Gmail update rant

[Gardener]

I hate Devs. I hate the moronic executives who approve these changes. I hate cutesy UI's that completely jack up an otherwise working experience. I hate when something is fast and works and does all I want it to becomes a trudging along piece of junk.

If a fascist regime takes over in America, I hope they leave the gutter trash to act 2, and kill all "progressive" and "good idea!" devs in the opening salvos.

/rant

[The Curt Jester]

The new contacts "feature" is ridiculous and I hate the auto-suggest function. Fortunately you can turn that off.

[Gardener]

I can barely use it. "Compose" used to open up a window ricky-tick. Now, it acts like I'm trying to open some giant attachment.

Yeah, I can switch to the basic HTML version, but that doesn't auto-pop historically used email addresses and I lose the ability to containerize various emails via type.

Tons of hate on Reddit and elsewhere for this change.

[Akavit]

The Case for "Bad" Design

More people should listen to Craig Newmark.

After discussing his rise to success as the founder of Craigslist, his birding hobby, and his Sunday school education, an audience member asked a question that has plagued many entrepreneurs who would like to mimic his success: How can a website like yours be so outdated, yet so high-impact?

“Do something simple and useful,” Newmark, in his signature newsboy cap, replied. “Spend your resources on stuff that people really want and need. Twenty years ago, I had in mind fancy user interface stuff. Talked to people, they said, ‘Don’t do that, keep it simple and fast and get to the point.’

Some people don't get it.

For plenty of reasons, Craigslist’s sustained success on nothing more than a basic HTML website has been particularly maddening to Silicon Valley. A recent Forbes feature on startups looking to disrupt online classifieds described Craigslist as “the cockroach of the internet,” and argued that “in the technology industry, where survival depends on constant innovation, conventional wisdom suggests Craigslist should have vanished long ago.”

Some people do get it.

Despite the constant flux of updates thrown our way, there is a significant part of the population that remains unimpressed by Silicon Valley’s manic attempts to continually redesign our online interfaces.

[Gardener]

Indeed Akavit.

There are some ADA considerations here, I believe.

Where UI being fancy matters is when you have to sift data, monitor, etc. Fancy UI can help there IF and only IF it is designed such that humans immediately spot discrepancies when they arise. An example would be something like some of the audio editing programs where you can see individual frequencies bouncing. That's helpful, and helps with adjustment in ways our ears cannot pick up always. But in general, KISS.

[Akavit]

I'm actually in the dark about Gmail's doings since I haven't logged into my account for over a year.  These days I'm running Thunderbird and funneling everything there (mostly email addresses on my Hostgator account).  Thunderbird works very well on my PC with the SSD.  It's somewhat prone to temporary lockups on the laptop and I suspect that's due to the resource-intensive indexing feature.

The best website in the world is mcmastercarr.com.  It's the sleekest, fastest shopping interface I've ever used.  It's fast because of the way they show products in Excel-like lists and put only the essential details on the main page.  Additional information for each product is found on a separate page via a link and even that is streamlined.  No marketing fluff.  Just facts.  Checking out is a one-click process.  Every time I visit competitor websites (Grainger, MSC) I get chased out by the cumbersome interfaces.

[maryslittlegarden]

I'm actually in the dark about Gmail's doings since I haven't logged into my account for over a year.  These days I'm running Thunderbird and funneling everything there (mostly email addresses on my Hostgator account).  Thunderbird works very well on my PC with the SSD.  It's somewhat prone to temporary lockups on the laptop and I suspect that's due to the resource-intensive indexing feature.

The best website in the world is mcmastercarr.com.  It's the sleekest, fastest shopping interface I've ever used.  It's fast because of the way they show products in Excel-like lists and put only the essential details on the main page.  Additional information for each product is found on a separate page via a link and even that is streamlined.  No marketing fluff.  Just facts.  Checking out is a one-click process.  Every time I visit competitor websites (Grainger, MSC) I get chased out by the cumbersome interfaces.

Yeah, I love my thunderbird.  Also hate the new gmail.

[Miriam_M]

Beginning to despise the Google monopoly, including its devolved gmail "update."  They're liars.  They say you can revert to classic.  You cannot.

[Miriam_M]

Tell everyone you know to bombard Google, Inc. with negativity about their new gmail and the inability to revert to Classic.

[Gardener]

Have gone to Thunderbird to get email now. If I have to use web interface, I use basic HTML view.

My main problem with it is how utterly slow the new version is. Waiting 10-30 seconds for a "Compose" window to open is unacceptable. An email not even opening is unacceptable. Previous version was fairly snappy, even on slower connections.

[carmina laetitiae]

I'm now favoring my student email that uses the MS Outlook app because of this "upgrade." That's right - it is so bad that I'm using OUTLOOK instead.

[aquinas138]

I'm now favoring my student email that uses the MS Outlook app because of this "upgrade." That's right - it is so bad that I'm using OUTLOOK instead.

Wow, it must be bad. I just use the standard Mail app on my macbook; I haven't logged into the gmail website in a long time. I only do if I need to change my password.

[Daniel]

Arrrgh, this is horrible. Google changed something again overnight, and now I can't even view what's in my inbox. It just displays a message, "No new mail!" (even though I got at least two new e-mails since last night, not to mention the thousands of unread messages...)

If I enter "in:inbox" into the search box, then it seems to work like normal. But I just hope it's not hiding anything...


edit - Oh, it seems to be working like normal now. Maybe it was just some glitch.

[Gardener]

Daniel, consider Thunderbird instead of web interface.

It's a popular POP3/IMAP (I recommend IMAP so it syncs any local changes to the account; POP3 will actually download the emails to your machine and have no effect on the web interface -- so if you delete email A on POP3 settings, it remains in your actual account inbox[boooooo!]) client and there is very little trouble in setting it up.

On another machine I was running Outlook and it crapped out on me for some account settings. Didn't feel like fighting it. I had Thunderbird downloaded and set up with all my mailboxes in less than 10 min on that other machine.

If you have sub-folders, it imports those. Only difference is there is no tab structure like on web interface (Primary, Social, Promotions).

[Gardener]

Haven't tried this since I don't use Chrome, but should help out those who do.

https://agileinbox.co/gmail-classic-theme/