How to cope with the Gmail redesign • Hacker News Board

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#101

Post by vl » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 8:30 AM UTC

copper wrote: post #85

mikegioia wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, what do/would you recommend? I'm really curious because I honestly can't think of ONE email service that does email better than Gmail.

fastmail's non-free service, maybe? I got it a very long time ago, mainly for the .in email address. It's been no-frills, fast, and (mostly) reliable. I'm still not sure I'd recommend it to a gmail user, but its been a good email account to have.

I moved my domain and imported all emails from Fastmail to Google Apps because of:

1) Deficient search, the more email you keep, the more you rely on search to find something from few days to few years ago. Incredibly painful with Fastmail.

2) Lack of calendar. It's just so more convenient to have your calendar integrated with email.

3) Lack of Exchange ActiveSync support (as in protocol). This protocol allows to sync email, calendar and contacts from the same account. All these things I want to be synced to my phone. Keeping contacts and calendar in Gmail (because it has ActiveSync support) and email in Fastmail was becoming more and more frustrating.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#102

Post by conradfr » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 8:31 AM UTC

Caligula wrote: post #22

Its not just GMAIL. Google analytics is painfully ugly. The first screen before showed a list of all the sites and traffic. Now it shows just the list of accounts. Its awful. There is no way anymore to use the classic design. Also, once I am in google analytics it is just a UI mess. They cram every feature possible and make it unintelligible. They are ruining the UI for gmail,google search and google analytics.

I must be using wrong because I have to do so more clicks with the new Analytics design to see things I want, it's frustrating.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#103

Post by esc » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 8:43 AM UTC

abentspoon wrote: post #66

You can actually still use the old interface for a little while longer, even if you've been forced over to the redesign. http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail

Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old one feels and looks so much better.

My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less intuitive than the old design.

Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave the old one as optional as it was during the past few months.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#104

Post by irpap » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 8:43 AM UTC

I've always been using the Candy theme, and I like much better the way it looks with the new design. It's quite girly though, which unfortunately might exclude most of HN readers. But I agree that anything other than the compact display density option makes the experience much worse.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#105

Post by bermanoid » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 9:00 AM UTC

andrewfelix wrote: post #72

mattmanser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth? Gmail grew 3 or 4 years ago. I wouldn't recommend Gmail to anyone now, it's just another Hotmail type service, there's nothing special or good about Gmail anymore. What really surprised me is how few of my friends get the 'conversation' view even in 2012. After too many awkward conversations and now their 'we've got absolutely no design skills and can't design for shit' redesign, I'm just shrugging when peopl…

According to Google(obviously not an unbiased source) Gmail gained around 90M users between 2011 and 2012.

As a publicly traded company, their published estimates of gained users over the past year are probably extremely solid. I wouldn't worry about bias, they would be in heaps of trouble if they lied about these numbers.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#106

Post by tjoff » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 9:02 AM UTC

ditojim wrote: post #75

sho_hn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're missing out on a ton of great Gmail features if you are using a desktop mail client. Integrated hangout/voice /text chat, phone, conversation view, the social pane with contextual information..the list goes on.

Why would I want that in my mail application?

Those features also only promote you to stay logged in on your gmail account at all times, and there have been numerous security issues with that approach.

I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail. Every time I see someone use gmail I cringe at how primitive and slow the workflow is.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#107

Post by ericd » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 10:03 AM UTC

jasoncrawford wrote: post #79

adgar wrote: post #29

This is more like a "how to revert to 2006 GMail" list. I mean, he even goes out of his way to turn off Priority Inbox and important markers. That has nothing to do with the redesign - it's just turning off year+ old features, which is what a good portion of the post is. Luckily for the author, options exist to turn off all the features that have been released in the past many years. Of course, there's some apportion…

I tried Priority Inbox for a while when it first came out. It's an interesting feature and maybe it works for some people, but I decided I didn't need it. It didn't matter until the redesign, though. In the new design, the "importance markers" are very similar in appearance to the stars, and they are right next to each other. It's hard to tell them apart at a glance. That's why I finally had to turn them off.

Thanks for the tips, I'd done most of these when they changed to the new theme, but the the icon button/web clip tips escaped me. Thanks for those! I couldn't find the high contrast theme, unfortunately.

As a random anecdotal data point, my inbox would be completely unusable without priority inbox. My email volume is way too high without it.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#108

Post by surgi » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 10:50 AM UTC

I also hate the new design, even after few hours I've spent trying to get used to it. With all the necessary settings (compact mode, text buttons etc.), the main flaw stays - theres no freaking border between message body and ads! C'mon Google, this is just too obvious. Wonder how users will switch to some other webmail or desktop clients, how many of them will install some ad-blockers, just because of this. You realise, Google, that this would mean actually less clicking on your ads? Speaking of intentional clicks here.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#109

Post by andrewfelix » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 10:54 AM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #106

ditojim wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out on a ton of great Gmail features if you are using a desktop mail client. Integrated hangout/voice /text chat, phone, conversation view, the social pane with contextual information..the list goes on.

Why would I want that in my mail application? Those features also only promote you to stay logged in on your gmail account at all times, and there have been numerous security issues with that approach. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail. Every time I see someone use gmail I cringe at how primitive and slow the workflow is.

>I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail

I can't speak for the 350M other people using Gmail. But here's why I use Gmail(some of these aren't exclusively Gmail):

- Conversation View

- Calendar Integration

- Very good Labelling/Grouping system

- Online Storage

- Browser access

- Very Powerful and effecient Search

- Great filter system

- Autosaves unfinished emails

- Integration with multiple third party tools including Attachments.me, dropbox, google docs, taskforce

I used to use Thunderbird, and it was great. But I had big 3 problems with it: 1) I never got comfortable with searching emails. 2)I couldn't access my email from other devices/computers etc 3)My emails starting chewing up a lot of HDD space.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#110

Post by Hurdy » Sun, Apr 22, 2012, 11:21 AM UTC

kreitje wrote: post #46

Their spam/filtering has gone down hill. It does a great job with the spam. Unfortunately, several people I communicate with a few times a day, half of their stuff goes straight to the trash and I don't see it. If I login to webmail I can see they have both an Inbox and Trash label on them but my phone and mail client to register the new mail and it doesn't show in the Inbox. I just want it to pick one.

Can you rephrase that? How do these messages get the trash label?