Live data from Hacker News

How to cope with the Gmail redesign

jasoncrawford.org

21–30 of 172 posts

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#21
post #19

You can talk IMAP/POP and SMTP, and you get to control your own user interface, or you can talk HTTP, HTML, and JS and abdicate control to someone else. I fell into that trap myself. I was a heavy user of Gmail for about four years, and when they started changing things and told me "only 0.07% of users use that feature we just removed", it was too late. This mayhem ruined "the cloud" for me ... and I used to help run…

Well, except that gmail.com offers much more customization than any desktop email client.

Well, except for emacs/gnus :-)

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#22
Its not just GMAIL. Google analytics is painfully ugly. The first screen before showed a list of all the sites and traffic. Now it shows just the list of accounts. Its awful. There is no way anymore to use the classic design.

Also, once I am in google analytics it is just a UI mess. They cram every feature possible and make it unintelligible. They are ruining the UI for gmail,google search and google analytics.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#25
post #12

My biggest new-Gmail-design pet-peeve is that the Display Density setting is only respected if your browser window is wide enough. I prefer the "Comfortable" setting. I have a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, but I don't have my browser window maximized (it only takes up 65-75% of the screen width). So, GMail has helpfully reduced my display density to "Cozy", ignoring my setting. As far as I know, there's no way to "fix" t…

It took my months of using the new design before I realized this. My impression before was simply that the design was “broken” on my desktop computer until one day I resized the window and discovered this issue.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#26
post #20
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of customisation That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.

I'm not sure I understand. Most desktop email clients have _very_ limited customizability.

On the other hand, if you don't like one you can get any other that fits your bill.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#27
Just use thunderbird if you're on a desktop or laptop (ie. not an ios or android device, although I'm sure they have equivalents).

I recommend installing muttator, the equivalent of vimperator for thunderbird. It will make the time you spend with email much more efficient.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#28
When I read this headline, I assumed Google had redesigned it again... didn't realise people were still using the old design.

Personally, the redesign pushed me back to Thunderbird and I ended up deleting thousands of emails. It was quite liberating.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#29
This is more like a "how to revert to 2006 GMail" list.

I mean, he even goes out of his way to turn off Priority Inbox and important markers. That has nothing to do with the redesign - it's just turning off year+ old features, which is what a good portion of the post is. Luckily for the author, options exist to turn off all the features that have been released in the past many years.

Of course, there's some apportioning of valid and invalid frustration with any redesign, and I won't invalidate any of that here. But this post just comes off as "make all the scary new stuff go away!"

Post reply on HN