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Gmail, We Need to Talk

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Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#101

Post by manigandham »

softbuilder wrote: post #95
icebraining wrote: post #32

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.

Maybe GMaps is just polarizing software that seems awesome to some people and awful to others? Unless you're a Googler and/or on the Maps team? :) One thing that is absolutely brain-dead is that (in Chrome) I can't type in maps.google.com and tab-search for my address. I can do this with Amazon.com or Netflix, but not an actual Google property? Weird. Another thing that is just bafflingly absent is that GMaps doesn't…

Home/Work are supported, you can easily set them if it doesn't learn on it's own: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273402?hl=en

Also I'm not sure but it would seem you have some kind of plugin that might be interfering as GMaps is very smooth on Mac Chrome and Safari.

And you might be single-clicking on the maps which brings up a gray marker to show you more detail of the nearest address to where you clicked. It's easier to just use the scroll wheel to zoom in/out.

And you can just put the address in the search bar and the first result on the results page should be the address detail plus links for directions.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#102

Post by g_delgado14 »

csomar wrote: post #83

If you haven't already, you are better leaving Gmail 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…

> If you don't pay for the product, you are the product

I'm starting to think that this statement is becoming really generalized. Anonymized data has the power to help society.

I.e. anonymized cancer patient data to help doctors see larger societal trends without jeopardizing client privacy.

I trust larry page and the Google team, and presume Google is handling my data responsibly.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#103

Post by manigandham »

mfisher87 wrote: post #73
icebraining wrote: post #32

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.

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…

Are you using the actual native app or just the mobile website? If you have wifi off, it should still have access to your GPS to get your location, unless that is either off or blocked/unavailable.

If the website then how would it know your location if you don't allow it?

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#104

Post by DanBC »

icebraining wrote: post #32
gdulli wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 mobile: Do I press, or do I double tap, or do I long press, or is it in a menu, or is it just not available?

I know that tapping will drop a pin, and I don't want to drop a pin, (because there's already a pin from my search and that's in the right place) so I don't want to tap. But tapping is actually what I need to do to get rid of the interface and just leave me with the map. But only after I've done whatever it is I need to do to make the GPS dot active. I'm on a bus. The GPS dot shows me where I am. The pin shows me where my destination is. Maps also shows every bus stop (I complain, but this is one of the things that makes me feel like I'm on StarTrek) but you only get the bus stops if you zoom right in. So, I spend some time zooming in and out. The map images keep loading and unloading. I kind of wish Maps would realise that I need the bus stops. I know there probably isn't a setting for that (because FUCK YOU USER WE KNOW WHAT YOU WANT) so I just keep pinch zooming and unzooming, and hoping I don't miss-pinch and un-drop the pin.

Maps is great if you use it often enough to learn it. I use it just often enough to not remember it next time I go to use it.

(All maps are amazing. I remember using Autoroute from 5 1/4" floppies and a Hercules graphics adapter and that was amazing, so GMaps on that slab of glass does feel like magic. I moan too much.)

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#105

Post by eggnet »

Karunamon wrote: post #98
brwnll wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never received data that needed to be displayed as a table? If plain text email was the end-all, then instant messenger and SMS would have killed email a long time ago.

If we're just displaying tables rather than interacting with them, that problem is solved. +----------------------------------+---------+------------------------+ | Col1 | Col2 | Col3 | +----------------------------------+---------+------------------------+ | Value 1 | Value 2 | 123 | | Separate | cols | with a tab or 4 spaces | | This is a row with only one cell | | | +----------------------------------+---------+--…

That only works if you can guarantee monospaced font rendering on the client.

It also looks ugly.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#106

Post by manigandham »

potatolicious wrote: post #42
icebraining wrote: post #32

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.

My beef with GMaps is its performance. The UI is for the most part fine (though there some awful blunders that were later fixed). Loading GMaps takes forever now and brings my entire browser to a freezing stop (Chrome OSX) until it's done doing whatever it's doing. This is a modern desktop (i7, 16GB RAM, discrete graphics). Even after it's done "loading" if you try to interact with the map right away it does so at a…

On a puny Macbook Air with 4gb ram and Chrome with 30 tabs open I'm getting perfect framerates and instantaneous UI... perhaps this is something local to your machine?

It's hard to imagine that Google would make a UI that slow given their extensive optimizations.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#107

Post by davidbanham »

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…

Why is that email using HTML?

Hello there! Thanks for purchasing X for $Y. Your tax invoice is attached. Here's where you can track your delivery:

http://example.com/tracking

Thanks!

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#108

Post by manigandham »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #53
icebraining wrote: post #32

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…

You have to find a real address before it can give you directions. Otherwise on the default maps page, you can switch directly to directions mode to input both start and end addresses.

http://i.imgur.com/jZyv7gZ.png

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#109

Post by discreditable »

Cakez0r wrote: post #11
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…

I completely agree. I am totally unsympathetic about it being difficult to send consistent looking advertisements and emails that resemble web pages. If anyone from the gmail team happens to be reading, please let my comment be a contrary data point to this TC article and keep doing what you're doing!

I'll agree there. One of my favorite things about using Thunderbird as my mail client is that I can force simple HTML view on all incoming mail. It ignores CSS and other garbage, while keeping basic things like bold, italic, and links in tact.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#110

Post by J_Darnley »

brwnll wrote: post #93
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.

You've never received data that needed to be displayed as a table? If plain text email was the end-all, then instant messenger and SMS would have killed email a long time ago.

In the old days instant messenger didn't work if the other party was offline, it didn't usually support more than 1 recipient, and it was just stuck in proprietary programs as it is these days. SMS is too short.
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