I'm planing to move to fastmail.fm in the near future. I find the Gmail UI very sluggish and quite the opposite of being user friendly, and I also don't have any guarantee I won't become a horror story about how Google automatically shut down my account without me doing anything wrong.
I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
21–30 of 344 posts
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Gmail first launched, they made a big deal of the fact that their user testing revealed ~11 different types of user with distinct workflows. They made sure the Gmail interface supported all those workflows well. It seems like the new interface is going after just one or two, and making life harder for everyone else. I think I will switch back to a desktop email client for day-to-day use and only use the web inte…
Do you have a link? Curious to see what kind of user I am (I also generally like the new interface; seems perfectly fine for me).
I'm pretty sure I'm not on that list. I've never liked the way the gmail web client works.
* I've always disliked conversation view, and I keep ending up turning it off whenever I try it
* The lack of ability to sort emails is really annoying
* The layout of emails, particularly when trying to reply to an email, I find confusing - in particular it would make far more sense to have the text box at the top of the page
That being said, I probably dislike it less now than when I first started using it so I think the changes have generally been positive.
On a side note, I think Photoshop is also a UI disaster area.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#23I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake, but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some getting used to however. Responses to the points made in the article: 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures. Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent email…
I rarely use the "make a link" button because Gmail automatically converts URL-looking strings into links. So I just paste the URL and get a link for free, no buttons required.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#24wow you guys totally crashed my little wordpress site. sorry it's down now :(
Don't worry we'll keep trying..every few seconds
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Gmail first launched, they made a big deal of the fact that their user testing revealed ~11 different types of user with distinct workflows. They made sure the Gmail interface supported all those workflows well. It seems like the new interface is going after just one or two, and making life harder for everyone else. I think I will switch back to a desktop email client for day-to-day use and only use the web inte…
Do you have a link? Curious to see what kind of user I am (I also generally like the new interface; seems perfectly fine for me).
I've just done a bit of googling around to try and find more on this. I've turned up a heap of references to the developers finding 6 different types of users during their 2 years of internal testing before launch. Alas no where is there actually a list of these 6 different types of users.
The doc in question was written by Kevin Fox who replied to this quora thread about it, but dodged the question claiming that the info isn't his to divulge.
http://www.quora.com/Gmail/What-are-the-six-types-of-email-u...
Weird.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#26I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake, but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some getting used to however. Responses to the points made in the article: 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures. Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent email…
@Fuzzwah - regarding #4, I'm trying to insert a link. I don't see how you can do the drag and drop, especially if you want to make a word a link instead. Not http url.
It seems you still can test links. For some reason, I couldn't do it for a period. Maybe they brought it back...
In regards to learning hotkeys - there is no hotkey for changing subject line or getting access to emails. Otherwise I'd learn it.
I think they should keep the simple UI for mobile and give the more full featured one for desktop (or at least an option).
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#27I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake, but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some getting used to however. Responses to the points made in the article: 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures. Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent email…
Saying 'hit the big red compose button' totally misses the point of why subjects get edited. If you'd ever participated in a discussion list, you'd know that sometimes a single discussion thread branches out into multiple smaller threads. The best way to handle this is to reply with a new subject so that threaded conversation views in email clients show it as a new thread, but all the participants stay on the reply-t…
I said "maybe". I'm savvy to discussion lists. I can see times when you want to edit the subject. It is still possible. It takes two clicks...... Yes it could take 1 click.
What about copy and paste is that beyond normal humans too?
Frankly, this article was about power users and my responses were from my own personal point of view. I couldn't care less about if these changes are bad for ma's and pa's.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#28I'm normally pretty easy to please with UI changes, but even I'm a little frustrated with some of the new compose quirks.
Personally, I've had a very hard time putting together bulleted lists in the new compose. To start the list, you need to click the underlined A (for Additional Formatting), then the familiar bulleted list icon. I can live with that, though I'd certainly prefer one click.
To do a nested list, though, I often get confused and frustrated. With your existing list, you need to click the underlined A, then click what appears to be the left align icon, which is the Align Menu. From there, Indent More is what you're looking for. It took me quite a while to figure this out, and I still find myself forgetting it frequently. Even when I do remember, I'm frustrated by the maze of clicking I have to go through.
I also have trouble with hyperlinks, often clicking the attachment button instead of hovering over the plus to reveal the chained hyperlink icon. I don't know that I've ever used the attachment button (other than mistakenly), as I always drag files onto the message to attach instead.
For me, pretty much the only formatting options I want are lists and links, and those are pretty inconvenient to access.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#29I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake, but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some getting used to however. Responses to the points made in the article: 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures. Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent email…
@Fuzzwah - regarding #4, I'm trying to insert a link. I don't see how you can do the drag and drop, especially if you want to make a word a link instead. Not http url. It seems you still can test links. For some reason, I couldn't do it for a period. Maybe they brought it back... In regards to learning hotkeys - there is no hotkey for changing subject line or getting access to emails. Otherwise I'd learn it. I think…
Gotcha. In general I detest html email so your #4 problem isn't something I've faced. My answer of dragging and dropping isn't actually something I do very much either. I normally just copy and paste the link into the email and don't format it in anyway.
I'm totally with you on subject editing and accessing email addresses from the header. Adding clicks purely to minimize the design seems like a poor move to me too.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#30Considering Google made all those changes to make the experience better and managing mails easier for most people, I think the author should recognise that he's in the minority - an edge case - and maybe consider switching to an email client that suits his needs rather than whine about one that works just great for many other people.
How difficult would it be, though, for Google to hide some advanced options in settings for power users to enable? Always Expand Header, Always Expand Collapsed Content, etc.
When you're handling more than one or two emails in succession, every keyboard-shortcut that became a triple-click-drag adds up and takes time.
I don't believe the author is an extreme minority - Google should cater to all of its customers - requesting that Google add a few options to enable power user mode isn't unreasonable in the slightest.