Maybe it's time more of us thought about the drawbacks of relying so much on a program that is proprietary, that we can't even hold onto a particular version of, and where the users are (mostly) not customers but part of the product offered to someone else.
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
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN discourages formatting. We don't indent posts, we don't have nested lists. Gmail and email encourage formatting. You're writing a letter, not a twitter post.
That's irrelevant to the point in the parent that I was responding to - that every app uses tab to format text. Most apps don't. There are a limited section of apps that use tab for text formatting. I'm pretty sure most web browsers never have, although I welcome examples of web browsers that do. If people want to write real email they can use a real client, not a web interface.
I think it's relevant. I expect app designers to use the keybindings that make sense based on what the user wants to do instead of blindly adopting whatever guidelines the OS suggests.
If you're in the shell, "tab" should tab-complete, not move to the next terminal you have open.
If you're in a shooting game, "tab" should reload your weapon or show scores or whatever, not advance your cursor to the next target.
If you're in MS word, tab should indent the next line, not move to a different control.
If you're writing an email, same thing, because "writing" is most like "writing in MS word."
Re: your second point, Gmail is a really good "real" web client, at least for most people, and this is a small step away from that.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#223Would certainly be nice if Gmail had pins (or some config page) to optionally keep minimalized/hidden stuff open by default.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#224Earlier 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.
Then do it client-side?
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
@tomkarlo Photoshop is extremely customisable and full-featured which is what I was getting at. Draw Something is fun and light which works well as a mobile app. I don't know about the average email user but after 10,000+ hours of using email, I feel like I'm pretty proficient at email :)
Understood... but all your points are about the negatives of that, and none are about the positives. It's pretty easy to come up with a bunch of arbitrary gripes about any major UX change. But you haven't made any effort to contemplate why these changes might make a lot of sense. For example, you're complaining about the need to do two clicks to make a link, but it seems to me that 90% of the time people just paste i…
Well we all know gmail is great that's why we use it so I didn't want to convert the converted.
It's just I'd like my gmail web app to be more full featured. We can make it chat-like for mobile. I'm glad you're not encumbered by it though.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#226People expect email to be instant now, despite SMTP not exactly being built for it.
I'm sure there is a non-zero number of users who would think the undo delay was the gmail service being "slow".
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Then do it client-side?
you send an email, then immediately close the tab. Does your e-mail get sent?
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#228Gmail got where they are for: - being offered by 2000 google, a company everyone loved and trusted - having a slick and useful UI it's not missing both those points. That means the market it serve is there for the taking!
Gmail got where it is because it offered a 2GB inbox when everyone else offered 25MB. It basically created a whole new market and got first mover advantage.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then do it client-side?
you send an email, then immediately close the tab. Does your e-mail get sent?
I think that they deal with this problem. Doesn't a modal dialog popup if an email is being slow to send (and you hit the close button on the tab)?
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#230Earlier 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.
Is it really unconventional though? Tab for navigation is the default behavior for HTML form inputs and contenteditable. I can't think of a website that I use that has input boxes that have tab do indent actually.