        I'm pretty sure I'm not on that list. I've never liked the way the gmail web client works. * I've always disliked conversation view, and I keep ending up turning it off whenever I try it * The lack of ability to sort emails is really annoying * The layout of emails, particularly when trying to reply to an email, I find confusing - in particular it would make far more sense to have the text box at the top of the page That being said, I probably dislike it less now than when I first started using it so I think the changes have generally been positive. On a side note, I think Photoshop is also a UI disaster area.
        • therandomguy 13y ago
          * I've always disliked conversation view, and I keep ending up turning it off whenever I try it >>I hated it deeply, thoroughly till I used it for a while. Now I can't live without it. * The lack of ability to sort emails is really annoying >>It took me some time to rely on search. * The layout of emails, particularly when trying to reply to an email, I find confusing - in particular it would make far more sense to have the text box at the top of the page >>Neutral on this.
      • Fuzzwah 13y ago
        I've just done a bit of googling around to try and find more on this. I've turned up a heap of references to the developers finding 6 different types of users during their 2 years of internal testing before launch. Alas no where is there actually a list of these 6 different types of users. The doc in question was written by Kevin Fox who replied to this quora thread about it, but dodged the question claiming that the info isn't his to divulge. http://www.quora.com/Gmail/What-are-the-six-types-of-email-users-identified-by-Google http://www.quora.com/Gmail/What-are-the-six-types-of-email-u... Weird.
    • manicbovine 13y ago
      > I think I will switch back to a desktop email client for day-to-day use and only use the web interface when I'm on a different computer. I primarily use Mutt because I spend most of my time in a console. I know Mutt gets a bad rap, but it's actively developed, super fast, has excellent (customizable) keyboard shortcuts, and is dead-simple to use if you're already on the command line. Plus, you can bring along your favorite text editor for composition. Mutt also handles gmail labels relatively well. Furthermore, tmux + powerline + mutt means that I get new mail notifications from the console, and switching to mutt is a key combination away. This setup is particularly helpful if I'm emailing about technical matters, since I can split the pane and view whatever code/data/mathematics is under discussion in the email thread. (One point of irritation is that bash doesn't seem to fully support powerline.)
      • dredmorbius 13y ago
        Another mutt user here. It's the best email client I've used, and that's saying a lot, covering a bunch of years, and includes recent and modern ones. It's fast, light, and the keyboard-driven functionality works very, very well for me. The main issues I've got with it: Plays poorly when others send highly formatted mail. I prefer treating email as straight text. HTML-marked up email with color to indicate, say, various quoting levels, obviously doesn't work (it's fragile in any regard). I'll generally keep a secondary GUI mailer (usually KMail from Kontact, the KDE PIM) for such needs. Lack of native tag support. Gmail's ability to tag messages is useful. There are extensions and rewrites which offer similar functionality in mutt. Slow performance on very large mailboxes. With >10k messages, I start seeing performance fall of for various mailbox operations, especially search. There are indexing tools to speed this.
  • kevingadd 13y ago
    When I'm trying to send an email, sure, I want the email client to get out of my way. But I also want to be certain that the email is going to the right person, and that the subject is correct (so they'll read it), etc. And those are all made harder by the new gmail ui. The new gmail UI also uses less of my screen real estate (because it insists on being a tiny popup fake modal that I can't move) which means composing larger emails involves more scrolling. If I'm responding inline to quotes it involves EVEN MORE scrolling. That modal is also glued to the bottom right of my screen, so if I had something there (like a floating window containing the email I was responding to), now I have to carefully resize my gmail window to get the modal into the right place - old fullscreen gmail had text start at the top left, so this wasn't a problem. The new gmail compose mode also breaks the text caret in a way the old one didn't. I don't know if this is a gmail bug caused by using a custom edit control or a firefox bug or what, but it definitely tells me they didn't test it very thoroughly. The new gmail is streamlined for particular purposes and not for others. You'd think that one of the biggest data companies in the universe would be able to gather actual data about how people use their software and ensure they aren't making it significantly worse to use for subsets of the customer base. Maybe this is what Google actually did, and they decided they don't care about the 1-10% of their users who use gmail for anything other than sending glorified SMS messages to people.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • visarga 13y ago
    > Most of the things that gmail makes hard (and when the author says hard he means an extra click) You have to memorize where to do the extra click. For example I tried to unsubscribe from a G+ community today and didn't find the unsubscribe button without a google search. I had to appeal to other websites to learn where the unsubscribe was buried. Same thing happened when I tried to cancel an automated monthly payment in PayPal - they fucking buried the page. Sometimes I have this problem when I try to help someone change a setting on his feature phone. Some essential items are under 5 levels of selection deep. The main problem is that people don't know which one of the button hides what they seek. I liked the old interface much more. I'd like to have the option to remain with the old one.
• twodayslate 13y ago
  > Internal Server Error
  • zzzcpan 13y ago
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.taigeair.com/why-gmail-2013-sucks-terribad-user-experience/&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.tai...
    • taigeair 13y ago
      this one has the images: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qdloSzBqm0EJ:www.taigeair.com/why-gmail-2013-sucks-terribad-user-experience/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qdloSzB...
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • pfg 13y ago
    I made a screenshot (seems like the pictures aren't working for the cache links): http://i.imgur.com/lSC4g0C.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lSC4g0C.jpg
    • taigeair 13y ago
      wow thanks!
    • cmircea 13y ago
      Surely you could've made it a PNG! http://awesomescreenshot.com/00e18gxe65 http://awesomescreenshot.com/00e18gxe65
      • pfg 13y ago
        Damn you, imgur! I actually uploaded a PNG :(
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• taigeair 13y ago
  wow you guys totally crashed my little wordpress site. sorry it's down now :(
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • hdragomir 13y ago
    now that's awful ux. ;-)
  • rschmitty 13y ago
    Don't worry we'll keep trying..every few seconds
  • josefresco 13y ago
    This is the place to ask if you need advice on how to optimize WordPress to survive traffic surges.
    • taigeair 13y ago
      @josefresco Really haha? I thought it was just because I have a cheap hosting service. But yes, advice would be great :)
      • josefresco 13y ago
        Sorry for the late reply, the lowest hanging fruit with WordPress assuming your theme isn't bloated is to implement a caching plugin. This will serve static HTML instead of hitting your DB every page request. There are others but since this post has now aged I'm assuming you have moved on. Contact me if you want specific help.
• hdragomir 13y ago
  Considering Google made all those changes to make the experience better and managing mails easier for most people, I think the author should recognise that he's in the minority - an edge case - and maybe consider switching to an email client that suits his needs rather than whine about one that works just great for many other people.
  • jen_h 13y ago
    How difficult would it be, though, for Google to hide some advanced options in settings for power users to enable? Always Expand Header, Always Expand Collapsed Content, etc. When you're handling more than one or two emails in succession, every keyboard-shortcut that became a triple-click-drag adds up and takes time. I don't believe the author is an extreme minority - Google should cater to all of its customers - requesting that Google add a few options to enable power user mode isn't unreasonable in the slightest.
    • hdragomir 13y ago
      And this, dear jen_h, is how we go about fixing the problem.
    • chch 13y ago
      I realize it's from a different product, but I find that these 'minority' cases in Google products are often summed up by: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=223070#c7 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=223070#c... "Why was this closed if we're leaving it for future consideration?" "Because it's asking for an option and we don't do options."
• Fuzzwah 13y ago
  I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake, but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some getting used to however. Responses to the points made in the article: 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures. Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent email clients do this on their own and are we really that worried about a few extra bytes of data these days? 2) I can’t easily change my email subject. If its time to edit the subject of an email thread maybe it is time to hit the big read "compose" button and start from scratch anyway. 3) Ok, so what if you want to insert a link or something. Drag and drop from the address bar. So easy. 4) Rapportive doesn’t work. I've never used rapportive, it sounds awesome. Bummer on this one. 5) You can’t easily get access to people’s emails. (Also fonts and formatting) This one does bug me, because they've all become 3 clicks (or new shortcut keys to learn). An option to just always display these things would be good.... but I've evolved and learned the hotkeys. In conclusion, I've also been a long time gmail user who got cranky at the fact that the new compose form forced me to change my habits. I learned hotkeys and feel it has made me more efficient. Since I try to spend as little time in life being cranky and optimize efficiency I evolved and moved on. Full list of hotkeys: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en
  • kevingadd 13y ago
    Saying 'hit the big red compose button' totally misses the point of why subjects get edited. If you'd ever participated in a discussion list, you'd know that sometimes a single discussion thread branches out into multiple smaller threads. The best way to handle this is to reply with a new subject so that threaded conversation views in email clients show it as a new thread, but all the participants stay on the reply-to list and the conversation history remains in the quotes. Drag and drop from the address bar to insert a link? What is this, Mac OS 9? I've literally never observed a user drag and drop from the address bar. I know it works, but I'm a power user. Do you really think it makes sense to remove an obvious button for a common operation (inserting a link) just because you assume that users know how to drag-and-drop a text selection from a 16 pixel high rectangle? Maybe all Google's user testers are dragging and dropping fiends so this actually is the reasoning behind it. I don't know how you would find precision drag-and-drop convenient on a typical laptop/chromebook touchpad, though.
• Tomis02 13y ago
  I'm planing to move to fastmail.fm in the near future. I find the Gmail UI very sluggish and quite the opposite of being user friendly, and I also don't have any guarantee I won't become a horror story about how Google automatically shut down my account without me doing anything wrong.
  • oinksoft 13y ago
    The FastMail UI is the best webmail interface I have used. It has keybindings for just about everything, and the UI is snappy and intuitive. Did I mention it doesn't hit me up to join Google+ or give it my mobile? Moving to FastMail from GMail for personal emails, and self-hosted (via Thunderbird) for business emails, has been nothing but a pleasure.
  • ams6110 13y ago
    Fastmail reworked their UI recently as well (shortly after the Opera takeover I think). I preferred the old UI which hadn't really changed in years, but the new one isn't too bad. I do 90% of my email in Emacs though, and only use a browser when I'm on a platform where I don't have ssh.
• georgefox 13y ago
  I'm normally pretty easy to please with UI changes, but even I'm a little frustrated with some of the new compose quirks. Personally, I've had a very hard time putting together bulleted lists in the new compose. To start the list, you need to click the underlined A (for Additional Formatting), then the familiar bulleted list icon. I can live with that, though I'd certainly prefer one click. To do a nested list, though, I often get confused and frustrated. With your existing list, you need to click the underlined A, then click what appears to be the left align icon, which is the Align Menu. From there, Indent More is what you're looking for. It took me quite a while to figure this out, and I still find myself forgetting it frequently. Even when I do remember, I'm frustrated by the maze of clicking I have to go through. I also have trouble with hyperlinks, often clicking the attachment button instead of hovering over the plus to reveal the chained hyperlink icon. I don't know that I've ever used the attachment button (other than mistakenly), as I always drag files onto the message to attach instead. For me, pretty much the only formatting options I want are lists and links, and those are pretty inconvenient to access.
  • Fuzzwah 13y ago
    I can honestly say I've never used text formatting in an email, so I realize we're coming at this from two different directions. If I need a list of things in an email I'll do this: - step 1 - sub step a - sub step b - step 2 - etc Which gets me thinking about how cool it would be if gmail accepted and displayed markdown formatting..... Would that be a winner for you too?
    • pfg 13y ago
      Yeah, that's something I'd really love to see in Gmail as well as Docs. It doesn't even have to be full markdown support, just the most convenient things (* for bullet points, ...)
    • k3n 13y ago
      I hate just about anything and everything about MSOutlook, but this is one feature that I sorely miss in GMail. In MSO, at least if you have the option turned on (although I think it's on by default), you start a new list simply by typing "* some text". When you hit enter, a new bullet-point is automatically created, and hitting enter twice without entering text ends the list. Likewise, typing "1. some text" begins an ordered list with the same behavior of the unordered list. Lists are so common, especially for development and business in general, that this has saved me tons of time over the years. While I do get annoyed at most of the other automagic formatting that MSO crams in, this particular feature is gold. To your question: yes, a MD-enabled editor would probably be the best. MD is quickly becoming ubiquitous, at least in my realm, and is a great compromise between an overblown WYSIWYG abomination and plain text.
• rschmitty 13y ago
  Honest question, why would someone use the gmail ui at all, even before the 2013 changes? I have rules setup in gmail, and sometimes when I need _very good_ search I will login to search, but everything else Outlook covers fine/better. Mac guys at the office use Mail. I've always thought of gmail.com as nice for vacations or using someone elses or crazy times when I dont have laptop/phone/tablet by some act of god
  • Fuzzwah 13y ago
    My personal response: I use outlook for my work email, where I am an "inbox zero" guy. I get an average of around 10 emails a day, so this isn't hard. I use gmail for my personal email addresses (I have a heap of gmail and other hosted accounts all pointing to one central gmail account). I get HEAPS of emails a day. I read the important ones and skim the rest by having my browser window nice and wide and just reading what is displayed on the inbox screen. I treat my gmail inbox unread emails count as a highscore. I have 12,440 unread emails in my gmail inbox. I'm winning my little game.
  • blehn 13y ago
    Hmm, I agree with much of the OP's criticisms of Gmail, however I consider Outlook and Mail to be effective forms of torture.
  • takluyver 13y ago
    Conversation view. It just makes complete sense to me, and since I've started using it, all desktop clients that I've tried (Thunderbird, most recently) have felt awkward. Geary is the only desktop client I've seen embrace the idea, but it's not quite there yet. Plus, I quite like the undo send extension.
  • recursive 13y ago
    Because it's easier to log in via a web browser than it is to install and configure outlook.
• cargo8 13y ago
  Regarding email formatting, I'm pretty sure that for a given message once you click on the formatting tools once, the bar stays open because they know you are formatting things.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• wkral 13y ago
  I don't know if anyone else has this problem but since I use VI for code editing I have a twitch reaction to hit escape a lot when I'm editing text. This actually closes the compose window now. Which is incredibly frustrating. I know it's not a mainstream user problem just something that effect my perception of Gmail on a daily basis.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • Fuzzwah 13y ago
    There is a hotkey editor in labs which you might find handy. Settings > labs > Custom keyboard shortcuts
  • 0bit 13y ago
    if you are on a Mac you can use QuickCursor and edit your mail in vi :) it works in any application that uses a standard Cocoa text box. http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/quickcursor http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/quickcursor
  • pseut 13y ago
    If you use firefox, try the "it's all text" plugin (although I don't know for sure if it works with the new gmail compose). You can write in the editor of your choice.
    • anonite 13y ago
      Nope, new compose breaks that as well, and it used to work fine. Guess it's finally time to switch to mutt.
• manicbovine 13y ago
  For whatever it's worth, it's possible to temporarily switch back to the old compose [1]. Perhaps this is well-known, but I just discovered it. [1] http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/01/switch-to-gmails-old-compose-window/ http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/01/switch-to-gmails-old-compos...
• jl6 13y ago
  Am I the only one who finds email signatures entirely obsolete nowadays?
  • lostlogin 13y ago
    When were they not? And what about the legal disclaimer that is stupidly long at the bottom - which has supposedly never stood up in court anyway. http://www.economist.com/node/18529895 http://www.economist.com/node/18529895
  • taigeair 13y ago
    how do people know your phone number and twitter otherwise?
    • davidsturnbull 13y ago
      Well, they can email and ask. :)
    • jl6 13y ago
      99% of the people I email already know me, and can look up any of those details in an address book or social network. On the rare occasion I'm making first contact, I'm more likely to take care over communicating further contact info in the body of the email.
• rayiner 13y ago
  Gmail is now a cluster fuck of terribleness. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to make you type your email in what is basically a slightly larger chat window? Who decided it would be a good idea to put the "reply" edit box at the end of a potentially very long email? Oh, and make it fit like six lines of text. I swear, this is what happens when you let a bunch of kids run the show. "My emails are rarely ever more than 'kthx' or 'heh' so lets get rid of all that useless space!"
  • imjared 13y ago
    Probably the same team that has usage data for hundreds of millions of users.
    • alayne 13y ago
      I would love to see Google design a car with usage data. It would have one door and the trunk would be perpetually open.
      • marknutter 13y ago
        But it would be self driving..
    • rayiner 13y ago
      I'm gonna quote @kevingadd from down below because I can't say it better myself: "The new gmail is streamlined for particular purposes and not for others. You'd think that one of the biggest data companies in the universe would be able to gather actual data about how people use their software and ensure they aren't making it significantly worse to use for subsets of the customer base. Maybe this is what Google actually did, and they decided they don't care about the 1-10% of their users who use gmail for anything other than sending glorified SMS messages to people." The new gmail is a toy for kids.
      • eropple 13y ago
        Guess I'm a kid, then? I find it faster to write an email on it than I did before and I like the ability to compose with another email in the background. GMail has some bits I don't like, but by and large I'm a pretty big fan.
• mccolin 13y ago
  Completely agree. Still clinging onto my old GMail UI for dear life in both gmail.com and hosted flavors.
• alayne 13y ago
  I have new compose disabled. It's just more incompetent UI design from Google. Even their search page is bad. There are two menu bars after I run a search including two More drop downs and the poorly named Search Tools which seems to change frequently as they A/B test ever worse designs on me. I was hoping Marissa leaving would allow them to hire real designers.
  • iamshs 13y ago
    I agree. I am annoyed by the two menu bars, and also +You thing. Further i used Google Scholar regularly, but now I cannot find it even in the drop down menu. I cannot customize those menu bars, according to my use case. Also, there used to be an option to search videos, instead it has now been replaced with a Youtube option. It is amazing, Google used to be so custom friendly, atleast I perceived them to be...and with advent of G+..........
    • CamperBob2 13y ago
      You guys should see what they've done with Groups. :( The inmates have truly taken over the Googleplex asylum.
      • iamshs 13y ago
        Well, no going back now. With upcoming Google Glass this behavior will become even more prevalent.
• aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that attaching large images makes the composer completely unusable. It is so bad it makes me wonder if anyone in Google actually uses the new composer. They've fixed one bug where the image wouldn't scale to fit the size of its container (i.e. if you had a 3000x3000px image it would render 1:1 as opposed to being shrunk down), but even with the scaling it's still incredibly hard to navigate emails with more than one picture in it. I mean, I have a 1080p monitor, let me use it!
• c--misura 13y ago
  I understand how some of these changes could frustrate users, but, honestly, the analogy ( used in the title ) of 'Photoshop' being user friendly just doesn't hold water. Also, the idea that every choice in UX needs to fit neatly into some Jakob Nielsen checklist is antiquated. I don't think developers/designers should blatantly ignore proven UI methodologies, but there does need to be a balance between standards, and aesthetics, or else, an application runs risk of becoming steril.
• cmircea 13y ago
  I agree with you. The newest updates annoy me a lot, especially the signature one - I commonly write emails in two languages and I need to check if the signature is the correct one; a pain now. Furthermore I use the web client to manage all my email addresses, because it is, well was, convenient. Now if I need to send from a different address I have to take extra steps. WHY?! But what alternative is there? I'm on Windows 8. The built in Metro mail app is... not that great. Outlook 2013 has some parts Metro, some parts leftover from all the way back in '95. I'm not particularly fond of Yahoo either.
• ebbv 13y ago
  I can't remember the last Gmail change that was actually an improvement. In general Google's changes since the Google+ rollout have been 90% terrible. There's been a couple of changes to Youtube that are better (like the really big mode), but overall changes to all Google services have been bad. I feel like they've really lost the plot.
  • jlarocco 13y ago
    GMail changes can be mitigated by using a normal mail client via IMAP. Obviously not an option for everybody, and not a 100% solution, but it helps a lot. I'm also not liking recent changes at Google, so I'm in the process of transitioning away from GMail and the rest of their services for most stuff. Before too long I'll only be using it to login to sites using the "Login with GMail" buttons, and all my real email will go to a different account.
    • ebbv 13y ago
      Except that using a mail client kills the main advantage of Gmail and why I started using it in the first place; consistent, clean interface and ubiquitous presence on all my devices. Yeah I can install mail clients on all of my computers for Gmail, but if I'm gonna bother with a mail client I'd just use mail set up through one of my own domains on one of my own servers.
      • lostlogin 13y ago
        The gmail interface is so very far from clean in my experience. Apples offering stands in stark contrast, such that the irritations with it (I'm not blind, massive buttons, huge click areas, low information density, missing features) are bearable.
        • ebbv 13y ago
          I was referring to the reasons I started using Gmail. I started using Gmail when it was still invite only. At the time Gmail's interface was refreshingly clean.
• plg 13y ago
  pine
• tomkarlo 13y ago
  Does anyone really think Photoshop is a good UX for mass consumption (which is obviously the target for Gmail)? I've been using it since version 2, and I think it's a great product, but for new users it's a miserably difficult product to learn, especially for any kind of casual use. There's a reason why users love apps like Draw Something or (more relevantly) Instagram or Paper. They're able to easily achieve the results they want without investing a huge amount of time in learning the software. Why is that so hard to understand? Not everyone wants to invest 40+ hours in learning Photoshop.
  • cmircea 13y ago
    Nobody thinks Photoshop has a good UX, but that's not the point; the point is it's been consistent, with only small, helpful changes. If Adobe redesigned the Photoshop interface they'd instantly love half their market share, as people using software professionally don't like or have the time to learn something new just because it's better in some odd way. Microsoft did that with Office, the whole Ribbon fiasco, but to their defense: - Office 2003's UI was extremely complicated; GMail's new extra steps are nothing in comparison. - The Ribbon UI was well designed from the start. - All (or most) keyboard shortcuts stayed the same. - Microsoft actually did extensively test the new design and, being Microsoft, it will be supported for a long time. Adobe probably wouldn't be able to pull that off, and it looks like even Google can't anymore.
    • tomkarlo 13y ago
      Yes, but Photoshop has a totally different target market from Gmail, which is why the article's comparison is nonsensical if not entirely wrong. Gmail is designed for everyone and has to support the full spectrum of users, in particular the new ones (because they're the ones picking new email accounts - consider that they're partially trying to target people who still don't have email). Photoshop is designed for a very select set of power users. Saying Gmail's interface is becoming less like Photoshop and that's bad makes no sense at all. You probably wouldn't recommend Photoshop to your Grandma - you'd tell her to use Picasa or iPhoto, both of which I suspect have far more users.
• chetanahuja 13y ago
  Google has been infected by the "minimalistic design" disease in the last few years. The term evidently means "hide everything from the user and present them with a pure white surface". It looks beautiful. The sensitive artist types running google UI now love that. Look at all that negative space. Orgasmic. Ship it.
• wonderyak 13y ago
  > "There is a tradeoff in HCI that is between ease and efficiency. It seems Gmail is less easy to use AND less efficient. The only improvement seems to be design." I would argue that the improvement is the arrangement of pixels to be more eye pleasing -- design improvement would be addressing all of those issues outlined. In fact, this is a design failure.
• antonpug 13y ago
  Time to try Outlook.com buddy. That product beats GMail anytime.
  • cmircea 13y ago
    I gave it a 5 minute trial. Can't figure out if it supports multiple addresses.
    • pullo 13y ago
      it does. setting icon>more mail settings>managing your account
• mixmax 13y ago
  Here's another total usability fail: Tab sends the e-mail you're currently writing instead of indenting text. Everywhere else tab indents text, and when you write an e-mail in gmail you'd expect it to act consistently with how it's used everywhere else. Start writing in gmail, hit tab to indent some text. Congratulations you've now sent half an e-mail to you boss.... I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea.
  • cmircea 13y ago
    Nitpicker's corner: it doesn't actually send the email, it focuses the send button.
    • richardjs 13y ago
      I don't think it's nitpicking. It's the difference between the standard way web forms work and Gmail overriding a known behavior to do something else. That said, after you hit tab, you'll probably type a word and hit space, which will then click the button and send off the message.
      • kevinpet 13y ago
        I had no idea what he was talking about until the replies. You and grandparent are wrong. Standard behavior on web forms is tab moves you to the next element. You are expecting gmail to act like a desktop app, and maybe you could make the argument that it should, but that's a different issue.
        • gcr 13y ago
          We can definitely make the case that it used to and that it doesn't anymore. Sending an email isn't like filling in several text boxes on a web form, it's composing/editing a lengthy message that often has proper formatting like indentation.
          • 3825 13y ago
• mpowered 13y ago
  As always, I feel like people are more averted to a change to a product than the product itself. People complain in droves about how "everything is RUINED" in Facebook or Gmail, but simple fact of the matter is that you can do far more in both than ever before. Gmail features like fulltext label search make me prefer it over almost every other email client. And the author's comment about it being "too hard to change the subject" is by design, because it both breaks threading and pisses people off when you change the subject of an ongoing thread. New subject? Write a new email, idiot.
• mtalantikite 13y ago
  Just make the switch to a desktop client. Lots of friends have been complaining about the new GMail UI and each time I recommend the same thing. I personally use Sparrow, but it seems like it has been abandoned since Google bought it.
  • taigeair 13y ago
    But the cloud...
• guilhermetk 13y ago
  One thing that annoys me in GMail is the fact that it doesn't support .eml files. Every time someone sends me an .eml I have to open my desktop mail client, wait for it to download all mails and then check what's in the file. Exporting mails to .eml would be nice.
• myfonj 13y ago
  Consider even task to "open the contacts list". Who would guess it is hidden under "Gmail logo with dropdown arrow"? [0] Yes, after such recall it is single 'clickdrag' operation, but still, recognition just passed out. [0] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1571982/shots/gmail-open-contacts.gif https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1571982/shots/gmail-open...
• therandomguy 13y ago
  All great points. I'm surprised that I never experienced these problems till you pointed it out. Could be because my usage of Gmail is strictly personal. I would have run into these I used it for work (deleting signature, modifying subject etc.).
• wtvanhest 13y ago
  "I can’t easily change my email subject." This is so crucial since threads are created using the subject. Easily the most frustrating thing about Gmail. SHOW THE SUBJECT! I have sent 3 emails before which all said "TIME SENSITIVE" only to find out later, that only the first was really time sensitive. For non-gmail users getting those emails, this is terrible.
• grownseed 13y ago
  As far as I understand, these UI changes are there to empower "multitasking" and bring Gmail closer to the way social networks and chat work. Now, I loathe the new compose, I like writing my emails in a structured way, with proper formatting, which this new feature doesn't let me do easily (or comfortably); I often use them as reference for docs and whatnot. I'm not saying this doesn't work for some people, but when I see that a large number of people I communicate with can barely read or write properly as it is, I fail to understand how empowering multitasking will make things any better. I'm a bit tired of the "social networks way" becoming the end-all, be-all.
  • chflamplighter 13y ago
    "I'm a bit tired of the "social networks way" becoming the end-all, be-all." Hear, Hear!
  • dwb 13y ago
    I hate receiving long, structured, intricately-formatted emails. If you're writing documents in an email body, don't: that's what Google Docs is for. A good email is as short as possible.
• lnteveryday 13y ago
  There are many keyboard shortcuts available for gmail. You have to enable keyboard shortcuts in the settings though. See this link: http://gizmodo.com/5995218/a-cheat-sheet-of-every-single-gmail-keyboard-shortcut http://gizmodo.com/5995218/a-cheat-sheet-of-every-single-gma... Or enable keyboard shortcuts in gmail and press shift + '/' Some of these keyboard shortcuts address some of the issues pointed out in the post, but I did not see any shortcuts that allow you to edit the subject in a composition window though. I have not been terribly inconvenienced by the changes to the interface.
• CurtMonash 13y ago
  I hate the new interface for a simpler reason -- why would I want to take the size of my writing area way down???? So I haven't used it. Any word on when Google will force users to switch? That's my deadline for finding an alternate email client.
• mzeshle 13y ago
  I think Yahoo mail beats Gmail at many levels..especially the newest UI. It feels like working from desktop email client.
  • alan_cx 13y ago
    I've been using yahoo mail for so long now I cant remember. 15 years, maybe. I'm not going to wave flags for it, but in all these years I have never seen a half decent reason to ever consider changing.
• vxNsr 13y ago
  My biggest gripe is the lack of a shortcut key to refresh/check for new mail without refreshing the page... everything else is just background noise compared to the lack of a shortcut key for refresh/check for new mail.
• api 13y ago
  There seems to be this tendency for good UIs to degrade over time. A good UI usually comes from someone who knows the basic principles of good UI design: unit economy, intuitiveness, ergonomics, simplicity/minimalism, uniformity, etc. But then, later, people "improve" on this original design template.
• motters 13y ago
  I was once a big Gmail fan and have had a Gmail account since 2005. However, in recent years I think they screwed with the user interface too much, turning something which was once very simple and elegant into a confusing mess. There's always the temptation to add more and more features. Now I just use Gmail as a glorified spam filter and forward mail to my own local server.
  • lostlogin 13y ago
    This. And mine is a backup dump too - if all else fails, its in gmail.
• nano111 13y ago
  I switched back to hotmail after using gmail for so many years because of this ...
• hawkharris 13y ago
  Every UI designer knows the backstory of the QWERTY keyboard, how the designers arranged the keys to intentionally slow down the users, to prevent typing errors. Well, Gmail's new pop-up Compose window makes me wonder if designers sometimes need to create interfaces that slow down users' cognitive processes as well. In theory, it's more efficient to write emails using the pop-up window because you can easily reference other messages. But in practice it makes me less productive because I feel distracted by seeing all of the other messages.
  • Gurrewe 13y ago
    Actually, the QWERTY-layout made typing a lot faster, since the keys didn't jam together.
• joering2 13y ago
  The biggest disappointment was to kill drag and drop attachments. Now you have to click the paper clip and pick the picture (one by one!) form your PC. In my opinion that's an indication that Google wants to discourage you from adding a lot of attachments to your mail because they don't make money off the bandwidth you are using. To me its another indication that Gmail at some point in near future may be doomed to sunset.
  • iamshs 13y ago
    Bang On. I encountered this a week before too. I had to pick the pictures, drag and drop just in-lined them. On attaching the pictures, there was hardly any space in the window left to write any words. I am in transition to another email provider, but I am being forced to do so, and at a critical juncture for me personally.
    • taigeair 13y ago
      Seriously I don't want to inline pictures sometimes. And guess what? If you delete it? You don't know if the picture is still attached because there is no visual feedback. Try it. 1. hit c 2. drag a picture into email 3. delete picture from email body 4. now i don't know if it's in attachment still or just removed from body.
      • iamshs 13y ago
        Yes. I had to double check too, since the pictures were of wide dimensions. I totally agree with the original post, I am also personally annoyed by this change. Another thing i hate is how it hides the "sent from" address, when the text focus is in the body. I use lots of emails aliases, and want to double check the address that I am sending the e-mail from. I have to click on the field, to see the address again. It is just one more click involved, instead of a glance. This is exactly why, I am moving onto outlook.com or maybe as another poster suggested use it as a spam filter and set up my stuff.
  • recursive 13y ago
    Drag and drop still works for me.
• sharjeel 13y ago
  Gmail is the application which has made me realize a big weakness of web applications. The web was supposed to make "application upgrades" painless and instant. After GMail's recent changes, I would really love to "download old version of Gmail"; however its web, I can't do that!
  • curiousdannii 13y ago
    I was given the option to go back to the old version..?
    • mikro2nd 13y ago
      So was I, and I took it, and I'm still using the old version. Thankfully. The day they force me onto the new version I'll go back to Thunderbird, using the gmail backend only as a searchable archive.
• maximz 13y ago
  My major gripe is that some formatting is completely hidden, making it impossible to deal with. I've often tried to copy-paste from an email thread to a new compose window, which looks like it works. But then the resulting email has a line break after each word! The clear-formatting button doesn't reveal this, nor does plain-text mode - this has led to a number of embarrassing emails.
• notatoad 13y ago
  I feel like a lot of people are mistaking gmail's opinionated UI design for a design failure. Changing the subject isn't difficult because the designers failed at making it easy, it's difficult because the designers succeeded at making it difficult. They really, really don't want you to change the subject because consistent subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation threading functionality, so they've made it as difficult as possible. similarly, the hiding of all the formatting options: they have all that space available, and they've quite deliberately chosen to hide things anyways. there's no way they just did it to make the compose window prettier, they want you to stop using so much formatting in your emails. Read the interview[1] with gmail's designer, they are trying to use a simpler UI to encourage faster and smaller responses and lower friction conversations. By and large, people are using email as a messaging tool, not to sit down and spend half an hour composing a letter, and they are adapting gmail to cater to this behaviour. you might disagree with their goals, but don't mistake your disagreement with their direction for a failure to advance their direction. [1]http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-window-could-reinvent-gmail http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-w...
  • saurik 13y ago
    > They really, really don't want you to change the subject because consistent subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation threading functionality, so they've made it as difficult as possible. So, as someone who doesn't use Gmail, I'm finding this (not just your mention of this, but others as well) confusing: what happened to In-Reply-To and References? I thought that using the Subject for threading was something you only did in a worst-case fallback scenario if you see something that looks like a reply but is somehow missing the required headers to establish the threading.
  • SageRaven 13y ago
    Well, whatever works for them. I've been using gmail since my '04 invite, but a few weeks ago I migrated to mail.com for web mail and bing for search. Google lured me in with the sparse simplicity of their search and webmail. If everything Google is getting bloated and broken (literal string "searches" in google search, fo example), I may as well disburse my online data to multiple places so no single entity has a full picture of my online behavior. I now can vote/comment on youtube without having those things tied to my identity (WTF, Google. If I didn't explicitly sign onto Youtube, don't fucking associate my gmail identity with Youtube!!!). Anyway, I'm not trying to be hip or edgy. I just finally got tired of Google's feature creep and identity wrangling. So I switched to inferior competitors. Hasn't been too painful, though. The one thing I'll keep a "real" identity presence on Google's services is "talk" just so I can converse with the few contacts who desire that venue, pretty much making that account similar to my token Yahoo and MSN accounts. I've managed to create a fake identity solely for my Android phone so I can get apps from Play. While I am curious about Google's future, I've decided that I no longer want to be a part of it.
• benaiah 13y ago
  To all the people complaining about text formatting in Gmail, I strongly recommend Markdown Here: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here. It lets you write emails as markdown and compile them to HTML in the email composition form. (I have mine bound to CTRL-ALT-Q). It works extremely well, I can easily store my emails in plain-text if I need to, I write emails in my text editor, and the Markdown utilities there make formatting much faster. It's great. Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-here/elifhakcjgalahccnjkneoccemfahfoa https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-here/elif... FF/Thunderbird extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/markdown-here/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/markdown-here... As for the UI complaints, I haven't hit too many of them, but those that I have have been very irritating. I don't use an email signature ATM, but I have run into the hard-to-change-sending-address quite a bit (I use <email>+<category>@gmail.com quite a bit), and didn't even know you could do it until just now. I only started using Gmail recently, so I can't say if it's worse, though it seems to be from what I've heard.
• ninjazee124 13y ago
  My biggest gripe is not being to reply all with a single click!
  • dudus 13y ago
    You can change the default to reply to all in the settings.
• loser777 13y ago
  I see this as a good motivator for moving away from webmail and using some offline e software, perhaps Thunderbird or mutt that will be more likely to keep its UI experience consistent.
• zaidf 13y ago
  Yes, yes, yes. What the fuck is going on with design/UX at gmail? It just becomes suckier progressively. Yesterday I attached a document 3-4 times during the course of my writing the email because there is no way to know if a document has been attached already. But if you start uploading another document, it will list out the documents already attached. What an incredible fail. And sadly, this is a trend, not an edge case complaint. This reeks of design-by-committee fail. It seems like an experience built on compromises to merely accommodate ideas of many different individuals even if those ideas together make the experience suckier.
  • recursive 13y ago
    This is what I see after attaching a file. What do you see?
    • recursive 13y ago
      Oops, forgot link: http://imgur.com/b3iW4p5 http://imgur.com/b3iW4p5
• gcb0 13y ago
  Gmail got where they are for: - being offered by 2000 google, a company everyone loved and trusted - having a slick and useful UI it's not missing both those points. That means the market it serve is there for the taking!
  • philtar 13y ago
    Gmail got where it is because it offered a 2GB inbox when everyone else offered 25MB. It basically created a whole new market and got first mover advantage.
    • gcb0 13y ago
      which would mean nothing if it was offered my hotmail. the 2GB is a huge falacy. it only matered for us nerds. the bulky just moved because it was "google email"
• speeq 13y ago
  I never really used this Gmail design in the first place, I'm in love with the "basic HTML" version which you can choose as default interface.
• bborud 13y ago
  On a related note: did Google hire some broken UX person with an immense fetish for annoying popups and interruptions? It seems that almost every product has some sort of "oh, let me intrude into your day and tell you about some annoying UX misfeature that you have to stop everything you are doing and look at right now"-popup nowadays. Of course, since I have 3-4 Google accounts (work, personal, hobby projects etc) I get each and every one of these popups at least 3-4 times. Whatever clown is responsible for this at Google: stop it. Fucking stop it right now. And if you work for Google and you read this and you have something to do with UX, please quote me in the next meeting you go to and be sure to include the word "clown" and the word "fuck". If that doesn't help I have a 4 by 6 foot poster of my ugly mug looking disapprovingly down on you mailed to you. I can mail that to 1600 amphitheatre parkway mountain view ca 94043 and whenever someone gets the urge to make a popup: point to the poster and shout "BJØRN SAYS NO POPUPS!" until their ears bleed.
  • Matt_Cutts 13y ago
    4 feet by 6 feet, you say?
    • x3c 13y ago
      Do you have spam filters for traditional corporal mails as well, Matt? It'd never bypass them in that case.
    • bborud 13y ago
      so c/o Matt Cutts then? :-)
• clarkston 13y ago
  we recently switched to MailQuatro.com, you can keep your gmail and you can also create customized email addresses at your domain
• lovehashbrowns 13y ago
  Google is great at ruining their UI. Starts out really well; you get a lot of power tools, the simple stuff is really easy to access and there's nothing confusing about the UI. And then it takes a nose dive after a few updates. Just look at how awful Youtube is. It's a disaster in there. It's almost as if the UI staff has a quota of changes that they have to fulfill every quarter lest they get tossed into a cauldron.
• mwcampbell 13y ago
  Maybe it's time more of us thought about the drawbacks of relying so much on a program that is proprietary, that we can't even hold onto a particular version of, and where the users are (mostly) not customers but part of the product offered to someone else.
• CatMtKing 13y ago
  Would certainly be nice if Gmail had pins (or some config page) to optionally keep minimalized/hidden stuff open by default.
• ceph_ 13y ago
  People expect email to be instant now, despite SMTP not exactly being built for it. I'm sure there is a non-zero number of users who would think the undo delay was the gmail service being "slow".
• k4rtik 13y ago
  Adding links really is a huge pain in the Compose window now.
• black4eternity 13y ago
  The whole redesign seems to based on the idea that I need to look at my inbox when composing an email. Well, I don't. And I personally use inbox in one tab and the compose email in the other. It is easier to switch tabs than learning to use the new interface. Also, it is frustrating to type in the smaller compose window. Seriously Google has screwed up the interface of Analytics and Gmail in the last year. Who ever has been doing there UI is surely not getting the User Feedback.
• tosh 13y ago
  Rapportive still works for me in the new Gmail
• kleinishere 13y ago
  To quickly access the signature and (when applicable) the cumulative email thread text, press Ctrl/Cmd + a to bring them into the compose editor. This is often faster than "click[ing] on three tiny dots."
• nsns 13y ago
  How can this - http://i.imgur.com/0mTa36W.png http://i.imgur.com/0mTa36W.png be better than this - http://i.imgur.com/FvnkaWX.png http://i.imgur.com/FvnkaWX.png ?!? There should be some serious psychological research into the possible causes for such glitches of common sense.
  • turing 13y ago
    One definite advantage: with the new design you can still navigate around your Inbox, open and reference other emails, etc. I've found this useful since the redesign.
  • dwb 13y ago
    FWIW, I very much prefer the new version. I never use formatting controls, and to be fair you have cut off the lower toolbar from the new screenshot. If they want to make email more regular (keeping subject line structure, less formatting, more immediate and less long-form), I'm all for that.
• guillermovs 13y ago
  The spell checker used to be great. It was a one-click feature (even if you needed to change language). Now, with the "improved UI" it's hidden away under a drop down menu, which on click brings yet another floating menu where you have to click a second arrow to change language. It's a mess. I hope they don't take away the old compose UI.
• amerika 13y ago
  Gmail used to have a single concept, and do very well at that. Someone thought up a vision for how an ideal simplified email client should work, and made that as a web application. Then the usual cruft built up. People wanted to "add features," not realizing that doing so changes the concept of the whole. The interface became non-consistent. In general, as companies grow, so does the cruft. Projects are no longer in the hands of a single visionary, but a committee. That committee makes demands of programmers, who graft on the new changes. These accumulate and soon inconsistency is the norm. At that point, users flee to other projects.
• vanderZwan 13y ago
  There is a tradeoff in HCI that is between ease and efficiency. It seems Gmail is less easy to use AND less efficient. The only improvement seems to be design. Speaking as an Interaction Design student, please don't confuse looks with design - the whole article is essentially about how the author thinks this is bad interface design.
• dudus 13y ago
  It's become a common topic to just pown any change to any service from google or any large company alike. And I just don't see the point. Google knows people that dislike changes are always louder than people that like changes. It doesn't mean they are in larger number. So no matter how hard you scream, don't fool yourself into thinking companies take these change decision lightly. The article claims it lack of UI tests which is an ignorant assumption. The goal of the new compose is very clear. Allow you to write an email while still reading others. It undoubtedly completed the goal. Of course there are some drawbacks like having to remove fields that would be visible by default otherwise.
• shizzy0 13y ago
  Use a real mail client. The web is terrible for non-CRUD work.
• axelfreeman 13y ago
  That's the thing what can happen with all the cloud services. They say it gets better over time but it can also get worse and you can only begging, hoping and crying that it will get fixed.
• kwijibob 13y ago
  I agree with all the criticisms in the article and in the HN comments. But my biggest gripe with the new Gmail - it is UGLY.
• mscarborough 13y ago
  Try your native email client. gmail has IMAP for free over HTTPS, and is available on every Android device, so I don't understand what this post is trying to say. If you don't like the web interface, go try one of the other hundred options that are also free.
• nbloom 13y ago
  TLDR: Gmail, my favorite email program, rolled out the "new compose experience" and then forced everyone to change to it, and everything about it sucks.
• felipelalli 13y ago
  For me the worst change was the new Compose email. Very fail because before it was in center of screen, big, easy to compose. Now, it's in the screen corner, so bad!
• sebastianavina 13y ago
  1. I never change my signature, really, who cares? I've registered several domains on my google apps, and when I change the email address I'm using, the signature changes automatically. 2. If you need to change the subject, maybe you need a new email. 3. Attaching a file?, just drag and drop from the download bar, or from the folder... Links really dont need to click the button. 4. Maybe your contacts use tweeter, but most of the industries dont, dont mess our email system with tweeter. It's awesome and anything you say, but it's almost exclusive of IT/media industry. 5. It's quite rare for someone to change the sending email address. I've several but I only change the email address when I really need. Most of the time, everybody knows my main address. (I happen to manage several companies, each of them with a simple webpage, I always receive my email at r*a.com, but I also have the other addresses just in case. Anyway, I always use the same. (Does Bill Gates used @microsoft.com @xbox.com @hotmail.com @….. = In conclussion, Gmail is awesome for bussines, try Streak for managing your mail chains with other parts of your company and you will love it. The only thing I really need is an option to attach a Google DOC directly as PDF on a Email on Gmail, and chain it up to Streak. EDIT: Sometimes I'm writing an email, and then I have to search for another one, or I receive a call. Sometimes I can be redacting an email for 4 hrs because I get busy. It's neat to minimize it and keep work rolling.
• quattrofan 13y ago
  It doesn't suck, but its certainly not as good. I was holding on to the old UI as long as I could but now that option is gone. I've grudgingly got used to the new compose UI but I agree its nowhere near as quick and easy as the old one was in an effort to be "cleaner".