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I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something

taigeair.com

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

#291

Post by [deleted] »

isaacaggrey wrote: post #241
oinksoft wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a widely used rich text editor, be it TinyMCE, CKEditor, YUI Editor or ExtJS' HtmlEditor that doesn't map the Tab key to insert a tabstop or a number of non-breaking spaces. goog.editor.Field is absolutely in the minority in that regard. There are good design reasons for this. The goog.editor package is designed to be modular. This tab-to-indent behavior is instead provided by th…

I'm not sure if it's because they are demo versions (and my experiences echoes esrauch's), but every rich text editor you listed except YUI Editor actually does _not_ map the Tab key to insert a tabstop or spaces. [1]: http://ckeditor.com/demo [2]: http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/basic.php [3]: http://try.sencha.com/extjs/4.1.1/docs/Ext.form.field.HtmlEd...

[deleted]

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

#292

Post by airbnbinterview »

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.

Oh man is that why I keep accidentally sending half written emails!?

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

#293

Post by ijk »

Draiken wrote: post #220
taigeair wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love trying new things and I love learning new software but I've learned the new gmail UI and I don't like clicking 2-3X more for things I do pretty regularly. Like getting someone's email address.

I agree that for you it's 3 more clicks, but for the millions of other regular users, it's less useless info on the way. People have to get that it's a product for many, not for all. You can agree with hiding emails or not, but a company as large as Google wouldn't hide it just for the sake of it. Obviously there was research and data that backed that change. Bottom line is, if it was your company, you'd hide stuff t…

It's an online web app. You can give different people different interfaces for the same data. You can even let them choose which interface they prefer. Your data-collection might tell you that 90% of users would be better off one way, but that's an argument for changing the defaults, not for alienating a chunk of your userbase. And if every change like this is upsetting 10% of your users...

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

#294

Post by ijk »

imjared wrote: post #187
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna quote @kevingadd from down below because I can't say it better myself: "The new gmail is streamlined for particular purposes and not for others. You'd think that one of the biggest data companies in the universe would be able to gather actual data about how people use their software and ensure they aren't making it significantly worse to use for subsets of the customer base. Maybe this is what Google actual…

Glorified SMS? I get that the compose window is smaller but this is pretty unbelievably hyperbole. On my main screen, I get over 4000 characters before having to scroll and even on my 13" laptop screen, I can fit close to 1700 characters in the compose window before I get a scroll bar ( http://cl.ly/image/0H1A2O3u251U ). In contrast, the "old" version only gives me about 650 characters on my small screen ( http://cl.…

It's glorified SMS in that the designer of the feature has explicitly said that they changed the design so that it would basically be glorified chat:

> What it looks like, really, is a slightly oversized version of Gchat. And that’s no accident. Google’s actively trying to make email less fussy and formal--or, in other words, to make it a little more like instant messaging. And as Jason Cornwell, Gmail’s lead designer, explains, one of the ways to do that is simply to "give you permission to write shorter messages." [...]

> "It was a space that was sort of intimidating, I think, to write a message like 'Hey, wanna get lunch?'" he explains. "We wanted the new compose to facilitate these quicker messages. Or at least make it a space where that felt appropriate."

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-w...

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

#295

Post by jrockway »

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…

I write long emails in Gmail. The new compose doesn't bother me at all. I feel like that if Gmail always looked like that, nobody would complain. But since something changed, we get a bunch of articles about how Google knows nothing about UX.

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

#297

Post by Numberwang »

snaky wrote: post #253
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…

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

What a horribly misleading graph.

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

#298

Post by Kequc »

snaky wrote: post #251
buo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Threading is good for reading through one time and when there are many topics of interest. Email is something you often return to again and again and topics are organised using subject headers. Email discussion view was introduced by google a very long time ago before almost anyone else did it. It is a bit of a cosmetic trick where it just sorts emails that have the same subject. Threading does not jive with the way Email technology is structured.

Remember when Google tried to build a brand new huge piece of technology meant to revolutionise communication on the web? Nobody adopted it, was called Wave.

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

#299

Post by mscarborough »

Try your native email client. gmail has IMAP for free over HTTPS, and is available on every Android device, so I don't understand what this post is trying to say. If you don't like the web interface, go try one of the other hundred options that are also free.

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

#300

Post by snaky »

Numberwang wrote: post #297
snaky wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What a horribly misleading graph.

What exactly is misleading in that graph?
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