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

Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

support.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#21

Post by themodelplumber »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Is there any way to alleviate the problem of these forced UX transitions? At the time, Gmail was pretty revolutionary for what it offered (a large, free email account), but as the cost of compute and storage has declined, its pretty cheap to store 10GB-15GB of email in an mbox file or similar data store, fronted with JMAP [1], which any client or web front end that supports it could talk to. Is asking for long term s…

10 years...wow, 2012 front ends would involve gobs of code supporting so much ridiculous legacy IE junk, Safari junk, and so on...I can't imagine the nightmare of retaining web industry experts for such a thing. Plus a lot of the UX changes over the years were legitimately helpful to people, even power users.

This is part of the reason why the "user's choice of IMAP client" line is so great.

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#22

Post by jeffbee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19
jeffbee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google launched IMAP for Gmail fifteen years ago. Use that if you want stasis.

No offense to Google, imap is inferior to both JAMP and Gmail's REST API for present day messaging and integration purposes. Google's IMAP implementation also has some...quirks.

Neither JMAP nor the Gmail API are ten years old so they don’t qualify based on the original complaint.

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#23

Post by bastardoperator »

Nobody cares about google chat, I have it set to auto respond with a message that says use slack. If people were looking for an excuse to move, this might be the catalyst. Training a non-technical workforce can cost millions, so maybe we switch to something else people don't need to be trained on. WTF is Google thinking...

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#24

Post by fartcannon »

compiler-guy wrote: post #2

I shudder at the amount of retraining non technically sophisticated users will need. The doctors, teachers, and everyday people who just want their e-mail to work so they can worry about their real jobs will all have some annoying cognitive load forced on them for reasons that benefit Google and not them.

I genuinely despise google. But this argument that people shouldn't need to learn things ever is what entrenches google, and Microsoft in our lives.

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#26

Post by toomuchtodo »

jeffbee wrote: post #22
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense to Google, imap is inferior to both JAMP and Gmail's REST API for present day messaging and integration purposes. Google's IMAP implementation also has some...quirks.

Neither JMAP nor the Gmail API are ten years old so they don’t qualify based on the original complaint.

It would be more accurate to compare JMAP to IMAP and SMTP, which have been around for forty years, and I think it's reasonable for me to calibrate forward looking expectations based on more recent protocols (such as JMAP). It would be wasteful to not consider increased utility from improved protocols currently in production for similar use cases.

Higher level, Google won't be around forever in its current form, so I think its reasonable to champion open standards and portability versus lock in to an org whose incentives between itself and its users is not that great. If you want to use a new Gmail version, great! If not, and Google doesn't offer ongoing support of a web version you're partial to, you can port out to another provider, just like a mobile phone provider.

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#27

Post by sundarurfriend »

asddubs wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Is there any way to alleviate the problem of these forced UX transitions? At the time, Gmail was pretty revolutionary for what it offered (a large, free email account), but as the cost of compute and storage has declined, its pretty cheap to store 10GB-15GB of email in an mbox file or similar data store, fronted with JMAP [1], which any client or web front end that supports it could talk to. Is asking for long term s…

html gmail works. You used to be able to set it as your default view (well, you still can technically), but they stopped respecting that setting and just send you to the javascript one now anyway. Still, if you change your URL manually after logging in (and possibly answer a prompt of "do you really want to use html gmail?" with yes), you can still get to it, and it's the same interface as ever.

> Still, if you change your URL manually after logging in

You can also bookmark the modified URL, or (what I do) have it always open as an "unloaded"/suspended tab that you can click to load.

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#28

Post by nicoburns »

I just wish they'd fix the performance. The bizarre thing is that it used to be fast while offering more or less the same functionality with more or less the same interface, and it's actually regressed. I'm not sure what on earth they have done, but they're doing something objectively wrong.

Re: Gmail – A New Integrated Layout

#30

Post by djanogo »

They had right button panel and top right app menu button which shows panel of icons, I guess those are projects under different teams?, so new team starts adding panel on left side.

The design reflects team/org chart, just as you would expect in a big org.

Post reply on HN