Live data from Hacker News

Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

storyblog.io

81–90 of 247 posts

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#82

For my usage, the new compose has been a major step back. It now takes additional clicks to accomplish basic tasks (e.g. change the subject) and is less clear on what I am doing (e.g. when you cc someone and switch back to the body, the cc-ed names is now in To: line making it appear that you are sending it to them directly.) There are many other examples where the experience has become worse. I am not clear if Googl…

Oh man, I wish I knew. Have you noticed this one? You're editing a wrapped paragraph, you use the right-arrow key to move, and once you're at the end of -any- line, it suddenly jumps down to the "..." (the toggle for displaying the quoted message). (Also, why hide the formatting bar...)

Ah, is that what's happening? All I know is I go back to proof my email before sending and I keep randomly ending up at the bottom and cursing as I scroll back.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#84
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the github library here: https://github.com/masukomi/kudos Also from the sourcecode on this blog: " rel="nofollow">https://github.com/masukomi/kudos-->

Interesting that someone took my code, nearly character-for-character, and "open sourced" it without permission.

I was not aware of that. I just saw the licence section of the github repo and decided that was good enough.

Not sure how you want to deal with the repo owner, but I can stop using the code if you want.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#85
The idiotic modal window is bad enough, but the new Gmail Compose also breaks basic shortcut keys (such as Command+left or right arrow to skip to the end of a line), at least in Firefox on my Mac. And pasting text in "Plain text" mode often adds weird line breaks. Gmail used to be such a pleasure to use and I cringe to click Compose now.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#86
post #34

I agree with this post's use of the word "ruined". That's what the new Compose did. It's a usability train wreck which I'm astonished they put out at all, let alone impose it on users against their will. There are big things wrong with it and there are little things wrong with it and the sum total is frustrating and disconcerting. It's one thing to redesign a website, but email is a huge part of my daily work, and th…

Jason Cornwell is a stupendous example of the Peter Principle.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#87
post #8

To avoid being distracted by the gmail inbox and to have a clean composition interface, I always keep this URL bookmarked, and it still works w/ the new compose: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailt...

not to be snarky but you know, this is 2013, not 1999. If the largest and best funded company can't get something as simple as email right, then they should just pack up and go home. Or at least fire their whole UX/UI department and start fresh.

By right, I mean a clean, simple interface that you don't need to judiciously learn over dozens of hours of frustrating trial and error or by googling in support forums.

The old gmail UX was fine. In fact, compared to the new compose it was the bees knees. It takes humility to be able to realize that. But Jason wants to leave his mark - unfortunately the mark is an ugly smear.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#88

Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago. Two examples: - maps: new interface is so terrible that I am activel…

Everything about the new Google Maps besides the maps themselves is so mindbogglingly bad that I have no idea how they thought it was ready for public consumption. It seems to be missing most of the features of the classic Google Maps, and those that are present are far harder to use. The UI for the public transit schedules is pretty much the only thing that seems like it could be an improvement once I get used to it…

I really hate the lack of ability to show street view and a map at the same time. How is that an improvement? It is now very hard to know where you are looking at.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#90
post #86
post #34

I agree with this post's use of the word "ruined". That's what the new Compose did. It's a usability train wreck which I'm astonished they put out at all, let alone impose it on users against their will. There are big things wrong with it and there are little things wrong with it and the sum total is frustrating and disconcerting. It's one thing to redesign a website, but email is a huge part of my daily work, and th…

Jason Cornwell is a stupendous example of the Peter Principle.

Let's not get personal. There are lots of ways this kind of thing can happen.
Post reply on HN