Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A rundown of the new Gmail

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 304 posts

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#251

Post by hoffs »

indianajensen wrote: post #191
OmarIsmail wrote: post #45

The most exciting news here is that they're iterating on Gmail again. It was clear that Gmail was stagnating for a while as they were investing in Inbox. It's unfortunate that Inbox didn't take off, but now that it looks like they're putting the effort behind Gmail proper, we'll be seeing continual updates and improvements. In just the past 6 months we've seen native Gmail add-ons (that work across web and mobile) an…

I've been an avid Inbox user for years. Anyone knows what's next for Inbox? Looks like it might be folded back into Gmail and discontinued as standalone?

Afaik Inbox will be like testing grounds for features that might come to Gmail in the future.

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#252

Post by linsomniac »

Raidion wrote: post #240
billfruit wrote: post #239

Something as bare minimum as stemming while searching(ie, if you presently search in Gmail for the string 'orange', the results does not include emails that may only contain the string 'oranges') strings inside emails is yet to be implemented by Google. Any possible reason why something that sounds simple is yet not implemented?

Wildcard searches are expensive and gmail has a LOT of data. I bet it would cost them more than you expect.

But stemming isn't wildcard...

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#253

Post by ktosobcy »

jk2323 wrote: post #153

What is good about Gmail? Imap is a nightmare if you travel a lot (Please log-in via Browser), it is a privacy nightmare..If you forget your password, who can you call? What is good about it? Okay, it is free and has the best "search" option. You can get a domain with Webmail and IMAP for a few bucks. gandi.net (France) infomaniak.com (Switzerland)

Well, gmail IMAP is terribly terrible. I'm eyeballing fastmail (was using it for a bit and mail/calendar/contacts were working like a charm) but for my usecase I would have to pay 15usd/month (2 domains, and 2 persons, one having accounts on both domains - totalling 3 accounts according to them) which would be quite pricey. Thanks for the hints about infomaniak.com - looks ok. Any comments?

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#254

Post by ktosobcy »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #45

The most exciting news here is that they're iterating on Gmail again. It was clear that Gmail was stagnating for a while as they were investing in Inbox. It's unfortunate that Inbox didn't take off, but now that it looks like they're putting the effort behind Gmail proper, we'll be seeing continual updates and improvements. In just the past 6 months we've seen native Gmail add-ons (that work across web and mobile) an…

I'm not so optimistic. New UI for me looks like an unfocused drawing of a child. What's more - I rarely used the webUI previously (prefer IMAP, which kinda sucks in case of gmail) but now it's slower and looks uglier... (IMVHO)

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#255

Post by rmorey »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #217
peatmoss wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved my stuff to / paid a year of Fastmail. I gather Protonmail puts security features a bit more front-and-center. How about the UX? Can anyone comment on how they like the over all experience of Protonmail as compared to Fastmail? I realize I could sign up a Protonmail account and compare, but I’m not sure I’d get a good picture of the service through casual use. I like Fastmail quite a lot so far, but…

Lack of POP/IMAP is a big, major con. You're forced to use their web or native interfaces. They don't make this super obvious outside of an FAQ on their site. I signed up and then found out. I wonder how much churn that causes them.

You actually can use IMAP/SMTP with ProtonMail using their new bridge application (only on Windows and macOS right now, Linux "coming soon")

https://protonmail.com/bridge

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#256

Post by portmanteaufu »

While I love the new functional features (Calendar view, snooze an email, add an email to your task list, etc.), the new UI has a lot of problems.

First and foremost, the "Feedback" modal dialog is completely broken in Firefox. The menu loads but then immediately disappears. It blinks back into view intermittently every several seconds, but I can't see it long enough to populate the form they provide.

They established a new dock for non-email applications on the right-hand side, but decided to leave the Hangouts interface shoehorned into the lower-left corner. It's too cramped to use and forces them to waste a huge amount of horizontal space to the right of the menu options above it ("Inbox", "Sent", etc.).

I count 5 vertical scrollbars visible on my small screen. The scrollbar in the primary inbox pane is there whether there's overflow or not. I tried selecting the "Compact" display density option and limited the list to 20 emails per page to guarantee that scrolling wouldn't be necessary, but I still have to look at the scrollbar. I also dislike that the inbox tabs ("Primary", "Social", etc.) aren't pinned to the top -- if I accidentally scroll on the inbox pane, they vanish.

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#257

Post by tofflos »

I know they put in a lot of hard work on improving the product... But I wish that they would divert just a minuscule amount of that effort into changing the font to something other than Arial.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Just pick "Segoe UI" or "Verdana" like everyone else.

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#258

Post by Boulth »

peatmoss wrote: post #246
zyrthofar wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to switch in a couple of weeks, until I read your comment. How would encrypted emails work in a client like Thunderbird? Would it normally be handled correctly if POP/IMAP was available?

This is the grand problem with email. At least two standards exist: PGP & SMIME But... those aren’t particularly friendly and thus aren’t widely used. The main usability issue is a fundamental one, namely that management of crypto keys is hard. Hearing that Protonmail requires their own client suggests to me that they’ve given up on the standards due to usability issues, and have instead adopted a managed key model l…

> Thunderbird would work with Fastmail for encryption using PGP or SMIME (at least I think Thunderbird supports SMIME).

Thunderbird supports SMIME natively, just like most of email clients. But of course there are some usability issues, like you need to enable encryption each time per email, or require it for all emails, there is no middle ground like "encrypt if I have keys, do not encrypt otherwise".

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#259

Post by jk2323 »

ktosobcy wrote: post #253
jk2323 wrote: post #153

What is good about Gmail? Imap is a nightmare if you travel a lot (Please log-in via Browser), it is a privacy nightmare..If you forget your password, who can you call? What is good about it? Okay, it is free and has the best "search" option. You can get a domain with Webmail and IMAP for a few bucks. gandi.net (France) infomaniak.com (Switzerland)

Well, gmail IMAP is terribly terrible. I'm eyeballing fastmail (was using it for a bit and mail/calendar/contacts were working like a charm) but for my usecase I would have to pay 15usd/month (2 domains, and 2 persons, one having accounts on both domains - totalling 3 accounts according to them) which would be quite pricey. Thanks for the hints about infomaniak.com - looks ok. Any comments?

I use both.

Informaniak has decent webmail. IMAP is okay, didn't get SMTP to work with k9 android email client. I don't have my domain with them, I buy email/IMAP as a service. I think it is 17 Euros per year.

gandi's IMAP seems more robust.

Infos https://www.infomaniak.com/en/support/faq/1944/ordering-emai...

Order (may have to change to English): https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/e-mail

Re: A rundown of the new Gmail

#260

Post by bproven »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #217
peatmoss wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved my stuff to / paid a year of Fastmail. I gather Protonmail puts security features a bit more front-and-center. How about the UX? Can anyone comment on how they like the over all experience of Protonmail as compared to Fastmail? I realize I could sign up a Protonmail account and compare, but I’m not sure I’d get a good picture of the service through casual use. I like Fastmail quite a lot so far, but…

Lack of POP/IMAP is a big, major con. You're forced to use their web or native interfaces. They don't make this super obvious outside of an FAQ on their site. I signed up and then found out. I wonder how much churn that causes them.

The other issue is inability to search your mail's message bodies in the web/mobile app. This is due to the encryption...
Post reply on HN