7 ms·

Agreed. Some more venting... Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards

Agreed. Some more venting... Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards. Got multiple Google accounts? You can't remove the 'events' calendar. And 'Events' is ostensibly the first calendar in your actual online Google Calendar which you might have named 'Home' but in the app is steadfastly refuses to be called anything but 'events'. This = install aCalendar[1] and Simple Calendar Widget [2] Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? I don't want a profile pic so I don't know which account is which of the 5 I need to use, so I just pick pot luck or swipe through them all? Then there is that annoying hover button. 'WRITE SOMETHING' it screams out at you, 'Surely that's why you're here isn't it? You couldn't possibly just want to scroll through your inbox without accidentally tapping me!!!' This = install K9 mail.[3] YouTube - Enter menu drawer, close it, press 'back' > still takes me back to the home screen. Take a leaf out of Feedly's book and open the frickin' menu drawer! Chrome - Thankfully you can stop the annoying tab merge pretty easily. Notifications - now to get to settings I have to do three actions, two pull downs and hit a teeny tiny little button, or you know, waste a space on the home screen. Phone dialer - I actually like it. It's way faster to get to you contacts and has a much better layout than before. Still got that annoying floating button - 'DIAL SOME NUMBERS ASSHOLE!!!' Default keyboard - why is removing the key separators a good idea? Is there some data to back that up? To me it looks like a cluttered mess. Thankfully switching back to the old style is just a setting away, but it would be great if there was a more sane default. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat.acalendar&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calendar&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calen... [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl...

_blob 12y ago
The month view is not gone ("three dot" menu on the right side -> Month) and you can easily untick `Events` per account to hide them. The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).
- collyw 12y ago
  Three dots. Obvious it is a menu (sarcasm). I have just realized in the last month or so that three stacked bars is a menu (bootstrap style). I am sure those have been around for a while now.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    So-called hamburger menus. New Relic has oh so helpfully moved everything useful into a hamburger menu it took ages to find (it even turns into a picture of a hamburger bun when you hover), while useless trivial distinctions get giant, labeled dropdown menus. The affordances are all backward. But I bet everybody clicking around looking for the features they used to use showed more "engagement" with the site, right?
- cjp 12y ago
  Nope. The three dot menu has Schedule, Day, 5 Day, Search and Refresh. There is no Month there. By the way, limiting to 5 days is at best inflexible. Many people want to look at 7 days because, you know, that's a week.
  - _blob 12y ago
    A quick search reveals, that the Week/ Month view is not available on phones (I only own an N7). Definitely a step backward.
mattmanser 12y ago
You can actually reskin the keyboard back to the old look. Click the unlock button, swipe up on your phone, not left or right, pull down on your phone twice, click the settings button, ignore the randomly flashing menu items as you scroll down, find "language and input", click "Google Keyboard" (not "Current Keyboard"), click "Appearance and Layouts", click "Theme", click "Holo White".
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  you forgot to say stand on one leg.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    And the repeated incantation of "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"
- nilkn 12y ago
  > swipe up on your phone, not left or right The way you wrote this makes it seem like swiping up instead of left or right is really horrible and confusing. Why? Previous versions of Android had a totally different lock screen design, so I honestly do not know why you feel so confident that the correct swiping direction should be left or right. Because Apple did it that way?
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    The problem is that if you swipe left it will open the dialer, right photo. Only up unlocks it. While it's useful having shortcuts to do these things, they've gone far too far and made it too hard to do what you most often want to do, which is simply unlock the phone. The old photo button worked well, for example. They had also previously used "up" on the lock screen for voice commands/google now, so I for one have learnt never to use "up" unless I want to set a timer using voice (pretty much the only useful thing it can do).
    - nilkn 12y ago
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>why is removing the key separators a good idea? // I've a suggestion for this one - key separators support a paradigm of key presses, following the [traditional] keyboard metaphor. However with swipe-able keyboards it doesn't really make sense, you only need to approximate the position of the letter during your swipe - no "barriers" helps to enforce that new paradigm. If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).
- meepmorp 12y ago
  > If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board). reply Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.
  - untog 12y ago
    I doubt most do, but there's no reason to not be forward thinking and hope that new users will - IMO it's a far better experience.
  - collyw 12y ago
    I swipe, but I must be in a minority. People always seem a bit surprised when they see me use the keyboard that way.
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    Wait...swiping? On a keyboard? That makes absolutely no sense. Most words contain a pair of letters that are not adjacent on a QWERTY keyboard.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Who said it has to be adjacent? To type WHAT just click W, swipe to H, then to A, then to T (and that roughly).
lnanek2 12y ago
Thanks for the calendar recommendation. Ugh. Already switch to City Mapper from Google Maps when Google stripped that app. Sad to see the rest of the apps going the same way now.
prapam2 12y ago
I like the new keyboard. I feel like my typing mistakes have been reduced. Earlier i felt like i need to be precise on clicking the buttons now without boundary i don't need to. I like everything about the new UI except for that Gmail profile switching. But you can easily switch from menu so no problem. Now OS X Yosemite those changes are annoying me and also slowing down my macbook pro. I had to disable few settings to get a acceptable performance. Edit: There is one particular annoying thing in L. Sometimes when click on a tab like in Chrome, the notification window gets the touch and is semi shown.
- tracker1 12y ago
  I think the account switching in gmail is the single most annoying issue I've come across in lollipop. Most of the other changes are a matter of taste, the account switching in gmail is just plain bad. I have 5 accounts and can't even see all the "icon" versions at the same time... make the dropdown more distinctive and nuke the icons imho. I feel much the same about the icons in the message list too. I wouldn't mind if the desktop/web interface were a bit more like the tablet sized gmail though... also if gmail proper could also see my other email accounts this way since there's no proper mail client in chromeos.
Symmetry 12y ago
While we're on the topic: Clock - I used to be able to dismiss my 7:30 wakeup alarm if I woke up at 7:20 by simply swiping away the notification. But now I can't find any way to suppress the next instance of a recurring alarm.
- JaggedJax 12y ago
  The upcoming alarm notifications seem to work exactly the same way for me. If you have the alarm notification expanded there's a dismiss option.
- 7007 12y ago
  I'm still on KitKat, but I think you can swipe down over the notification to open up a dismiss option underneath the notification. (at least you can on kitkat, I swipe down over 3 alarms at once and dismiss them all)
- zem 12y ago
  I've been happy with Alarm Clock Plus as my wake up alarm. has the ability to set an alarm on some days of the week, and the "skip next" feature.
JeremyNT 12y ago
> Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? The gmail redesign is really jarring if you're still on KitKat. It "fits" visually with the design language of Lolipop, but it still feels like a major step backward in terms of usability. The conspiracy theorist in me is inclined to conclude that they do not, in fact, use their own app; it's almost like they made the Gmail app worse to encourage people to migrate to Inbox.

_blob 12y ago

The month view is not gone ("three dot" menu on the right side -> Month) and you can easily untick `Events` per account to hide them. The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).

collyw 12y ago
Three dots. Obvious it is a menu (sarcasm). I have just realized in the last month or so that three stacked bars is a menu (bootstrap style). I am sure those have been around for a while now.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  So-called hamburger menus. New Relic has oh so helpfully moved everything useful into a hamburger menu it took ages to find (it even turns into a picture of a hamburger bun when you hover), while useless trivial distinctions get giant, labeled dropdown menus. The affordances are all backward. But I bet everybody clicking around looking for the features they used to use showed more "engagement" with the site, right?
cjp 12y ago
Nope. The three dot menu has Schedule, Day, 5 Day, Search and Refresh. There is no Month there. By the way, limiting to 5 days is at best inflexible. Many people want to look at 7 days because, you know, that's a week.
- _blob 12y ago
  A quick search reveals, that the Week/ Month view is not available on phones (I only own an N7). Definitely a step backward.

mattmanser 12y ago

You can actually reskin the keyboard back to the old look. Click the unlock button, swipe up on your phone, not left or right, pull down on your phone twice, click the settings button, ignore the randomly flashing menu items as you scroll down, find "language and input", click "Google Keyboard" (not "Current Keyboard"), click "Appearance and Layouts", click "Theme", click "Holo White".

throwawayaway 12y ago
you forgot to say stand on one leg.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  And the repeated incantation of "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"
nilkn 12y ago
> swipe up on your phone, not left or right The way you wrote this makes it seem like swiping up instead of left or right is really horrible and confusing. Why? Previous versions of Android had a totally different lock screen design, so I honestly do not know why you feel so confident that the correct swiping direction should be left or right. Because Apple did it that way?
- mattmanser 12y ago
  The problem is that if you swipe left it will open the dialer, right photo. Only up unlocks it. While it's useful having shortcuts to do these things, they've gone far too far and made it too hard to do what you most often want to do, which is simply unlock the phone. The old photo button worked well, for example. They had also previously used "up" on the lock screen for voice commands/google now, so I for one have learnt never to use "up" unless I want to set a timer using voice (pretty much the only useful thing it can do).
  - nilkn 12y ago

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

>why is removing the key separators a good idea? // I've a suggestion for this one - key separators support a paradigm of key presses, following the [traditional] keyboard metaphor. However with swipe-able keyboards it doesn't really make sense, you only need to approximate the position of the letter during your swipe - no "barriers" helps to enforce that new paradigm. If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).

meepmorp 12y ago
> If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board). reply Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.
- untog 12y ago
  I doubt most do, but there's no reason to not be forward thinking and hope that new users will - IMO it's a far better experience.
- collyw 12y ago
  I swipe, but I must be in a minority. People always seem a bit surprised when they see me use the keyboard that way.
- jackmaney 12y ago
  Wait...swiping? On a keyboard? That makes absolutely no sense. Most words contain a pair of letters that are not adjacent on a QWERTY keyboard.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Who said it has to be adjacent? To type WHAT just click W, swipe to H, then to A, then to T (and that roughly).

lnanek2 12y ago

Thanks for the calendar recommendation. Ugh. Already switch to City Mapper from Google Maps when Google stripped that app. Sad to see the rest of the apps going the same way now.

prapam2 12y ago

I like the new keyboard. I feel like my typing mistakes have been reduced. Earlier i felt like i need to be precise on clicking the buttons now without boundary i don't need to. I like everything about the new UI except for that Gmail profile switching. But you can easily switch from menu so no problem. Now OS X Yosemite those changes are annoying me and also slowing down my macbook pro. I had to disable few settings to get a acceptable performance. Edit: There is one particular annoying thing in L. Sometimes when click on a tab like in Chrome, the notification window gets the touch and is semi shown.

tracker1 12y ago
I think the account switching in gmail is the single most annoying issue I've come across in lollipop. Most of the other changes are a matter of taste, the account switching in gmail is just plain bad. I have 5 accounts and can't even see all the "icon" versions at the same time... make the dropdown more distinctive and nuke the icons imho. I feel much the same about the icons in the message list too. I wouldn't mind if the desktop/web interface were a bit more like the tablet sized gmail though... also if gmail proper could also see my other email accounts this way since there's no proper mail client in chromeos.

Symmetry 12y ago

While we're on the topic: Clock - I used to be able to dismiss my 7:30 wakeup alarm if I woke up at 7:20 by simply swiping away the notification. But now I can't find any way to suppress the next instance of a recurring alarm.

JaggedJax 12y ago
The upcoming alarm notifications seem to work exactly the same way for me. If you have the alarm notification expanded there's a dismiss option.
7007 12y ago
I'm still on KitKat, but I think you can swipe down over the notification to open up a dismiss option underneath the notification. (at least you can on kitkat, I swipe down over 3 alarms at once and dismiss them all)
zem 12y ago
I've been happy with Alarm Clock Plus as my wake up alarm. has the ability to set an alarm on some days of the week, and the "skip next" feature.

JeremyNT 12y ago

> Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? The gmail redesign is really jarring if you're still on KitKat. It "fits" visually with the design language of Lolipop, but it still feels like a major step backward in terms of usability. The conspiracy theorist in me is inclined to conclude that they do not, in fact, use their own app; it's almost like they made the Gmail app worse to encourage people to migrate to Inbox.