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I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

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Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#171

Post by twistedpair »

k3n wrote: post #69
Fuzzwah wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can honestly say I've never used text formatting in an email, so I realize we're coming at this from two different directions. If I need a list of things in an email I'll do this: - step 1 - sub step a - sub step b - step 2 - etc Which gets me thinking about how cool it would be if gmail accepted and displayed markdown formatting..... Would that be a winner for you too?

I hate just about anything and everything about MSOutlook, but this is one feature that I sorely miss in GMail. In MSO, at least if you have the option turned on (although I think it's on by default), you start a new list simply by typing "* some text". When you hit enter, a new bullet-point is automatically created, and hitting enter twice without entering text ends the list. Likewise, typing "1. some text" begins a…

FWIW, MSO has had something like 16 generations to refine that.

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#172

Post by artursapek »

pkamb wrote: post #153
w1ntermute wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One easy solution to this (and many other general email mishaps) is to enable Gmail's undo button for sending email: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1284885?hl=en

I don't understand why 15-second "undo send" isn't default behavior.

I think it probably costs Google a little bit to queue up your email for a send action 30 seconds from now instead of sending it off immediately. I bet it would actually cost them money to just enable it for everyone - I'm sure the percentage of users who even explore Labs is very small.

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#174

Post by xtracto »

imjared wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #51

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 mo…

Probably the same team that has usage data for hundreds of millions of users.

Which can yield erroneous results if not used properly:

http://www.stanford.edu/~savage/flaw/Article_files/image002....

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#175

Post by WildUtah »

tomkarlo wrote: post #70

Does anyone really think Photoshop is a good UX for mass consumption (which is obviously the target for Gmail)? I've been using it since version 2, and I think it's a great product, but for new users it's a miserably difficult product to learn, especially for any kind of casual use. There's a reason why users love apps like Draw Something or (more relevantly) Instagram or Paper. They're able to easily achieve the res…

Does anyone really think Photoshop is a good UX for mass consumption

Obviously not. I just wish Gmail would work more like The GIMP.

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#176

Post by [deleted] »

tomkarlo wrote: post #70

Does anyone really think Photoshop is a good UX for mass consumption (which is obviously the target for Gmail)? I've been using it since version 2, and I think it's a great product, but for new users it's a miserably difficult product to learn, especially for any kind of casual use. There's a reason why users love apps like Draw Something or (more relevantly) Instagram or Paper. They're able to easily achieve the res…

[deleted]

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#177

Post by saurik »

notatoad wrote: post #155

I feel like a lot of people are mistaking gmail's opinionated UI design for a design failure. Changing the subject isn't difficult because the designers failed at making it easy, it's difficult because the designers succeeded at making it difficult. They really, really don't want you to change the subject because consistent subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation threading functionality, so they've made i…

> They really, really don't want you to change the subject because consistent subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation threading functionality, so they've made it as difficult as possible.

So, as someone who doesn't use Gmail, I'm finding this (not just your mention of this, but others as well) confusing: what happened to In-Reply-To and References? I thought that using the Subject for threading was something you only did in a worst-case fallback scenario if you see something that looks like a reply but is somehow missing the required headers to establish the threading.

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#178

Post by Gurrewe »

hawkharris wrote: post #148

Every UI designer knows the backstory of the QWERTY keyboard, how the designers arranged the keys to intentionally slow down the users, to prevent typing errors. Well, Gmail's new pop-up Compose window makes me wonder if designers sometimes need to create interfaces that slow down users' cognitive processes as well. In theory, it's more efficient to write emails using the pop-up window because you can easily referenc…

Actually, the QWERTY-layout made typing a lot faster, since the keys didn't jam together.

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#179

Post by pseut »

wkral wrote: post #46

I 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.

If you use firefox, try the "it's all text" plugin (although I don't know for sure if it works with the new gmail compose). You can write in the editor of your choice.

Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

#180

Post by SageRaven »

notatoad wrote: post #155

I feel like a lot of people are mistaking gmail's opinionated UI design for a design failure. Changing the subject isn't difficult because the designers failed at making it easy, it's difficult because the designers succeeded at making it difficult. They really, really don't want you to change the subject because consistent subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation threading functionality, so they've made i…

Well, whatever works for them. I've been using gmail since my '04 invite, but a few weeks ago I migrated to mail.com for web mail and bing for search. Google lured me in with the sparse simplicity of their search and webmail. If everything Google is getting bloated and broken (literal string "searches" in google search, fo example), I may as well disburse my online data to multiple places so no single entity has a full picture of my online behavior. I now can vote/comment on youtube without having those things tied to my identity (WTF, Google. If I didn't explicitly sign onto Youtube, don't fucking associate my gmail identity with Youtube!!!).

Anyway, I'm not trying to be hip or edgy. I just finally got tired of Google's feature creep and identity wrangling. So I switched to inferior competitors. Hasn't been too painful, though.

The one thing I'll keep a "real" identity presence on Google's services is "talk" just so I can converse with the few contacts who desire that venue, pretty much making that account similar to my token Yahoo and MSN accounts. I've managed to create a fake identity solely for my Android phone so I can get apps from Play.

While I am curious about Google's future, I've decided that I no longer want to be a part of it.

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