81–90 of 247 posts
Since then: Slow death by "product manager", or whatever the hell they call it.
(In league, I suspect in my personal opinion, with some cabal of out-of-control graphic "designers". Though this is hardly the only problem.)
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…
You can still use the "Basic HTML" layout for GMail. It's actually pretty great. It doesn't look "modern", but if you ask me it's more usable. https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h
1. Have your own domain for emails. This is important. Gmail (or any service provider) can block you/remove your account for no reason and with no recourse. Your email is very important if you are doing serious work and have financial sites and data linked to that email address.
2. The very reason that I used Gmail was speed and storage. The very reason that I left Gmail was speed. Storage is no longer relevant now. Speed become a problem in 2012-2014. It seems better now, but there seems to be "rush hours".
3. The Gmail web app is no longer good. I like a very simple interface because I write very long email. Why make the "compose" show up as a pop-up? I write emails and not chat messages.
4. The SPAM filter is good until it catches a couple business emails. This is when I decided that no SPAM filter is better.
5. If you don't pay for the product, you are the product. I left Gmail after using it for 8 years. I was fine for 12 years but as the business grow I thought about that line. Suddenly, I had strange thoughts about Google using all my data.
They say history repeats itself... Google is making all the mistakes Microsoft made with IE a decade+ ago. Amusingly, Apple remains unfazed.
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What? If you left-click in a place, a small card appears with an arrow that you can click to get directions. If you right-click, you can get directions from or to the place. And if you search, you also get a very visible round button with an arrow and the label "Directions". How is it hard? EDIT: Sorry if this came out as aggressive. I'm just dumbfounded, that's all.
On my phone, if I type in the name of a store, it gives me the most popular store of that name in the United States instead of the nearest one, because I have wifi locaiton turned off. That's the only reason. If I turn it back on (I don't want it on), the results are sorted as expected. This is clearly an intentional anti-pattern, and it's been there for over two years. I have to actually type, for example: "Fry's el…
I'm assuming you do have GPS location turned on, and that you're allowing location access on that page and waiting for a GPS lock before searching, correct? (And if not, how do you expect it to know where you are?)
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I don't actually sell, as these business don't pay us anything. Rather they list they business on our website to their (and ours) value. Is it still spam? (honest question) Edit: They are a business and have a "contact us" email on their website. Should I really not email them just because im not a customer, but a possible partner?
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative Another way of phrasing your mother's advice: "What if everybody did X?"
I think the same for the email. If,everybody who can make a legitimate business proposal email them, no problem. And I apply the same ethics when I had my own company with a public email on my website (now im an employee and emails dont get to me)
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? If you left-click in a place, a small card appears with an arrow that you can click to get directions. If you right-click, you can get directions from or to the place. And if you search, you also get a very visible round button with an arrow and the label "Directions". How is it hard? EDIT: Sorry if this came out as aggressive. I'm just dumbfounded, that's all.
I think part of the problem is that Maps looks different at random times. I just took this screenshot to answer your post: http://i.imgur.com/SaHMCF2.png Yes, there's a round "Directions" icon. This time . Frequently, searches for a given address don't bring up that icon or any other UI affordance that indicates how I might get directions to the destination. However, Maps does reliably fill half the screen with photo…
This is sadly a really common UX failure in a lot of different apps.
One thing that many people still don't seem to realize is that it's more important to be consistent than being smart. I like to call these "hide and seek" UI elements - they display conditionally in an effort to be smart (e.g., no directions are available to this place, so we hide the directions button). But in practice it just confuses users.
One thing I keep encouraging, to varying levels of success, is that UIs should always be consistent. If you are unable to provide a feature, disable that element with a helpful tip (e.g., graying out the Directions button and say "Directions not available from this address" or some such).
I've been wondering about this and after reading that link, I think I'm going to switch from the Gmail iOS app to using the included Mail app. We'll see how it goes, but I do want my email as the developer intended.
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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…