Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose • Hacker News Board

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#201

Post by lzm » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 9:01 AM UTC

siddboots wrote: post #112

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…

Youtube: * Buffering was nerfed/broken some time ago. I can no longer watch 720p+ videos on youtube at all. * Changing video quality now has a long and unavoidable delay, and often fails outright. * Google are evidently uneasy about the profile name that I signed up with, and have been repeatedly nudging me to change it. I don't know how to reassure them about my choice. * Advertising. Everywhere.

Luckily you can fix the buffering behaviour with a browser extension. Look for "SmartVideo for Youtube".

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#202

Post by robryan » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 9:05 AM UTC

Personally I am a big fan of the new compose, although I can also understand why it isn't right for some people.

My usage would be something like 80% very short emails, 5 lines or under with maybe a copy paste block. Occasionally I will want to add an attachment or a cc.

The speed and the ability to still see the email list works for me. I should also add the majority of my gmail use is done on a 27 inch screen.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#203

Post by lucian1900 » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 9:08 AM UTC

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…

> 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).

That's what window managers are for.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#204

Post by dcc1 » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 9:40 AM UTC

Whoever approved this change at Google deserves to be fired, its a serious usability fuckup

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#205

Post by test001only » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 9:47 AM UTC

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…

Exactly, lot of UI features in GMail, Maps and Google plus are starting to piss of me. The UI used to be nice and comfortable to work with before, but now it is plain horrible. I read somewhere that Marissa Mayer used to control the UI of GMail and Maps(she apparently used to depend on metrics to get things right). Does this have to do something with she leaving?

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#206

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:01 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #106

dredmorbius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a pair of shell scripts to deal with the URL encoding. I've also switched to DuckDuckGo for virtually all my search. Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this. http://pastebin.com/YvsAPm5u

> Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this. Try indenting by four spaces. Like this: Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this.

I had. For whatever reason, code with linebreaks was getting wrapped ...

Oh. Duh. That's my CSS stylesheet. I'd gotten sick of seeing unwrapped long lines requiring horizontal scroll, I've got:

    pre { white-space: normal; }

... set in my Stylebot stylesheet.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#207

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:05 AM UTC

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…

maps: I love the new interface. The only thing missing is re-adding rightclicks for additional options. For what I use maps nearly everything is easier than it was before. But as you want a replacement, what about OSM [1]? It's becoming better every day and a lot of areas have better data than google.

gmail: It became slower and more bloated all the time, the interface changes looked nice but were, as many said, horrible UX. I know the lack of tags is a dealbreaker for many but as I can live without them, fastmail.fm [2] is a replacement that does pretty much everything else better and faster.

search: Yeah, the lack of easy linking is extremely annoying and has been for quite some time now. My problem is still that I need the bubble to get relevant results for me. Every time I try to use DDG [3] or other replacements, searches result in way too much noise over signal. And with those boxes on the right side google now has what was one of the best features of DDG.

At least calendar is still useable for now as I haven't found a replacement I really liked.

[1]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ [2]: http://fastmail.fm [3]: http://duckduckgo.com

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#208

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 11:52 AM UTC

porker wrote: post #199

dasil003 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have so many assumptions in this response that I'm quite sure you don't know what you're saying. My organization is not a little tech startup with everyone sitting in a room. We have editors, translators, acquisitions, materials, marketing folks, etc. We have part time, full time, contractors, volunteers. We have people in over 20 countries, some working from home, some from offices, some from coffee shops. Most…

> I can't begin to think why you believe all my short emails are better suited for chat, but without context it's extremely, extremely ignorant and wrong. I can't begin to think why you think I've even suggested chat, but hey, jump to your conclusions. All that remains is for me to thank you for being a patronising bastard, and leave it there.

> All that remains is for me to thank you for being a patronising bastard, and leave it there.

I'm just returning the favor.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#209

Post by znowi » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 12:00 PM UTC

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…

The new Google Maps on Android is disappointing. I can appreciate the clean, minimal interface, but with it are gone:

1. Zoom buttons. Now I have to hold the phone in one hand while pinch in and out with another, instead of a tap with one finger.

2. Offline maps. I suppose it's part of the "cloud strategy".

3. Secondary streets at common zoom level. Now I have to really zoom in to see them. A tad out and they're gone. Sometimes it shows them just fine, though. Perhaps, it's a bug.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#210

Post by agumonkey » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 12:01 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #161

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…

The "new" Google Maps is essentially an opt-in beta. The "replacement" is to continue to use classic Maps until it is done. It is obvious that most of the old features like multi-stop directions will return, but Google needed external testers because WebGL is very dependent on machine performance and GPU, and they indicated as much when they limited the initial users to an explicit signup form. I find the new Maps in…

I'm not sure they will optimize enough to make it as fast as the 'old' on an old machine. They won't put that much effort and just require machines supporting accelerated css/webgl and fast enough to run complex javascript such as this.

I hope they manage to keep the "old" maps accessible after switching to the new, since the responsiveness is so low it negates all the new features.