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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#131

Post by heavenlyblue »

coldtea wrote: post #121
heavenlyblue wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> increasing hard questions Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. You're still sending text. You're still attaching links to your messages if you'd like to send a large file. You're still trying to keep concise in your comm. What have evolved, exactly? Sans encryption - that's not really a "hard question". Gmail's a great spam-free p…

> Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. The difference is (a) those messages started to measure in the hundreds or thousands per day, not 5 of them at most like in the eighties, (b) people started using it for all kinds of work collaboration and organization. Not just some academics exchanging ideas.

So what collaborative features unique to Gmail does the organisation you work for currently actively uses?

PS: please do not say "Hangouts", as Hangouts are only loosely integrated with Gmail. These are two separate systems and it does seem they are still unsure if these two should be merged together.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#132

Post by achamayou »

alkonaut wrote: post #65
achamayou wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the lack of visual density and regularity in Inbox very annoying. Gmail (compact) fits 3/4x times more emails on the same screen, with a single text line of identical size for each. It's very quick and easy to scan through. Inbox looks like a jumbled mess to me, with randomly sized images and pre-rendered images, and it makes me scroll a lot more. Annoyingly, the new UI is slightly less dense than before, but…

I think the key idea behind inbox is that you don't have more than say 5 or 10 emails in your "to do" view. I never had to scroll. I only look at the inbox view (i.e. things I need to deal with) - and that is always fewer than one screen. If I need something from the "already dealt with" screen I do a search, never a visual scan. This might be due to the volume of emails received obviously, but that's why I was wonde…

Yes, for some reason Inbox expands some attachments inline for me, and pre-renders some links (with a picture from the page a short summary). It doesn't seem to do it systematically, and it could be something that can be turned off in options (it didn't seem to be when I first checked). It seems to pick the most useless items for expansion (recurring bills! 150px vertically for this month's G drive bill!).

A quick an dirty screenshot-on-my-current-machine shows inbox compact emails at 60px vertical, vs 50 for the new gmail. All of the difference seems to be whitespace, the fonts are more or less identical. There's extra waste for "Today" and "This month", and with a couple of expanded pictures, I can't even fit 10 emails vertically on my screen (MB 12"). Gmail shows 20 emails in the same space just fine.

It's quite possible that if you have just the right volume of email, the Inbox format is perfect. It's also possible that most people don't mind scrolling. Me though, I like to see as much as I possibly can at a glance.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#133

Post by ino »

It's also slower. The scrolling is choppy and I shouldn't need a top of the line computer to scroll smoothly through some emails.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#134

Post by legohead »

What got me is they moved the archive button. I have been trained to click on the email, move my mouse up a few pixels, and click archive. Now when I do that, my cursor resides on the spam or delete button. Oops! I don't think the Google of yesteryear would have made that mistake -- the google that designed Chrome closing tabs to stay the same size so you could close multiple tabs quickly.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#135

Post by spinchange »

I don't understand replacing the onmouseover shortcut to all mail from/to a given address with shortcuts to other google apps actions (add to contacts, compose, schedule event, hangouts, etc.) I'm mostly a keyboard shortcut person but that's a mouse action I use all the time.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#137

Post by mikeash »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being spam free was revolutionary when Gmail was new. It also revolutionized email by offering enough space that you could actually keep an archive. When most providers offered maybe 10MB, Gmail offered 1GB. If those don’t sound revolutionary today, it’s only because Gmail revolutionized things so hard that everyone had to jump on board.

You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. But in terms of proper e-mail usage: be it through MS Exchange, University campuses, corporate servers - they made no difference. Everyone already had enough space there anyway, and spam filters worked - as they had enough email volume to detect attack. And they still use these systems.

As a university user at the time, it certainly wasn’t my experience that everyone already had enough space, or that spam filtering worked.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#138

Post by mhuffman »

rayiner wrote: post #108

While we are griping, the mobile website is complete crap on iOS, constantly mistaking the initial touch to start a swipe motion. So you accidentally open emails while trying to scroll through them. I’ve never seen any other website do this, so I’m assuming someone got too clever.

Youtube (another Google product!) does this and it is infuriating! The youtube iOS app is utter garbage, but the site itself is nearly unusable because of the initial-touch mistake.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#140

Post by pmlnr »

Illniyar wrote: post #62
pmlnr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

e-MAIL. The stress is on the mail part. When your Grandfather sends a letter via post, he doesn't expect it to be his anymore, does he?

That's the other way around. The grandfather is the one receiving the email that he can't print.

I misunderstood the parent. Sorry, and you are right.
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