Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

storyblog.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 247 posts

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#91

Post by kenko »

dasil003 wrote: post #65
Avshalom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa whoa whoa. short by definition ? I use email to you know write to people if I want short I can text or chat or tweet or smoke signal. I rather assume email is long by definition.

Okay I played fast and loose, but I meant this: By definition of the length of a day, if you are sending any serious volume of emails then most of them are going to be short.

"By definition of the length of a day, if you are sending any serious volume of emails then most of them are going to be short."

Or you could type fast.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#92

Post by ciniglio »

dasil003 wrote: post #68
olog-hai wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win It was possible to do this before the changes rolled out. Shift-compose opened it (still does) in a new window, and you could work with it and your mailbox side-by-side.

Not in reply it wasn't.

Shift+R could do it (Shift+a for reply all)

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#93

Post by pg »

ihnorton wrote: post #27

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…

There's a reason for this pattern. When I complained to a friend at Google about the new GMail compose, he said that what was driving it was that Larry wanted a beautiful, consistent look throughout all Google's products. That sort of motivation leads to design disasters. The various Google products may have been inconsistent, but each of their designs was the product of long evolution.

Steve Jobs could probably have forced consistency on Google's products without breaking them, but few CEOs have the taste Steve had.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#94

Post by [deleted] »

plorkyeran wrote: post #66
ihnorton wrote: post #27

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…

[deleted]

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#95

Post by canthonytucci »

I'm not sure it's a good idea to take anyone's opinion of gmail seriously that doesn't use the keyboard shortcuts. If you really are composing so much, hit 'c', not reach all the way over to the mouse like an orangutan.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en

Pop the window out and maximize it if you don't like the new interface. If you hit d, it will open the compose window in a new tab, _the whole thing_, dedicated to your awesome email that you really need to concentrate on writing.

But as for the "hidden text formatting controls".

Don't use text formatting; send plain text email like a decent human being.

If you need to emphasize or:

1.e

2.nu

3.mer

4.ate

that's why we have markdown. No one wants to see your fancy fonts and fuchsia signature. Content, yo.

If it's that much of an issue, why not edit content in your favorite editor then paste it into gmail?

If you're on a mac, you can format to your heart's desire in textedit (full-screen-mode-obviously) then copy it all and paste into gmail and all your stupid font size changes and bold shit will still be there.

EDIT: minor changes, also imagine that the formatted stuff is the raw markdown, because I forgot that this does that.

Edit 2: it's cool to hate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#96

Post by bane »

Something that gets me in a little trouble from time to time, forwarding an email includes the entire previous conversation chain...which isn't normally a problem, but gmail compresses the previous chain into a collapsed [...] box that I sometimes forget is there. So on occasion I forward parts of emails to other parties that probably shouldn't be seeing those other bits.

I have to remember to expand it, then delete all the content I don't want to be included in the forward.

Other comments here have pointed other gui foibles, I agree with all the maps complaints, I'm on the beta for it and switch back to classic almost 70% of the time because I can't get something done in the new one.

And I won't repeat what I had to say about the absolute brokenness of the youtube interface.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314694

Even in search, lots of the nice sidebar utilities I used all the time like the search tools' time range are now buried two clicks deep. Searches give you quick options for web, images, maps, shopping and applications, but one I use several times a day, video, is buried.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#97

Post by TallGuyShort »

I hated the feature at first as well, but I've found myself multi-tasking recently where I type multiple emails in parallel as I collect my thoughts for each. It's growing on me, but I definitely see the validity of the criticism. I do wish it was easier to get at the advanced features.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#98

Post by thezilch »

pg wrote: post #93
ihnorton wrote: post #27

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…

There's a reason for this pattern. When I complained to a friend at Google about the new GMail compose, he said that what was driving it was that Larry wanted a beautiful, consistent look throughout all Google's products. That sort of motivation leads to design disasters. The various Google products may have been inconsistent, but each of their designs was the product of long evolution. Steve Jobs could probably have…

What a load of crap. Plenty of untasteful and inconsistent crap had come out of Apple, under Jobs; it's painfully easy to find examples [0]. Everyone is going to have their opinions, of course, but the compose, unlabeled / iconography buttons, detractors of WYSIWYG emails, etc are _not_ disasters for myself and many others.

[0] http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/06/on-ui-inconsistency-in-ios-5/

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#99

Post by brownbat »

dasil003 wrote: post #29

The self-righteous anger about the irredeemable horror of the new Gmail compose is starting to get a bit old. First of all, it's not as one-sided as people are making it out. I was also annoyed when it first came out, but there are some clear benefits. Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win for my email workload (CTO for a 30-person company). There are some important philosop…

> the small window by default encourages short emails... the vast majority of emails are going to be short (and if they're not I don't want to work with you)

Agreed, write enough emails and you eventually learn that you're on borrowed time beyond the first half sentence.

PS - Seven paras? Tsk... :)

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#100

Post by bcj »

ams6110 wrote: post #76

Doesn't gmail still offer imap? Use a real mail client, not a web page. Much more fulfilling in almost every way. I like emacs, because I like to be able to write emails using the same editor I use for everything else. But that's a preference. There are many good mail clients to choose from.

Of course that doesn't always protect you from Google's whims. Google purchased the company that made the mail client I like, Sparrow.
Post reply on HN