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Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#111

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #11

A week or two after reverting back to the usable gmail, Google notified me they would switch my Google apps mail to the new gmail in a popup on the corner. It presented me with two options: Now, Delay One Week. Instead of choosing one, I adblocked the notification. Two weeks later I'm still on the old gmail that responds to clicks. Hoping it never changes.

As soon as I got the update notification and couldn't say no, I quit Gmail.

The redesign is absolutely horrible, and just like OP, I find it unusably slow (on a beasty Gaming PC).

I got Fastmail, and redirect my Gmail which will now only be used as a spam address. Exactly the same as when I went Hotmail to Gmail and Hotmail because my spam address.

The tech cycle continues.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#112

Post by mikekchar »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #11

A week or two after reverting back to the usable gmail, Google notified me they would switch my Google apps mail to the new gmail in a popup on the corner. It presented me with two options: Now, Delay One Week. Instead of choosing one, I adblocked the notification. Two weeks later I'm still on the old gmail that responds to clicks. Hoping it never changes.

Just a warning. A couple of days before the switch over, all my filters stopped working. Not sure if it's related, but be careful if you rely on them.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#113

Post by muststopmyths »

yesimahuman wrote: post #10

On Firefox it’s unusable for quick work (open, quickly manage emails, close). The interface is noticeably slower than the classic UI. It’s maddening. Not sure what I’m going to do when it switches over for our Google Apps account. Any alternatives people like?

I was seeing this when they first forced the new interface a few weeks ago. The performance improved quite a bit when I killed all my firefox processes and restarted it. It's still not great, but it's tolerable.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#114

Post by bassman9000 »

userbinator wrote: post #95
bassman9000 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about 285 requests (19MB) before I can compose. This is insane. So I went to test it. 358 requests, 6.3MB, 20 seconds till full load. Compared to the standard, really old view ( https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en ): 14 requests, 25.3KB, 2 seconds. Edit: fans were spinning hard, so I opened the task manager: after CPU went down from ~90% tab is using 600-700MB, stable, with the dev console open, 400-…

25.3KB, 2 seconds That's what the size of a webmail app should be measured in --- kilobytes, not megabytes. A megabyte of code is a lot , and I'd guess a lot of developers just don't have the intuition of how much that is; to put it into perspective, this is an entire operating system in 1.44MB: http://menuetos.net/

Went to test Fastmail after some other poster suggested it. Granted, inbox is empty, but feels way faster that gmail, on par with basic gmail, with more functionality.

No cache reload: 28 requests, 114KB, 2.45 seconds.

With cache: 28 requests, 12KB, 2.65 seconds. Funny: UI seems ready after 1 second, but there's an eventsource request that dwarfs the rest in the waterfall, taking the rest of the time.

Edit: playing around with the UI, feels close to native.

Edit 2: downvotes, feel free to engage in discussion. Getting tired of the HN mob.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#115

Post by jcranmer »

bassman9000 wrote: post #57
iamwil wrote: post #43

Yes. I was complaining into the air on twitter, and their support responded by asking me to clear the cache and cookie. I told them: no man, it's not cache and cookies. You're loading too much stuff on initialization. It takes about 45 seconds for page load, and it's not until 1m37s that I can compose an email. You're making about 285 requests (19MB) before I can compose. That's the size of a long pop song on iTunes!…

> about 285 requests (19MB) before I can compose. This is insane. So I went to test it. 358 requests, 6.3MB, 20 seconds till full load. Compared to the standard, really old view ( https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en ): 14 requests, 25.3KB, 2 seconds. Edit: fans were spinning hard, so I opened the task manager: after CPU went down from ~90% tab is using 600-700MB, stable, with the dev console open, 400-…

... what the hell is gmail doing to suck up that much memory? It shouldn't take more than 1KB per message to store all potentially-relevant message headers, and even the textual content [i.e., no attachments] is unlikely to consume more than a few KB. That takes 100,000s of messages to reach 400MB, which is roughly on the order of "save every message you have ever received for several years."

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#116

Post by MiddleEndian »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #111
MiddleEndian wrote: post #11

A week or two after reverting back to the usable gmail, Google notified me they would switch my Google apps mail to the new gmail in a popup on the corner. It presented me with two options: Now, Delay One Week. Instead of choosing one, I adblocked the notification. Two weeks later I'm still on the old gmail that responds to clicks. Hoping it never changes.

As soon as I got the update notification and couldn't say no, I quit Gmail. The redesign is absolutely horrible, and just like OP, I find it unusably slow (on a beasty Gaming PC). I got Fastmail, and redirect my Gmail which will now only be used as a spam address. Exactly the same as when I went Hotmail to Gmail and Hotmail because my spam address. The tech cycle continues.

My Google mail is already a personal domain I just manage through Google apps. To be honest the main reason I keep it on Google apps is the six-ish people I talk to exclusively through hangouts (and momentum).

If I do get forced to the new gmail web version I'll likely switch to a desktop client or write my own client if I can't find a tolerable one.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#117

Post by navs »

philliphaydon wrote: post #103

I find it pretty sluggish. On Saturday I had to login to outlook for the first time in maybe 2/3 years. Wow the outlook ui from MS is awesome now. For me it was supe... ok ok ok. The login experience from MS still sucks donkey cock. I don’t know if they will ever fix that. But if you get past the terrible login experience. Man outlook is Super quick and clean. I switched back to gmail and i doesn’t look as good and i…

As an outlook.com and gmail user, I have to say it's going through the same crap as gmail. More features getting tacked on. I stopped using outlook.com's web interface once they started throwing Skype in my face at every chance.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#118

Post by beerlord »

throwaway140 wrote: post #54

Am a googler (hence throwaway account) & I can easily tell you why this shit keeps happening! Google featureless ZERO penalties for fucking shit up! Zero! Do you know what the people who wasted two years on Allo got after it was canned? Nothing! Some of them actually got promoted! Google GREATLY encourages "launches" - releasing something publicly. And keep in mind - no penalties if the shit is half baked, not workin…

Unfortunately a lot of product manager roles are hired based on how many new products/features that person launched, and not the actual impact to the company or customers (that information is usually confidential or impossible to tease out from one product anyway).

In reality the Product Manager roles should often be to nurture products to perfection over the long-term, and to be an absolute expert on the category.

Often though those people who want to nurture great products over the long-term just go on to start their own businesses! So the field is left with flashy people who launch flashy products very often, but who don't really understand the business, the industry, or their customers.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#119

Post by beerlord »

iamwil wrote: post #43

Yes. I was complaining into the air on twitter, and their support responded by asking me to clear the cache and cookie. I told them: no man, it's not cache and cookies. You're loading too much stuff on initialization. It takes about 45 seconds for page load, and it's not until 1m37s that I can compose an email. You're making about 285 requests (19MB) before I can compose. That's the size of a long pop song on iTunes!…

It was enough for me to take my staff over to a Microsoft-hosted email account. Outlooks just sits in the background using a few dozen megabytes, and has a better UI than Gmail. You don't need to hunt through Chrome tabs to find your email client, or load a webpage each time you want to check email. Having a native desktop application is a much better experience.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#120

Post by philliphaydon »

navs wrote: post #117
philliphaydon wrote: post #103

I find it pretty sluggish. On Saturday I had to login to outlook for the first time in maybe 2/3 years. Wow the outlook ui from MS is awesome now. For me it was supe... ok ok ok. The login experience from MS still sucks donkey cock. I don’t know if they will ever fix that. But if you get past the terrible login experience. Man outlook is Super quick and clean. I switched back to gmail and i doesn’t look as good and i…

As an outlook.com and gmail user, I have to say it's going through the same crap as gmail. More features getting tacked on. I stopped using outlook.com's web interface once they started throwing Skype in my face at every chance.

There's skype on there too? My experience was.

- Ah stupid MS login

- Oh that loaded fast

- clicks email loads instantly on right hand side and can still see my list.

- Oh this is clean and fast!

I've been debating loading gmail into a desktop client now that the UI is so sluggish for me. (for the first time since gmail came about) but as of saturday, i'm wondering if I should try using my outlook email more.

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