161–170 of 283 posts
For me (I'm in Italy) the best part was the request: " would you like to switch now or in two weeks?". I use the same with my kids: "would you like one portion of broccoli or two portions?". This approach gives the perception of being able to choose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's especially bad on Firefox. With that, and the fact that Google is killing Inbox, it feels like time to look for alternatives.
Sure, but where? There are not that much email providers that will live forever and won't change your UX and have mobile apps, and... and...
Xoogler here, but I guarantee: 1) This conversation (and complaints) already happened, repeatedly and in-depth, months ago on various internal lists 2) The response - the Decision is made, you're change averse/not a representative user 3) Whichever PMs/leads/designers involved had an OKR to do Something, so Something had to be done
Do the IMAP or SMTP/POP3 options still work in GMail? If so, maybe it's time for a proxy WebMail UI hosted on a tiny VPS that simply acts as the mail client for you, whilst gmail still does all the heavy lifting of spam filtering and trusted sending.
Standard protocols still work. Why not just use a proper email client instead of a VPS hosted web UI?
I'm a self hosted MS Exchange + Outlook user, so I'm being purely devils advocate here.
What's interesting is that I remember how devs and designers were frustrated when they were asked to build a web version of their desktop apps finding it too hard to fit into new constrains. Now, I wont be surprised if web-devs/designers feel frustrated too trying to build a desktop app with a mental model of HTML documents and page reloads which is what the new gmail UX looks like to me (the old one was not better, I just got used to it).
If it was up to me, I would focus only on performance and accessibility. I would cut all animations and use much simpler (bare text if needed) ways to present information. Today when you can be fast on web, no need to compensate lack of it with too much content and animations.
I don't mind the look that much, but it's painfully slow. When an application gains a animated splash screen I know that it's time has come. I'm using a Chromebook, so in a way a Google blessed device and it's annoyingly slow. I'm switching to basic HTML view. If it will disappear I will get off gmail for good.
For me (I'm in Italy) the best part was the request: " would you like to switch now or in two weeks?". I use the same with my kids: "would you like one portion of broccoli or two portions?". This approach gives the perception of being able to choose.
1. The page will reset and reload, or,
2. Your keys will trigger a keyboard shortcut and then truly, good god damn luck because who knows how many pages of emails you'll archive with no way to undo (the toast that appears for 3 seconds is NOT sufficient, especially if you keep typing.)
Hangouts, YouTube, and Gmail are embarrassing to use. And that's not even discussing what happens in Firefox where everything is somehow nearly twice as slow.
edit: Oh, let me say, it's bad enough that if I'm on a laptop where I don't want to keep the bloated Gmail tab around in mem/cpu, I have reverted back to using the Web 1.0 / mobile-esque version of Gmail. (Which has it's own problems, attachments are broken, etc).
Just a mess. I am actively trying to move away from Google. Unfortunately, I can't find anything that is half-as-good as Google Photos.