Gmail’s new look(gmailblog.blogspot.com) |
Gmail’s new look(gmailblog.blogspot.com) |
(PS: I know whether this is real; I'm just phrasing it this way for ironic impact.)
To read the email message is the reasong I am opening Gmail!
I don't care about a static user account bar, a static search bar, a static action buttons bar, a static folder and tags sidebar, etc. All that c%#p should be scrolling! It's a web page!
Is there any fix for this in the Gmail settings?
The many position:fixed elements is a major flaw in this new design.
I find it a huge improvement.
Only one complaint, I want to have a more loose display than the current one, I want 'Cozy' rather than 'Compact' regardless of my screen size. I should be able to change that somewhere.
&view=ad&I find it very interesting that a blog post written by a User Experience Designer on the new interface for a major web app doesn't work on mobile devices. Especially since Google also just launched GoMo.
I seriously hope they would _FINALLY_ include some sort of sub-string search as the lack of it really makes their mail search pretty much unusable unless you know exactly what you are looking for but I have a huge mail archive that goes a good 10+ years back - and that is google we are talking about, of all companies.
I would be totally fine if they limit me to just 2 or 3 sub-string searches a day and then just grep through my mails if that's what it takes but come on people, this feature has been requested ages ago and there surely are ways to implement this without breaking your servers' backs.
Everything just takes milliseconds longer to sink in.
The bold subject on unread messages helps, but it isn't enough for my eyes.
1) using the page space for fixed "app-like" UI instead of just presenting the page. UI on top of UI really doesn't make using their pages better for me. The scroll bars get smaller, the effective vertical space of my screen usable for content goes away exactly at time the screens on notebooks get always less vertical pixels. Things go horribly wrong recently. Compare 1973:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
therefore:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3184798
2) using the BIG RED BUTTON for creating a post! Really? RED like "stop sign" red? Like a "SELF DESTRUCT" red? Aww.
It reminds me of the first time I tried to use a cell phone: I didn't own one and had borrowed one for a trip. I could not figure out how to turn it on. I kept pressing the green "TALK" button and nothing happened. I assumed the battery had died. Turns out I was supposed to press the red button labeled "END" which is the last button I would think to press.
Now, let's hope that the next step is not to make Gmail just a Google+ app, like they did with Google Reader.
It seems like gmail has previously changed at a glacial speed (for better/worse).
I hope they continue to improve the UX of gmail on a continuous basis.
It makes me really sad to see that accessibility is getting worse at Google, not better. The problem isn't limited to Gmail, it's also now in core search and probably just about everything else since the G+ wave of updates. :(
I hate this love affair we have at the moment with white space. To me, it's wasted space. I guess I just hate scrolling or maybe I should just move to Asia.
However constantly changing any user interface is a fantastic way to make customers furious when they can no longer find things and have to stop to adapt, over and over.
Why not allow the old look to function for years instead of weeks or months. There is no way you are going to convince me google doesn't have the resources to do that, it's not a massive internal change, it's a visual layer.
I really need to make a point to switch to Thunderbird and imap in 2012 - google is getting on my last nerve on every product they offer.
Can you explain what you mean by "constantly changing"? It's clear that Google is going through a big visual refresh and rolling all of it's products over to one new unified design, but that's something that hasn't been done in a long time, it's not a constant state of significant change.
> Why not allow the old look to function for years instead of weeks or months. There is no way you are going to convince me google doesn't have the resources to do that, it's not a massive internal change, it's a visual layer.
Years is a long time for Google to have to hold onto old code and support both versions (as well as the mechanisms to allow the both to exist). And as you say, it's "just" a visual change, for most users it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to. And I'm sure that if you had specific complaints about its usability, the team at Google working on this would be happy to hear from you.
(I don't really like Google's new style either, but it doesn't really upset me or damage my experience in any way.)
One of the many reasons I switched to GMail was the fact that they didn't charge to access mail from a POP3 (and now IMAP). Neither protocol is perfect (or perhaps it's the implementation in the variety of mail apps that support it), but the bottom line is that there are limitless numbers of clients that support those protocols, which allows me to abandon the web platform if I choose to.
When my bride complains about the next Facebook UI overhaul, I always think of this. To clarify, I'm always stuck thinking of Facebook in terms of old-school online service like AOL with features that fit better in the 21st century...I get that it's not e-mail+ or e-mail-. And I appreciate that it has a powerful API, the usage of which allows me to avoid the UI overhauls for the limited feature-set that I enjoy. But for e-mail, I still prefer the provider with the most options.
Count me in as perfectly fine with the new UI changes because I don't have to care if I don't like them.
I understand Google wants me to search and to use G+, but for user's sake, could you shove all that into 1 button and make it expand on click, so I could actually use my gmail screen for something like... answering emails.
Is this too much to ask? Google, the new Yahoo!?
p.s. No, the "compact" view doesn't really solve the problem. The objects get smaller and narrower, but the top banner still takes up all the premium space.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3184606
The problem are non-scrollable regions. What's next, status bar on the page and even more menus?
Once this is forced on us, I will withdraw to a native client.
I use Gmail's backend but I can't use something that won't find “client” in “mynewclient”.
Amazing that a company known for search can't provide this simple and essential feature.
I activated it on a new domain yesterday: http://i.imgur.com/PoQ2F.png
In your domain admin panel, make sure that you opt into the quick release cycle as opposed to the scheduled one. Since they added that option, apps really doesn't lag any more feature-wise
I am staying on the old version.
If enough people hate this, they may slow the intro, but this may be the worst of all Clusts, the one that fails, but is hailed as a glorious success.
I'm still waiting for a UI where I can just drag the components I need, a la browser's toolbars.
Overall, the highly visual approach allows some hidden but useful features to emerge for the average user. However, I'm still on the fence about the excessive padding on the individual email items.
When he selects "compact", it looks like the classic padding to me.
Chrome and Firefox optimized away much of the 500msec or less it takes for the page to render, and I don't want to have to spend that time watching the loading logo instead. Plus there are unavoidable animations for every page I try to access, but they're slow and make my netbook lag. I like being able to access the alternative views, but some of them seem clearly oriented towards photo blogs and turn into a pastiche of menus and grids, defeating the point of making the blog more usable for the reader (I have to try click on each one to see what it does?). /complain
The left sidebar pops open, thats great!
However, read messages now have a lifeless grey background. The archive buttons have been replaced with icons. I can now only see half the amount of messages per screen due to the increased spacing.
Its disappointing.
Individual email threads are much harder to distinguish and due to the increase in information its harder to concentrate on the actual email body itself.
Hopefully, the comments I sent to the GMail team didn't fall on deaf ears - I really don't want to rework how I do email.
It must be tough working on a product that is so core to people's life and work. The changes in XCode never sit well with me either.
Any ideas? I won't change this netbook to the 'new look' unless I can figure this out - guess I'll have to use Thunderbird or something. I'd rather not.
Thanks for any help.
F'ing terrible in the usability department, though, especially on the default super-spaced view - it makes it much harder to scan quickly, and lets you see half the number of emails in the same vertical space.
The wide open space with no border between panes is also really annoying. Adding a border-right on the folder pane via firebug/whatever brings it almost back to being bearable.
Looks like it will re-size elements automatically based on screensize.
Usually the answer, at least for a service like GMail, is to just ignore the netbooks. I actually think that's the right answer almost always, but I would absolutely love to hear the opposing view, as this is a position that I feel I don't fully understand.
Luckily the new Gmail interface has three settings for display density.
Another poster indicated that the theme automatically resized based on window dimensions. I'm not seeing the new theme (merely the "Preview" theme in the list - there's a "Preview (Dense)" in the theme list as well).
I'm also glad to see the 'mobile first' idea gaining traction, with css/html5 frameworks coming out based on that. There are more and more use cases where a mobile site that gracefully expands to desktop size works out better than the inverse.
We don't know when someone is aging from day to day, but if we see them year to year then we can see the change.
I just switched to the new look and (after changing the density to "Compact") I could not notice a difference on the padding.
It was a nice surprise.
Are you working on anything related to this design?
I'll watch the video when I get home, but Google is having a love affair with white space on this new layout, I'm doubtful about the padding on the email list.
As for tables, most users use dedicated apps so this design change won't affect them. Google usually does a custom web interface for tablets/mobile anyway to make it more touch friendly.
How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all.
> I'm not seeing the new theme
When it rolls out to your account, you'll see a little black notification bar/box in the bottom-right asking you if you want to try the new theme.
Seems to me, "a couple of years ago". That's when any real innovation in CSS seemed to cease.*
* I can hear people arguing already. By "innovation in CSS", I don't mean "cool, awesome tricks" like "being able to render strange bullets in pure CSS by bastardizing four divs, a span, and a dozen lines of stylesheet", or "a bargraph library that outputs pure CSS".
Those are cool, awesome tricks, to be sure, hacks, but the very definition of "solving the wrong problem".
You can also force the theme to use the smallest size via an option in the menu.
The new theme won't show up as a simple entry in the theme menu as it replaces all the old themes. Some have been remade or ported, but they're clearly running on the new theme engine. Alas, the Android theme no longer changes the Gmail UI font to Android Sans.
This is what makes Gmail very powerful for me.
I also use [ and ] a lot. From message view, they archive the current message and immediately move to the previous/next message in the current list.
For your second point, if you really mean "locked in" (as in "my company has outsourced their email to gmail") you can always use an IMAP client.
But I guess this is just a small typo and you mean "logged in" - in which case I'm not sure I can follow? Is your point that people don't like the user interface but use it anyway because their friends use it?! Not sure I buy. If no-one forces you to use gmail, don't use it. Or, again, use an IMAP client.
There are a number of ways you can switch email addresses. You can set up a forwarder from the gmail address to wherever you want--over time this should rectify itself and in the case it doesn't, you're not really losing out on anything. Receive via Gmail, respond via your new email.
I used to use Gmail for the interface. When I received my invite, I'd never experienced anything like that in the browser. It was refreshing, cool and it worked extremely well. I'm not 'locked' into those addresses in any sense of the word and never have been.
And yes, I mean locked in, because if everybody knows you at tim@yahoo.com, or reg@hotmail.com, you can just move to gmail easily. Sure, you can setup forwarders, email everyone, but this is a non trivial step for most people. I am confused why people here can not see this.
Though I am certainly seeing where you're coming from with second part. It is a hassle that I don't think most would embark upon. I don't know but it seems switching emails could be a problem that needs solving. There certainly are ways I can think of that would make this easier.
