Gmail, We Need to Talk • Hacker News Board

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#21

Post by kawsper » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

wise_young_man wrote: post #15

scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

The article claims that Schema has not caught on, but in fact you have to be approved [1] to be able to have Gmail pick them up in emails you send and it's not really an open standard like it should be. Moz has a great article which covers it pretty well. Basically you have to send 100 emails per day for some length of time. Since you can't just add them to your email and expect them to work, I think that is why it h…

Adding that data to our order emails when we sell tickets took an hour. Going through the process still haven't been completed.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#22

Post by PhilWright » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #8

LeoPanthera wrote: post #3

Maybe I am just really, really old at this point, but sending emails in plain text solves all these problems. I don't think I've ever received an HTML email that couldn't have been adequately represented in plain text and maybe an attached image if necessary.

I'm sole responsible for acquisition on a startup and I solely (for now) use direct cold email (it is B2B, email sent to public adresses, so it is not spam). I only use plain text emails. I don't even use email tracking so that hidden pixel doesn't trigger any annoying warning on the email client that ruins the experience.

Sending unsolicited email to public addresses in order to sell something is spam. Calling it 'cold email' to make it sound like a legitimate process does not change the fact you are spamming.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#23

Post by rconti » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

GMail, we need to talk. We need to talk about how substring searches do not work, 11 years after your launch. We need to talk about how you've slowly engineered out everything that was good and unique about GMail. We need to talk about how you "flattened" the style, removed colors from threaded messages, and just decided to use shades of grey everywhere. We need to talk about how difficult it is to tell one message from a forwarded message from a divider line from attachments from the next message in a thread. We need to talk about how you've decided to replace the window manager by insisting that my messages be a window inside of a browser window, but ones that adhere to no UI standards. We need to talk about how you've hidden the date of a message, and hidden the To: address, and the Subject, so that what used to be a simple tab action now requires multiple mouse-clicks.

And apparently something about HTML emails too.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#24

Post by icebraining » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

ryan-c wrote: post #7

Media queries in email would allow a number of information leaks about how the email is being viewed, which I don't especially like. Allowing external images is already pretty awful.

Images are much less problematic for Gmail users since they started proxying them[1]. Now the sender can't tell if you opened the email by checking if the image was downloaded.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-...

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#25

Post by scott_s » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:44 PM UTC

badloginagain wrote: post #19

scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

Marketing emails are not the only ones that developers want to look not broken. To pick an instance at random: Confirmation emails for purchases made, especially if they have tickets as an attachments. If this email looks broken, customer thinks it's phishing or something, and might end up trashing it, just because styling is not supported consistently. And I take issue with your argument of "marketing emails are bad…

I did not argue that marketing emails are bad. I'm stating that I don't want them, and guessing that many users are like me.

Regarding your example, I have no problem if such emails are not stylized.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#26

Post by gdulli » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:44 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #23

GMail, we need to talk. We need to talk about how substring searches do not work, 11 years after your launch. We need to talk about how you've slowly engineered out everything that was good and unique about GMail. We need to talk about how you "flattened" the style, removed colors from threaded messages, and just decided to use shades of grey everywhere. We need to talk about how difficult it is to tell one message f…

Maps has really become a chore to use, too. I remember getting directions used to be easy once and now it's like interacting with enterprise software.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#27

Post by PuffinBlue » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:45 PM UTC

newjersey wrote: post #20

isido wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Sadly, plain text email seems to be endangered species. But perhaps there is still hope, markdown and pals have made some inroads as all around useful document formats.

I know this is an extreme but I like this extreme. When I say plain text, I mean plain-text. I mean not even markdown. Just plain text. The client can choose to make links clickable if they like. Any formatted document should come as an attachment (I'd prefer PDF). I guess it should be an attachment I expect or I probably wouldn't open it. In any case, I don't like emails with tracking. It feels forced. If you really…

I'm with you on this one, though I didn't realise we were extreme!

Plain text cuts all the cruft and I can reasonably expect emails I receive to largely look similar so I get good at extracting relevant information.

Every client I have, desktop and mobile, displays and sends in plain text only and I'm pleasantly surprised how infrequently this breaks anything completely and how often it exposes tracking links etc.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#28

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:46 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #8

LeoPanthera wrote: post #3

Maybe I am just really, really old at this point, but sending emails in plain text solves all these problems. I don't think I've ever received an HTML email that couldn't have been adequately represented in plain text and maybe an attached image if necessary.

I'm sole responsible for acquisition on a startup and I solely (for now) use direct cold email (it is B2B, email sent to public adresses, so it is not spam). I only use plain text emails. I don't even use email tracking so that hidden pixel doesn't trigger any annoying warning on the email client that ruins the experience.

> it is B2B, email sent to public adresses, so it is not spam

Unsolicited commercial email is spam, regardless of whether it is B2B, and regardless of whether it is sent to "public addresses".

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#29

Post by thieving_magpie » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

techcrunch, we need to talk about your article titles.

Addressing the content of the article:

- "Gmail Makes Developers Shun Email", I can't think of any developer I know that shuns email, and they all pretty much use gmail.

- "How Gmail Breaks Email", to be frank... not even in the slightest. Sure, it sounds pretty annoying having to jump through all those hoops for a fancypants email.

- "Google should take the lead in bringing the web mail stakeholders from Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL together toward the support of a common set of CSS and HTML."

Who makes a demand like that of a company? Hey, Company X, gather every industry leader please and force them to all standardize to one spec. Am I the only one that would prefer companies to not be in the driver seat for these kinds of decisions? Isn't this what led to the IE6 debacle?

I really don't get these articles. Today I've read HN front page articles about horrible gmail is (my favorite email service for the past 10 years) and "Amazon kind of sucks". I must be out of touch.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#30

Post by ryan-c » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #24

ryan-c wrote: post #7

Media queries in email would allow a number of information leaks about how the email is being viewed, which I don't especially like. Allowing external images is already pretty awful.

Images are much less problematic for Gmail users since they started proxying them[1]. Now the sender can't tell if you opened the email by checking if the image was downloaded. [1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-...

I was aware of the proxying, but didn't realize that gmail always prefetched the image. This implies that even sending each recipient a unique image URL will not work?