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I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

taigeair.com

251–260 of 344 posts

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

#251
post #76
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…

What bothers me most about gmail is the flat conversations, where you can't see that a message was a reply to an email in the middle of a thread. It seems I'm almost alone thinking this way, though -- it's not a complaint I often hear from other people.

It seems like concept of threading is too complicated for average user these days. All the new & trendy software for communication have no threading capabilities -- Discourse, Google+, Github issues, Moot.

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

#252
post #49

Am I the only one who finds email signatures entirely obsolete nowadays?

how do people know your phone number and twitter otherwise?

99% of the people I email already know me, and can look up any of those details in an address book or social network. On the rare occasion I'm making first contact, I'm more likely to take care over communicating further contact info in the body of the email.

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

#253
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…

That's how it is, considering about 40% of emails being opened on mobile, and this share is growing - http://i.imgur.com/8hPUHY2.png

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

#256
post #255

How can this - http://i.imgur.com/0mTa36W.png be better than this - http://i.imgur.com/FvnkaWX.png ?!? There should be some serious psychological research into the possible causes for such glitches of common sense.

One definite advantage: with the new design you can still navigate around your Inbox, open and reference other emails, etc. I've found this useful since the redesign.

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

#257
post #15

I'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…

> 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures.

One easy way to do this (and reply in a bottom posted manner) is to press Ctrl+a followed by Ctrl+end. As someone who almost exclusively uses the keyboard to navigate the gmail interface, I've found that quite handy.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a workaround of sorts, not a solution.

It solves the problem for the most part, which is what's important here. We're not building a rocket.

It 'solves' the problem in the same way that "save frequently keep backups" 'solves' the "my OS crashes every 10 minutes" problem.

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

#259
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.

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

Indeed. All other text fields in your browsers do this, why should gmail be any different?

I agree that it would be nice to have some way to force insert a tab, but it's hardly surprising that it works the way that it does.

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

#260
post #194
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.

If you're replying to an email you can quickly press Ctrl+a, Ctrl+end to go to the bottom, for all your bottom-posting needs.
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