Gmail is now a cluster fuck of terribleness. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to make you type your email in what is basically a slightly larger chat window? Who decided it would be a good idea to put the "reply" edit box at the end of a potentially very long email? Oh, and make it fit like six lines of text. I swear, this is what happens when you let a bunch of kids run the show. "My emails are rarely ever more than 'kthx' or 'heh' so lets get rid of all that useless space!"
I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
51–60 of 344 posts
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#52I don't know if anyone else has this problem but since I use VI for code editing I have a twitch reaction to hit escape a lot when I'm editing text. This actually closes the compose window now. Which is incredibly frustrating. I know it's not a mainstream user problem just something that effect my perception of Gmail on a daily basis.
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Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#53Considering 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 - req…
And this, dear jen_h, is how we go about fixing the problem.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#54I don't know if anyone else has this problem but since I use VI for code editing I have a twitch reaction to hit escape a lot when I'm editing text. This actually closes the compose window now. Which is incredibly frustrating. I know it's not a mainstream user problem just something that effect my perception of Gmail on a daily basis.
There is a hotkey editor in labs which you might find handy.
Settings > labs > Custom keyboard shortcuts
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#55I'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…
> If its time to edit the subject of an email thread maybe it is time to hit the big read "compose" button and start from scratch anyway.
This isn't always the case. I quite often want to forward emails and edit the subject for clarity. Having to create a new mail and then copy the content from the previous mail (especially attachments) seems unnecessarily painful.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#56Gmail is now a cluster fuck of terribleness. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to make you type your email in what is basically a slightly larger chat window? Who decided it would be a good idea to put the "reply" edit box at the end of a potentially very long email? Oh, and make it fit like six lines of text. I swear, this is what happens when you let a bunch of kids run the show. "My emails are rarely ever mo…
Probably the same team that has usage data for hundreds of millions of users.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#57Completely agree. Still clinging onto my old GMail UI for dear life in both gmail.com and hosted flavors.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#58I have new compose disabled. It's just more incompetent UI design from Google. Even their search page is bad. There are two menu bars after I run a search including two More drop downs and the poorly named Search Tools which seems to change frequently as they A/B test ever worse designs on me. I was hoping Marissa leaving would allow them to hire real designers.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#59I wouldn't consider myself a gmail power user, but I do use it as my every day email. I love the new updates. Most of the things that gmail makes hard (and when the author says hard he means an extra click) are things that are rarely, if ever, done by me. This is exactly how I think email should function, make the stuff you use most easy. The author mentions things like "It's hard to delete my signature." I've never…
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…
> I think I will switch back to a desktop email client for day-to-day use and only use the web interface when I'm on a different computer.
I primarily use Mutt because I spend most of my time in a console. I know Mutt gets a bad rap, but it's actively developed, super fast, has excellent (customizable) keyboard shortcuts, and is dead-simple to use if you're already on the command line. Plus, you can bring along your favorite text editor for composition. Mutt also handles gmail labels relatively well.
Furthermore, tmux + powerline + mutt means that I get new mail notifications from the console, and switching to mutt is a key combination away. This setup is particularly helpful if I'm emailing about technical matters, since I can split the pane and view whatever code/data/mathematics is under discussion in the email thread.
(One point of irritation is that bash doesn't seem to fully support powerline.)
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#60Gmail is now a cluster fuck of terribleness. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to make you type your email in what is basically a slightly larger chat window? Who decided it would be a good idea to put the "reply" edit box at the end of a potentially very long email? Oh, and make it fit like six lines of text. I swear, this is what happens when you let a bunch of kids run the show. "My emails are rarely ever mo…
Probably the same team that has usage data for hundreds of millions of users.
I would love to see Google design a car with usage data. It would have one door and the trunk would be perpetually open.