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How to cope with the Gmail redesign

jasoncrawford.org

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Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#11

Post by dancesdrunk »

I quite like the new design, and I've been using it since it was in "beta" a couple of months ago.

It certainly provided a couple of frustrating days before I got used to it, but I find it much more soft on the eyes - to me the old layout now looks pretty harsh; giving the impression of being just "functional".

A lot of non-technical folks I work (and live!) with find the new design much, much more pleasing. Bear in mind these are the folks that use hotmail, yahoo etc - so they really are after the "eye candy" more than the functionality; and with google's new social push I can assume this is now the target audience.

My only complaint would be about the icons; regardless of wether you've used Gmail before - you will get caught out; a few days ago it took me a good few minutes before I could find out how to get to my contacts.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#12

Post by teach »

My biggest new-Gmail-design pet-peeve is that the Display Density setting is only respected if your browser window is wide enough.

I prefer the "Comfortable" setting. I have a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, but I don't have my browser window maximized (it only takes up 65-75% of the screen width).

So, GMail has helpfully reduced my display density to "Cozy", ignoring my setting.

As far as I know, there's no way to "fix" this; it's a known issue but there's no workaround other than making my browser window wider.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#14

Post by eternalban »

davux wrote: post #9

I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really…

Try http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#15

Post by davux »

eternalban wrote: post #14
davux wrote: post #9

I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really…

Try http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

Thanks, I know about the basic HTML site. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me, though. The basic site is literally worse than the 2003 version.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#16

Post by soulclap »

dirkdk wrote: post #6

besides the default theme and the high contrast theme, all others are useless and look like the work of a 5 year old. Design has a function, namely to make things clear and give the user a good experience.

I agree. Really makes me wonder if all their themes have been made by developers (like me). 'Work of a 5 year old', exactly.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#18

Post by ken »

A year or two ago I got tired of my email UI changing every week, so I switched to the "plain HTML" view. It's not as fast or smooth or javascript-y but I don't think it's changed a bit in years.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#19

Post by pbreit »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #3

You can talk IMAP/POP and SMTP, and you get to control your own user interface, or you can talk HTTP, HTML, and JS and abdicate control to someone else. I fell into that trap myself. I was a heavy user of Gmail for about four years, and when they started changing things and told me "only 0.07% of users use that feature we just removed", it was too late. This mayhem ruined "the cloud" for me ... and I used to help run…

Well, except that gmail.com offers much more customization than any desktop email client.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#20

Post by pbreit »

sho_hn wrote: post #7
TamDenholm wrote: post #2

Personally I really like the new design, despite the fact I have actually implemented most of the things mentioned in the article. However, I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation, and this doesn't include any of the stuff from the labs feature set.

> I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.

I'm not sure I understand. Most desktop email clients have _very_ limited customizability.
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