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

Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 283 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#251

Post by ProZsolt »

babuskov wrote: post #17

In don't mind the way it looks, I can live with that. But it's sooo slow. Much slower that previous interface. It loads slow and it works slow. Switching between inbox and another folder use to be instantaneous, now I actually have to wait. Opening messages, deleting, everything is slow. And it looks like they removed the option to turn Undo off, so now I have to wait 5 seconds to my message to actually be sent. I'm…

I'm currently using Inbox which is fast and clutterless. It will go away in a few months and I have to use a worst Gmail than I switched from.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#252

Post by nasredin »

romwell wrote: post #198
kroltan wrote: post #31

Get Thunderbird (or any other standalone email app). Extremely traditional UI, and better responsiveness due to no frill JS and no tracking. Bonus, even read your emails offline! Innovation!

Opera 12 for me solely for the mail client. (They did spin off Opera Mail as a separate app, but I see no point in it, since it's just Opera 12 with the browser part disabled).

I recommend "The Bat!".

It's a bit clunky, but it's the best for serious people.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#253

Post by nasredin »

eiieirurjdndjd wrote: post #47
TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would they get that data? Users are given no way to voice negative feedback. If most users are like most non-techies I know, I assure you, they do care. There's just nothing they can do, beyond telling first couple people they encounter that they hate the new UI, and carrying on with their lives. Because what are they going to do? Move 10 years of their e-mail history to Microsoft and IM/phone 500 people about…

> Where would they get that data? The gmail product forums, monitoring sites like reddit, HN, and Twitter, focus groups and UX studies, internal dogfooders and trusted external testers, metrics from experimental or holdback groups, etc.

Ahh the famous Google Products Forum, where all the complaints and bugs are promptly fixed by real human beings!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#255

Post by html5web »

hawski wrote: post #18

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.

I describe it as too slow too. I wonder if they tested it before pushing it live to the world.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#257

Post by peatmoss »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #248
mrbonner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2015 MBP with 16GB of RAM and a core i5. The experience using Firefox with the new Gmail UI with this laptop is nothing but sluggish. I have to switch back to the old UI. I am not sure what I would do after Google takes away the old UI. What the hell is going on at Google?

> What the hell is going on at Google? Iterations are going on. There is a school of thought that believes any kind of movement is progress. May it movement into good or bad direction. Thats why companys regulary rehaul their apps, the design and corperate identity. It always end with some people becoming unhappy, but hopefully more people being happy.

Change for change’s sake. I feel like F/OSS has a potential advantage here in being able to take the time to build durable, long-lived, stable software.

The web-everything world we live in right now has led to a cambrian explosion in new UI metaphors and visual design. I can only hope at some point we all wake up and decide that GNUMail running on GNU Hurd has gotten really stable, and that maybe we should all just re-adopt open protocols and native apps.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#258

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

hawski wrote: post #18

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.

It's the final straw for me. I mean, for me Gmail was an important tool for daily business. I choose this tool for certain reasons, but now that most of them are gone, why stick to it? I'm migrating my accounts right now and it's actually fun.

One thing I still don't understand is why they wouldn't let people to use the old interface. Come on, it's just the UI, why force your taste on everyone?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#259

Post by babuskov »

emperorfin wrote: post #183
babuskov wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have "mu", only "u" and changing it to "h" only gives me the old html interface. I can do the same in the settings. I had the option to switch back to "classic" a couple of days back, but now it's gone.

Changing mu to h works totally fine for me. You can even change from mu to x but I think x is for mobile only. Just to clear any confussion, I hope the classic interface you are talking about is same as the basic html view. You can switch between standard view and basic html view from the buttom of the page. There are links there. But here's a link from Google so try this: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75k…

> I hope the classic interface you are talking about is same as the basic html view

No. There's are 3 interfaces: html, previous UI and new UI forced on users now. New UI apparently contains some features from Inbox product, and is much slower. You could opt out to use the old UI (dubbed Classic by Gmail) until yesterday. Now I can only choose between new UI and html.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#260

Post by Guest9812398 »

hawski wrote: post #18

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.

This seems to be the case for most Google services. I use Google DoubleClick, AdSense, and Analytics, and they seem to get slower, and more clunky with every update. I was using DoubleClick yesterday, and I was waiting about 10 seconds for every page to load. Then I searched for help on a topic and I was sent to the Google product forums, which nearly offered an equally poor experience. The frustration reminded me of my years with dial-up, even though it's 20 years in the future, and I have an 80 Mb/s internet connection. And of course the most basic features don't always work correctly with Google services now, such as being able to open a link in a new window, or being able to navigate without the back button breaking in some way.

Without question, Google services are the worst I currently use in my daily life. I would honestly be embarrassed to have my name attached to many of their products.

Post reply on HN