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What happened, Gmail?

uxplanet.org

41–50 of 220 posts

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#41
post #4
post #2

It flickers. It animates. It's annoying. Thank goodness they did not break keyboard shortcuts. It's more intrusive as a gui than the old one.

As long as google keeps the imap and pop3 gateways alive, we have a choice. Use them, utilize other webmails, even run it localhost, like rainloop; desktop clients, like geary, evolution, claws, thunderbird; command line, like mutt. Don't let the gmail interface drive the way you want to deal with email.

Their imap gateway is nonstandard to say the least. The labels vs folders thing is already a mess, but it also speaks a protocol that is just different enough from regular imap that most clients (e.g. thunderbird) have a different implementation with quirks for google-imap.

Using those clients is sub-standard with google's imap implementation, and switching between them is more painful due to how each one handles googles "labels not folders" quirk

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#42
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, up to the point of marking legitimate e-mail from personal domains as spam, even though such domains were set up correctly, including stuff like DKIM or SPF. Also, the wording was "... and what can wait for later", which doesn't sound like spam was meant - I don't think people keep their spam messages and read through them later, e.g. over the weekend. :)

Maybe I'm an exception, but I do scan through my spam from time to time :) Partly to see if I've missed something, but also because it can be amusing. I agree that spam detection is not an exact science, and that it is in fact quite subjective. It's also quite valuable!

Yes, I do that too, for certain class of spam that did not score high enough in my spam filter solution to warrant automatic removal. :) But that's about 5% of total spam I get.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#43

@google, check this: https://dribbble.com/shots/4020485-Inbox-Client/attachments/... . It's better than yours. Never a fan of material design.. seriously, Google is NOT good at design. Period. I hoped, in this Gmail iteration, Google would finally take the plunge and kill the flat icons and minimalist design and once for all. It's quite the opposite unfortunately. It got flatter and uglier. All so plain and washed ou…

That design is...awful. Tons of wasted space, prominent screen real estate given to interactions the user will never engage and less than 50% of the screen is given to the content I am there to see?

> one doesn't know what he should look at first.

Pot, meet kettle.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#44
post #41
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as google keeps the imap and pop3 gateways alive, we have a choice. Use them, utilize other webmails, even run it localhost, like rainloop; desktop clients, like geary, evolution, claws, thunderbird; command line, like mutt. Don't let the gmail interface drive the way you want to deal with email.

Their imap gateway is nonstandard to say the least. The labels vs folders thing is already a mess, but it also speaks a protocol that is just different enough from regular imap that most clients (e.g. thunderbird) have a different implementation with quirks for google-imap. Using those clients is sub-standard with google's imap implementation, and switching between them is more painful due to how each one handles goo…

It's better than nothing, though. It is almost bearable if you ignore the "All Mail" folder.

The problem is that it might as well disappear at any time. It is already disabled by default for new accounts, and you need to change 2 different settings to enable it.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#45
post #3

Among "needed innovations", the post lists: "A good method for telling users what’s important to read and what can wait for later." To me, it's downright scary that someone would want Google telling them what is important in their own mailbox. Personal responsibility bad, Hand-holding good, apparently.

Just as scary as having Google filter out mail that is totally not important, i.e. spam? In Gmail you can (un)label email as being important, which will then train an algorithm just like a spam filter. Besides that, it will learn to recognise email you reply to often as being important. I very much like this feature; I set up the Gmail app on iOS to only send me push notifications for important mail. For me that stri…

Yes, and it's been really due in gmail https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/03/29/the-road-to-fogbug...

http://onoffswitch.net/fogbugz-priority-prediction-naive-bay...

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#46
post #41
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as google keeps the imap and pop3 gateways alive, we have a choice. Use them, utilize other webmails, even run it localhost, like rainloop; desktop clients, like geary, evolution, claws, thunderbird; command line, like mutt. Don't let the gmail interface drive the way you want to deal with email.

Their imap gateway is nonstandard to say the least. The labels vs folders thing is already a mess, but it also speaks a protocol that is just different enough from regular imap that most clients (e.g. thunderbird) have a different implementation with quirks for google-imap. Using those clients is sub-standard with google's imap implementation, and switching between them is more painful due to how each one handles goo…

This is true, I'm well aware of this, but at least there's still a choice.

Unfortunately nothing is truly stopping Google to pull a Slack move and close the gateways... unless the amount of IMAP/SMTP users are significantly higher, than we know, or that those users are tech influencers Google don't dare to loose.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#47
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their imap gateway is nonstandard to say the least. The labels vs folders thing is already a mess, but it also speaks a protocol that is just different enough from regular imap that most clients (e.g. thunderbird) have a different implementation with quirks for google-imap. Using those clients is sub-standard with google's imap implementation, and switching between them is more painful due to how each one handles goo…

It's better than nothing, though. It is almost bearable if you ignore the "All Mail" folder. The problem is that it might as well disappear at any time. It is already disabled by default for new accounts, and you need to change 2 different settings to enable it.

It always was, nearly since the beginning. I remember needing to turn it on around 2007.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#48
Extra First Class World problems: Inbox is not optimized for iPhone X. Everytime I read this I cringe.

How about the thought that your phone broke common UI behaviour and not your software which needs to adapt to a new screen culture.

I'm sure very soon Inbox will support iPhone X. But there are many other problems in Inbox which I see more important like Unspam emails without Gmail.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#49
post #32

Email was meant to be kept simple, and Google is making this exponentially hard with every single "design" iteration. Get off Gmail - it'll break your email. The article has very good points, especially when it touches the issue of "hidden" mail, like the promotions tab: there are labels and tabs. There should be only one system, and no, don't hide things from the user at this level. When there's 17k mails in promoti…

> Things like unprintable email is a bad joke. Unprintable? What if I connect to Gmail with mutt? It gives the sense of a false security.

It also fundamentally breaks with what the user expects. The user expects their email to be theirs, to do with what they will. I know of no situation in which I would like an email which I specifically cannot print; I have no idea how I would explain it to my Grandfather.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#50

Extra First Class World problems: Inbox is not optimized for iPhone X. Everytime I read this I cringe. How about the thought that your phone broke common UI behaviour and not your software which needs to adapt to a new screen culture. I'm sure very soon Inbox will support iPhone X. But there are many other problems in Inbox which I see more important like Unspam emails without Gmail.

True that. But I hope that's not your only take away from the article :) Still they updated everything else - so I guess they didn't cringe at that. Apple breaking UI standards, yap, they always do, gotta write on that too.
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