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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#171

Post by 333c »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #151
hota_mazi wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off Gmail and get on... what? You're only offering non constructive criticism. Gmail is light years ahead of any other email client I have tried so far.

Gmail is not just an email client though, it's also the email provider. If you want to get off of Gmail the client, you can use an IMAP client like Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc. There are quirks with how the IMAP protocol's concepts get mapped to Gmail's concepts though. If you want to get off of Gmail the provider, that's a different story. There are many free and paid providers, but there's still a large effort to…

Regarding getting off of Gmail:

I switched away from Gmail at the start of 2018. So far everything has gone smoothly. My new email provider (Fastmail) has a tool to import all emails from another provider, which ran overnight. I forward all mail from my Gmail address to my new address. One feature of Gmail which makes it particularly easy to switch away from is that it's free, so I can keep my Gmail account open indefinitely to forward mail.

Asking people to update my address hasn't been a huge problem. Even when they email me at the old one, I still get their messages.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#172

Post by toomuchtodo »

conradk wrote: post #127
toomuchtodo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is phenomenal to hear (import process ease). Can’t wait for them to support multiple labels.

That would be great indeed! I think the problem here is that this is a Gmail-specific, non-standard feature, meaning there is no specification that allows to implement this in a reliable, cross-client way. However, Fastmail is working on something similar with JMAP. I found this earlier HN comment to be really interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16372835

> However, Fastmail is working on something similar with JMAP.

They are! [1]

"It really is coming in JMAP! Come along to IETF in London to have a play, or I'll be pushing out links to updated JMAP Proxy in the next couple of weeks and you can play with it there :)"

Once they've got JMAP nailed down, they'd just need to support Gmail's native API [2] for retrieving rich message data for their import process.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16375101

[2] https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides/

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#173

Post by jadeklerk »

coldtea wrote: post #119
pmlnr wrote: post #32

Email was meant to be kept simple, and Google is making this exponentially hard with every single "design" iteration. Get off Gmail - it'll break your email. The article has very good points, especially when it touches the issue of "hidden" mail, like the promotions tab: there are labels and tabs. There should be only one system, and no, don't hide things from the user at this level. When there's 17k mails in promoti…

> Filtering on Gmail is outrageous, especially when you compare it to Sieve. No option to match on custom header, seriously? What percentage of users would even know what a custom header is, much less ever attempt to match one? Is that what one would call a basic feature lacking from Gmail, for its lack to guarantee a "seriously?"?

+1 to this. You have to realize that over a billion users use gmail. You can't possibly imagine that prioritizing .0000000001% of users that know about something like filtering on custom headers is remotely good decision-making against all the other work being done that helps the majority of users.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#174

Post by roberttod »

Jabbles wrote: post #36
papa_bear wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like I’d have to do a ton of scrolling to see the amount of info that the old gmail shows me. Everything is too spaced out for me ;(

Google is providing three new layouts to choose from, including a default view that highlights attachments like documents and photos, a comfortable view that doesn’t highlight attachments, and a compact view that increases the amount of messages you can see on a single page. The compact view is the most similar to the existing Gmail design, allowing existing users to keep a similar layout. https://www.theverge.com/20…

This is such a departure from the industry norm, trying to figure out what works best and focusing on that configuration. It looks like Google already struggle keeping the product maintained and nice-to-use, I imagine these options make it a lot more difficult.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#175

Post by bluedino »

Waterluvian wrote: post #84
pmlnr wrote: post #32

Email was meant to be kept simple, and Google is making this exponentially hard with every single "design" iteration. Get off Gmail - it'll break your email. The article has very good points, especially when it touches the issue of "hidden" mail, like the promotions tab: there are labels and tabs. There should be only one system, and no, don't hide things from the user at this level. When there's 17k mails in promoti…

If I want to take my 20GB of email out of Gmail and put it elsewhere for the next 15 years without having to think about it, where do I go?

Pull it all out with IMAP and then stick it wherever you want after that

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#176

Post by leetcrew »

roberttod wrote: post #166

I just went through my Inbox to figure out why I still use email. For personal stuff, I think WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessages are clear winners. 90% of my emails seem to be marketing I'll never read or notifications I ignore. I try my best to unsubscribe, but email really needs maintenance to work nicely. For work almost everything is Slack. Sales team and a few others still seem to use email for some reason. Email is…

an email address and a phone number are still the only things you can safely assume everyone has. for many of my older relatives and non-tech acquaintances, the only options are email, sms, or phone calls.

i dislike phone calls in general for all but the most time-sensitive and/or intimate conversations. i get a bit anxious on the phone and i don't like being essentially blocked for the duration of the call.

i dislike sms because i don't have an iphone, so i cannot respond using a full sized keyboard without using workarounds like pushbullet, which i don't feel like setting up for the small number of people who insist on using sms.

i don't love communicating via email but i would contest the claim that it is a legacy technology on the basis that it does not have a clear successor.

there is no modern service that matches the ubiquity of email; the penetration is unequaled even by the likes of facebook. i would also point out that (personal) email addresses provide highly stable means of communicating with infrequent contacts. while people's phone numbers change over time, people seem to accumulate personal email addresses and at least forward the old ones to their main account. if i got someone's personal email address five or even ten years ago, i have a pretty good chance of reaching them today. on the other hand, i assume that phone numbers that i haven't used for a couple years are dead links. with messaging apps, you don't always have a clear indication of whether the person currently has the app installed with notifications enabled.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#177

Post by always_good »

pmlnr wrote: post #158
hota_mazi wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off Gmail and get on... what? You're only offering non constructive criticism. Gmail is light years ahead of any other email client I have tried so far.

It's really not, nor the web client, nor the provider, and the options are plenty, mentioned even in this very thread. Fastmail, self hosted iredmail, protonmail, etc., are fine providers. Geary, rainloop, macos mail, k9, are very nice clients. Have you actually tried any alternative clients, before you made this comment?

Protonmail doesn't even have fulltext search (truly a joke). Fastmail just feels like a worse Gmail client, only redeeming if you particularly care about paying for a service.

I have to agree with them.

Also, pretty weak rhetoric to suggest someone hasn't tried the alternatives. Can I assume you haven't tried Protonmail because I can't understand how someone can say email without search is better than Gmail.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#178

Post by Tyr42 »

freehunter wrote: post #168
8ytecoder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Google Inbox since the launch and I absolutely LOVE it. It finally solved my email problems. - I have notifications disabled for all but the important emails. So I respond to emails in time and I don't keep checking my phone anymore. - Easy to read and discard emails. Especially promotions. I actually do check them - once a day and once a day only and then delete them all. - Social/Updates ...etc ar…

My problem with it is that I don't trust it. Outlook does the same thing, I'm not singling Google out for this. Anything that automatically sorts my email for me, I don't trust it to get it right 100% of the time. And the last thing I want to do is a miss a critical email because Google or Microsoft told me it wasn't important to me. Case in point: I run a website for my town and some user actions are sent to me via…

I think you can either add a filter for emails like that and say always primary, or just drag them back to primary and it'll (hopefully) learn.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#179

Post by 8ytecoder »

freehunter wrote: post #168
8ytecoder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Google Inbox since the launch and I absolutely LOVE it. It finally solved my email problems. - I have notifications disabled for all but the important emails. So I respond to emails in time and I don't keep checking my phone anymore. - Easy to read and discard emails. Especially promotions. I actually do check them - once a day and once a day only and then delete them all. - Social/Updates ...etc ar…

My problem with it is that I don't trust it. Outlook does the same thing, I'm not singling Google out for this. Anything that automatically sorts my email for me, I don't trust it to get it right 100% of the time. And the last thing I want to do is a miss a critical email because Google or Microsoft told me it wasn't important to me. Case in point: I run a website for my town and some user actions are sent to me via…

First of all if it's something really important you need a better notification mechanism or a separate email address so you can whitelist it. I primarily use it for my personal email. There's nothing ever there that can't wait.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#180

Post by zamber »

freehunter wrote: post #168
8ytecoder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Google Inbox since the launch and I absolutely LOVE it. It finally solved my email problems. - I have notifications disabled for all but the important emails. So I respond to emails in time and I don't keep checking my phone anymore. - Easy to read and discard emails. Especially promotions. I actually do check them - once a day and once a day only and then delete them all. - Social/Updates ...etc ar…

My problem with it is that I don't trust it. Outlook does the same thing, I'm not singling Google out for this. Anything that automatically sorts my email for me, I don't trust it to get it right 100% of the time. And the last thing I want to do is a miss a critical email because Google or Microsoft told me it wasn't important to me. Case in point: I run a website for my town and some user actions are sent to me via…

The idea with whitelisting is viable. Use a freehunter+superimportant@gmail.com email for these and then in the classic interface set a filter that will land these mails always in your inbox with an additional label.

Been doing this kind of categorizing with filters since I discovered the feature and never looked back.

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