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Google Rolling Out Gmail Redesign

Posted by Soulskill on from the make-sure-to-react-before-you-try-it dept.

Today Google announced a redesign of the Gmail inbox. Citing a high volume of email which makes it hard for users to focus on what's important (or what they want to focus on at any given moment), the new inbox will automatically group incoming emails into categories, which will appear as tabs at the top of the inbox. 'You can easily customize the new inbox — select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.' Speaking to The Verge, Gmail product manager Alex Gawley said, 'It became obvious to us over time that this notion that the inbox was more of your master than your servant was becoming more widespread. It wasn't just the people receiving hundreds of emails a day — more regular users were starting to feel stressed out by their inbox.' The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.

12 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. No! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

    1. Re:No! by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

      No shit.

      I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

      What has changed so much that they need to potentiall fsck up the interface yet again?

      I think by now, we've pretty much gotten email front ends and MTA's done about right, not much need for new tinkering that I can fathom.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:No! by twisted_pare · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Optional will be tomorrow's mandatory. That has been the typical beta test to roll out of Gmail updates so far.

      --
      HTFU
    3. Re:No! by BradleyAndersen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      exactly.

      gmail keeps pushing not insignificant changes, and calls them 'optional'. my experience is they later remove the options.

    4. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.

      Because if it turns out people LIKE it, then the GP and GGP might wind up having to admit they're the outliers and no longer represent the views of the internet. This is an unacceptable solution, as it would be tantamount to admitting that the internet, being a melting pot of humanity never before seen in history, has evolved to something the GP/GGP doesn't recognize, and that, in turn, would be the first step in realizing that they're OLD (with a capital OLD) and behind the times, AND that they can't stop the progress of time any more than the music labels and movie studios can.

      Therefore, the objective is to whine loud enough so that the choice to change things is somehow removed. This will preserve their fragile egos, which I'm certain they can agree is worth holding back any possible conveniences, unless they themselves are initiating it, in which case everyone else is old. And the fact that old people can agree on it is all that matters.

    5. Re:No! by brentrad · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're actually wrong on both counts:

      To get rid of the "Important" mailbox in the web interface: Go to your Gmail settings, Inbox tab, and set your Inbox to "Classic".

      In the Android Gmail app, go into the settings for your Gmail account, and uncheck "Priority Inbox".

  2. Re:Sounds Horrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't have to use that stupid "Priority inbox", it's optional. As long as they keep these experiments optional, I'm fine with it, but Google has a tendency of removing options instead of adding them.

  3. "Let me just take care of that for you." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.

    At least you can turn it off... for now.

    But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.

    There's something not quite right with that attitude.

    1. Re:"Let me just take care of that for you." by wdef · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.

      At least you can turn it off... for now.

      But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.

      There's something not quite right with that attitude.

      You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.

  4. Re:Sounds Horrible by NJRoadfan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Use an IMAP client of your choice than.

  5. Yes! by Piata · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's actually a lot of room for improvement with email. It's one of the more clunky and archaic parts of the web and I'm really glad Google keeps pushing the boundaries on this as they seem to be the only ones doing so effectively. I personally have a hard time keeping my email organized and sorted so any attempts to improve email clients are welcome in my books. Even if the changes aren't necessarily better, trying new approaches and getting feedback on those changes will create an overall better product.

    If you want a static and unchanging email experience you might be better served with Outlook. At my job we just switched from Corporate Gmail to Outlook after 6 years and Outlook has hardly changed since I last used it. It's downright ancient!

  6. Don't trust them by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The old Compose interface was fine. I find the new Compose interface crippling, there are several things that I do in Gmail that just don't seem to be there in the new Compose interface, at least I can't find them with a lot of searching. Yes, you can switch back to the old Compose interface, I did that months ago. Lately I've started getting messages that the old Compose interface is going away and I better learn to use the new one. Not that I object to learning something new, although I shouldn't have to if the old one is fine, but the new one doesn't seem to support some very basic functions. Of course, this isn't presenting a problem for the people at Google who help us out and support the product, because there is no one at Google who supports the product and apparently no way to even give them feedback on the problems with the new interfaces.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.