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

Introducing the new compose in Gmail

gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 202 posts

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#121

Post by manaskarekar »

Teckla wrote: post #117
manaskarekar wrote: post #90

Does anyone have a comprehensive/good solution to how to move all your stuff out of Gmail? Midway while typing this post, I did a search and boom: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3581613

Does anyone have a comprehensive/good solution to how to move all your stuff out of Gmail? I use Thunderbird + IMAP to sync a local copy of my Gmail email every week or two. It does not sync anything except your email, but even that much is pretty nice, for peace of mind.

I don't use email clients, so pardon me if this is elementary, but is there a good way to compress and archive downloaded emails with their attachments?

Also, is the formatting (rtf) preserved?

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#122

Post by dquigley »

It seems like many people don't like this, but I had this exact issue last night. And opening another tab takes a while to load simply because the gmail app is so big. So while I'm not sure about this exact implementation yet, it could be a nice feature.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#123

Post by fudged71 »

anonymouz wrote: post #36
nkurz wrote: post #32

Saving a draft, opening the old email, and then reopening your draft wastes valuable minutes. The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger). Minutes? I do sometimes wonder where the day goes... Alternatively, Shift-click on compose (or press capital C to with keyboard shortcuts on), and you'll get an actual window that you can move and resize. With the chat mini-windows I frequently wish that I c…

I completely agree. We all have some sort of window manager that deals with handling multiple windows in a consistent way. We don't need every website reinventing window management in their own half-assed manner, that is utterly inconsistent with other sites and other applications.

A few different web services are trying more and more to be "Online Operating Systems". I think GMail and Facebook have gotten to that point.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#124

Post by Teckla »

manaskarekar wrote: post #121
Teckla wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have a comprehensive/good solution to how to move all your stuff out of Gmail? I use Thunderbird + IMAP to sync a local copy of my Gmail email every week or two. It does not sync anything except your email, but even that much is pretty nice, for peace of mind.

I don't use email clients, so pardon me if this is elementary, but is there a good way to compress and archive downloaded emails with their attachments? Also, is the formatting (rtf) preserved?

I don't know the answer to your first question, but in response to your second question, yes, formatting is preserved.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#125

Post by rbanffy »

jsdalton wrote: post #16

I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but... Whatever blogspot theme Google uses for this blog is just god awful (oh, I see, this is it: http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gm... ), and I swear it gets worse every time I view a post there. To wit: When I load the page I see the orange "loading" gears. Then that sliiiiides up to reveal…

> I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but...

Then don't do it.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#126

Post by andrewljohnson »

jsdalton wrote: post #16

I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but... Whatever blogspot theme Google uses for this blog is just god awful (oh, I see, this is it: http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gm... ), and I swear it gets worse every time I view a post there. To wit: When I load the page I see the orange "loading" gears. Then that sliiiiides up to reveal…

Ugh, why would anyone up-vote this comment? Some how this is the top comment, even though it doesn't address the content of the article. This happens all the time on HN and I find it very annoying.

It's not just that I don't want to scroll past this comment. These meta-comments may seem harmless, but when this is the top comment, it stifles the entire discussion about the article. Instead of people discussing the merits of the new GMail UI, there is an endless chain of replies burying all the topical comments.

I've said it before - I'd like to see a community guideline advising people not to make comments like this. These comments end up being easy ways to score points, entertaining for the people involved in the criticism, but harmful for the topical discussion. If it's a "Show HN" post about a hacker's new project, it seems topical to criticize the technology, but when it's a blog post, it seems so lame to criticize the blog software.

This kind of complaint belongs in its own thread - it should be a blogpost or something. The comment doesn't even apply to me - the page works perfectly and crisply for me.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#128

Post by deltaqueue »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #13
tomasien wrote: post #7

I can see the merits of this, but I'm curious about how it fits into a mobile strategy. My big complaint about email, especially gmail, is that it seems to insist on keeping too many elements from desktop to mobile. My mobile email needs are much more like my SMS needs, yet the UX for mobile Gmail (for example) largely resembles the desktop client. I know that's tangential, but it's what's on my mind regarding Gmail…

The thing is, who uses mobile GMail? Almost everyone I know uses a native client (Android or iOS). The mobile version of Gmail is definitely a second-class citizen, but I'm glad they're not letting it hold back development of awesome features like this.

I do, because the Google Apps security policy is way too inhibitive for me to add my work account on my android phone to use the native apps. Essentially, the policy requires me to enter a 6-character password (read: a password, not a PIN) every time I want to unlock my phone. I would much rather not use the native google apps and just access Gmail via my phone's browser, as terrible as the interface may be.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#129

Post by te_chris »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #126
jsdalton wrote: post #16

I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but... Whatever blogspot theme Google uses for this blog is just god awful (oh, I see, this is it: http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gm... ), and I swear it gets worse every time I view a post there. To wit: When I load the page I see the orange "loading" gears. Then that sliiiiides up to reveal…

Ugh, why would anyone up-vote this comment? Some how this is the top comment, even though it doesn't address the content of the article. This happens all the time on HN and I find it very annoying. It's not just that I don't want to scroll past this comment. These meta-comments may seem harmless, but when this is the top comment, it stifles the entire discussion about the article. Instead of people discussing the mer…

I'm finding HN harder and harder to deal with without comment upvote counts to provide perspective as a filtering mechanism. I find that regulars and comments like this always tend to get upvoted, even when they're normally far from the most insightful comments posted.

Re: Introducing the new compose in Gmail

#130

Post by Hurdy »

GlennS wrote: post #77
blhack wrote: post #9

Good. The most annoying thing to me about gmail's interface is center-clicking on something (to reference it, like something in a mailing list) and having the entire window redirected. This is cool :)

You can use Ctrl+left-click to get the same 'open in new tab' behaviour as middle-click. I do agree that broken middle-click is hugely annoying. I'd much prefer they fixed that though, rather than introducing a non-standard popup as the default left-click behaviour. I don't really understand why they hijacked middle-click in the first place. Does anyone actually use middle-click + drag to scroll? I would've assumed t…

This was more of an oversight of some other changes than a conscious decision. It's definitely a known issue though.
Post reply on HN