I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by takluyver » Fri, May 03, 2013, 10:47 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #172

pkamb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't imagine the cost would be significant, relative to the overall cost of running GMail. And it's not like they generally try to run GMail on the cheap.

Perhaps they're concerned that seeing an 'undo' button would confuse people about how e-mail works, and they'd get a lot of requests to 'undo' messages that had really been sent. Or perhaps there are enough cases where people really want the message to go instantly that even 30 seconds delay would annoy them.

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

#202

Post by takluyver » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:04 PM UTC

rschmitty wrote: post #33

Honest question, why would someone use the gmail ui at all, even before the 2013 changes? I have rules setup in gmail, and sometimes when I need _very good_ search I will login to search, but everything else Outlook covers fine/better. Mac guys at the office use Mail. I've always thought of gmail.com as nice for vacations or using someone elses or crazy times when I dont have laptop/phone/tablet by some act of god

Conversation view. It just makes complete sense to me, and since I've started using it, all desktop clients that I've tried (Thunderbird, most recently) have felt awkward. Geary is the only desktop client I've seen embrace the idea, but it's not quite there yet.

Plus, I quite like the undo send extension.

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

#203

Post by speeq » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:11 PM UTC

I never really used this Gmail design in the first place, I'm in love with the "basic HTML" version which you can choose as default interface.

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

#204

Post by curiousdannii » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:36 PM UTC

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…

I think we all wish Gmail was just more like Gmail. The arguably redesigned email client UX. Compare it to itself!

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

#205

Post by curiousdannii » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:40 PM UTC

sharjeel wrote: post #152

Gmail is the application which has made me realize a big weakness of web applications. The web was supposed to make "application upgrades" painless and instant. After GMail's recent changes, I would really love to "download old version of Gmail"; however its web, I can't do that!

I was given the option to go back to the old version..?

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

#206

Post by serginho » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:41 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #74

Here's another total usability fail: Tab sends the e-mail you're currently writing instead of indenting text. Everywhere else tab indents text, and when you write an e-mail in gmail you'd expect it to act consistently with how it's used everywhere else. Start writing in gmail, hit tab to indent some text. Congratulations you've now sent half an e-mail to you boss.... I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea.

Use spaces.

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

#207

Post by karthikkolli » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:43 PM UTC

kpanghmc wrote: post #48

georgefox wrote: post #28

I'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, thoug…

Learning the following keyboard shortcuts for formatting bullet lists made the transition to the new compose UI much less painful for me: ctrl + shift + 8 to create a new bullet list ctrl + ] to indent right ctrl + [ to indent left

If keyboard shortcuts are enabled ? will give list of all shortcuts :)

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

#208

Post by serginho » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:49 PM UTC

3825 wrote: post #194

gcr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can definitely make the case that it used to and that it doesn't anymore . Sending an email isn't like filling in several text boxes on a web form, it's composing/editing a lengthy message that often has proper formatting like indentation.

I actually use tab -> enter to send and I find it quite convenient. Why are people complaining about this when we've all tacitly admitted top posting? IMO bigger problems are that email ought to be plain text by default and replies ought to go in the bottom (with three dots on the top if necessary). Sorry if I made anyone mad. Now you know how I felt reading this post.

Ctrl + Enter is much more efficient for me.

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

#209

Post by bborud » Fri, May 03, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

On a related note: did Google hire some broken UX person with an immense fetish for annoying popups and interruptions? It seems that almost every product has some sort of "oh, let me intrude into your day and tell you about some annoying UX misfeature that you have to stop everything you are doing and look at right now"-popup nowadays.

Of course, since I have 3-4 Google accounts (work, personal, hobby projects etc) I get each and every one of these popups at least 3-4 times.

Whatever clown is responsible for this at Google: stop it. Fucking stop it right now. And if you work for Google and you read this and you have something to do with UX, please quote me in the next meeting you go to and be sure to include the word "clown" and the word "fuck". If that doesn't help I have a 4 by 6 foot poster of my ugly mug looking disapprovingly down on you mailed to you. I can mail that to 1600 amphitheatre parkway mountain view ca 94043 and whenever someone gets the urge to make a popup: point to the poster and shout "BJØRN SAYS NO POPUPS!" until their ears bleed.

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

#210

Post by oinksoft » Sat, May 04, 2013, 12:07 AM UTC

oinksoft wrote: post #168

missing_cipher wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default behavior for "Tab" on the web is to move to the next element on the Tab order.

The default behavior for Tab in rich text editors has been to insert a tabstop for quite some time. I think this is just a casualty of goog.editor.Editor's unconventional default behavior, which is to tab out of the field. If that is truly an oversight (not overriding this behavior), it says a lot about how the Gmail project is being run these days, because previously they did override this.

Just wanted to add it is goog.editor.Field, not goog.editor.Editor. When I wrote that, I told myself "don't call it goog.editor.Editor," a typo I often make in my code. I guess it's like when people look at something and then crash their car into it. Sorry about that.