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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#151

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

hota_mazi wrote: post #147
pmlnr wrote: 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…

Get off Gmail and get on... what? You're only offering non constructive criticism. Gmail is light years ahead of any other email client I have tried so far.

Gmail is not just an email client though, it's also the email provider.

If you want to get off of Gmail the client, you can use an IMAP client like Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc. There are quirks with how the IMAP protocol's concepts get mapped to Gmail's concepts though.

If you want to get off of Gmail the provider, that's a different story. There are many free and paid providers, but there's still a large effort to switch since you have to ask people to update your email address and probably keep the old one around (and forwarding to the new one) for a long time. If you have your own domain that's backended by Gmail, this is a lot easier.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#152

Post by pletnes »

michaelmior wrote: post #63
pmlnr wrote: 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…

My understanding is that if you connect with a non-Gmail client or send to a non-Gmail user, the email is just a link to a webpage that enforces the restrictions.

Printscreen.

Photograph your screen with your phone.

It’s still just a «please don’t print».

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#153

Post by spookthesunset »

matwood wrote: post #98
therealmarv wrote: post #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.

> Inbox is not optimized for iPhone X. This has led me to think Inbox is on its way out. Lack of updates is the classic Google move prior to killing a product.

> This has led me to think Inbox is on its way out.

Any time an app takes forever to update to a new apple screen resolution is a good indicator the app is on its way out.

I mean, think about it.... if you were all-in on your app, wouldn't the highest priority fixes on your backlog be "get the damn thing to run in the native resolution of your target device"?

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#154

Post by 8ytecoder »

tgb wrote: post #126

The author's experience with GMail seems to be the opposite of mine. The new features for disappearing/unprintable/etc. emails sound like they're just going to cause annoyances while Gmail sorting things into promotions and updates is absolutely fantastic . And I use the "forums" tab too. This is the "good method for telling users what they need to read" that the author wants - that's what Primary is. This is the way…

I have been using Google Inbox since the launch and I absolutely LOVE it. It finally solved my email problems.

- I have notifications disabled for all but the important emails. So I respond to emails in time and I don't keep checking my phone anymore.

- Easy to read and discard emails. Especially promotions. I actually do check them - once a day and once a day only and then delete them all.

- Social/Updates ...etc are neatly organised. I check them during a downtime and not often. They don't alert me.

- Organising emails by trips are great. I can find all the relevant emails in one bundle.

- Absolutely love the GTD features - Marking as Done and Snoozing emails. My Inbox is always zero. I use that as pretty much a task manager as well.

Overall, classification of emails make emails actually usable for me. I used to be meticulous with creating email rules and filters in Outlook so I get to the ones I need to and ignore the rest for my sanity. Now it's done automagically and pretty spot on.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#155

Post by GordonS »

Something I really hate about Gmail is the way it places attachments at the bottom of the page. So if I open a long thread in which the latest email had an attachment, I've got to scroll down to the bottom to locate it - it's so unintuitive that I often find myself scanning the page looking for the attachment.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#156

Post by Yetanfou »

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.

I worked as a service developer at a large telco in Europe, building - among other things - mail infrastructure. If there was one thing I would not have uttered in that context it would have been '...proper e-mail usage ... through MS Exchange'. We fought tooth and nail to be able to have 'proper email' despite the insistence of corporate to use MS Exchange. In the end we ended up with two machines on each desk, one of them for the sole purpose of communicating with those parts of the company which used MS Exchange.

Things might be less bad nowadays, I don't know. What I know about MS Exchange is enough to keep away from it.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#157

Post by mephitix »

8ytecoder wrote: post #154
tgb wrote: post #126

The author's experience with GMail seems to be the opposite of mine. The new features for disappearing/unprintable/etc. emails sound like they're just going to cause annoyances while Gmail sorting things into promotions and updates is absolutely fantastic . And I use the "forums" tab too. This is the "good method for telling users what they need to read" that the author wants - that's what Primary is. This is the way…

I have been using Google Inbox since the launch and I absolutely LOVE it. It finally solved my email problems. - I have notifications disabled for all but the important emails. So I respond to emails in time and I don't keep checking my phone anymore. - Easy to read and discard emails. Especially promotions. I actually do check them - once a day and once a day only and then delete them all. - Social/Updates ...etc ar…

I love the little things in Inbox also:

- Seeing things in the email list associated with the email without having to open them, like expected shipping dates, PDFs. I can click on those things directly in the list without having to open the email and hunt for them

- Being able to pin things. This also functions as a 'selective offline' - when I'm traveling I pin travel and other important emails. Or if I purchased a movie ticket months before I can pin that and easily press a button to retrieve it without having to search for it

One thing that worries me though is that not only is Gmail moving closer to Inbox (a good thing) but Inbox seems to be moving closer to Gmail...

For example on Inbox iOS there was a swipe down to dismiss email list or email which made it really easy to work one-handed. Now they've adopted the Gmail-style 'push into new page' which means you have to reach your thumb all the way up the screen to hit the back button instead of just swiping down on the email.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#158

Post by pmlnr »

hota_mazi wrote: post #147
pmlnr wrote: 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…

Get off Gmail and get on... what? You're only offering non constructive criticism. Gmail is light years ahead of any other email client I have tried so far.

It's really not, nor the web client, nor the provider, and the options are plenty, mentioned even in this very thread.

Fastmail, self hosted iredmail, protonmail, etc., are fine providers.

Geary, rainloop, macos mail, k9, are very nice clients.

Have you actually tried any alternative clients, before you made this comment?

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#159

Post by jclos »

pletnes wrote: post #152
michaelmior wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that if you connect with a non-Gmail client or send to a non-Gmail user, the email is just a link to a webpage that enforces the restrictions.

Printscreen. Photograph your screen with your phone. It’s still just a «please don’t print».

It's not meant to stop malicious users, it's meant to stop careless ones. Malicious users will always find a way.
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