Slashdot Mirror
Google Testing Gmail Redesign
An anonymous reader writes "Google is testing out some big changes for Gmail. Some of the changes are: the sidebar has been replaced with a slide-in pane, the 'compose' button has been moved, and there's a new feature called 'reminders'. From the article: 'Gmail may soon look nothing like the Gmail we all know so well. Google has invited a select group of users to test a completely new interface for the webmail client, according to Geek.com, which appears to be part of the trial. The test version of Gmail — which may never see an official release — dispenses with design elements that have been present from the very early days of the email service.'"
Like Slashdot Beta, this is probably being driven by âoeweb designersâ and marketers. It's not good enough that something have reached a state of maturity that works well with users, and they like. Throw away the furniture and toss out the Persian rugs, white carpet and a do-over by Ikea is what we need, right?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They already RUINED Google Maps, please don't ruin Gmail as well.
I think I might have to consider running my own crap, I'm sick of Google.
Google's motto should be "We don't care about design, and it shows!"
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
... and completely despise all the changes. Then in another week or so I'll get used to it and not mind it. A week after that I'll think the old interface looks atrocious.
Vista? Edsel? my name is Legion, for we are many.
If it's anything like the new Google maps, no thanks. Its atrocious and no one can find anything that was previously accessible.
... I'm still using an old version of Thunderbird. I don't get my mailnews interface overhauled every 5 minutes and that's the way I likes it. Web apps are overrated.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Honestly, the current version is badly cluttered, and this implementation is just a bunch of porcine lipstick.
I want a nice, clean, fast-loading interface. The closer I can get to a raw text-list interface on it the better. I don't WANT shit popping out at me from any given direction.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Aesthetics does not account for the lack of any way of contacting a Human should you come into trouble. A prettier GMAIL? Quite frankly, who gives a hoot? GMAIL is strutture in such a way as not to request "human labour", never. This makes it very, very frail and user support is, literally, non existing. If for any reason, you loose access to your account, you are basically fucked. Lessons learned: GMAIL is OK for basic throw/away don't care type of things. If you are using GMAIL professionally you are doing it wrong. First of all set the correct DNS records of a domain you own to point to a service, any service which allows you to set some name@yourdomain.tld. Should you not like the mail provider service, you can move your account where you like, and NEVER, EVER loose access to your mail account. First thing to check if you plan to use a service: is there a way to contact a human being? is there an actual phone number you can use to ask for assistance? If you can't contact them during sales phase, go someplace else.
I'm still fighting with the last set of changes, lots of features that I used to use regularly are either gone or hidden so well that I usually can't find them. The best change they could make is go back to the version that worked and then let us keep it, or at least give us the option to keep it and not keep having changes forced down our throats.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
WHAT THE HELL.
First they take my XP away with the best UI. Then take away my menus in office 2007 with ribbons. Then they cripple Youtube so I can't browse by category. Then take away the ok UI of Windows with Metro full screen and 70% of all the functionality. Then they change perfectly Gnome 2 with a half cell phone gnome 3/shell! Now office 365/office 2013 is all FREAKING WHITE IN ALL CAPS where I get a migraine looking at it. Then they change Hotmail.com to all blinding with blue. ,.. now gmail is changing too. GOOD lord. I have had enough. Stand up folks and let those elitist art professors know we will not tolerate this minimalism and reduction of features. Art majors are being brainwashed by these guys who go on to design websites and operating system GUI's who do not tolerate dissent and have never worked in real jobs before.
They were assholes to post impressionist artists too back in the day because it wasn't the *new* thing. Now anything that doesn't look like it is 2 colors and non descriptive gets flunked out.
We should not tolerate such things.
http://saveie6.com/
what they're up to again...
The current Gmail interface was a step back in usability (for me).
- wider line spacing, less emails to see
- cannot click on emails to open in another tab
- mailboxes are not visible - have to be clicked on to expand
I always have a tab open with the "old" html version and get notified that I am missing out on something...
The only thing on the current version I find better is the autorefresh to show new messages.
One of my low priority projects is to get completely off Gmail - the NSL calamity...
It's so goddamn awful, it will drive me away from Gmail, its uncomplicated and great search results, and make me get off my lazy ass, and set up my own cloud service that I control.
It might even make me motivated enough to limit my exposure to Google in other ways, too.
The volume of non-work email I deal with has been dropping steadily, anyway - to the point where my own solution managed in my own cloud service might be worthwhile.
I strongly suspect I am not alone.
Full speed ahead Google!
..don't panic
Try Gmail "Basic HTML" interface. Missing things are: the chat history (can still be accessed via "in:chats" search) and easy selection of multiple items.
Google has removed the link to activate it, so here it is.
From the basic, if you do not like it, you can always switch back to the "normal" interface. Only switch to the basic is via this special link.
Overall, works well for me. Definitely better than the mess they have made out of the GMail interface 2+ years ago.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
The sidebar is one of the most important features for me. I filter various emails to skip my inbox, so I like to see an unread count against the labels to know when I've got mail I might want to look at. I like to keep the inbox to the more important stuff, as that's the one I sync with my phone.
I like the way the current gmail uses space as well - not too much whitespace. Email is a tool I use constantly - I don't need it to look good, I need it to be functional and have as much information as possible available at a glance. Site designs that are OK for casual browsing are not necessarily appropriate for real work and power users.
Gmail was the first web interface that was good enough for me to replace a desktop client for PC use. I'd rather not go back, but that interface will have me switching, either back to a mail client or to outlook.com
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Please just have a profile option that says "Don't ever change anything on the interface", ever.
If you move the blue button labeled "Compose" located in the upper left corner of the screen to the upper center of the screen, my dad won't be able to find it and he will call me and say his email is broken. If you change the color of the button, he will call me and tell me that email is broken. If you change the label from "Compose" to "New Email", he will call me and say his email is broken. If you pop up a great big dialog box on the middle of the screen that uses a bold blinking font and uses very noticeable colors, and this dialog box says "Welcome to the new mail interface, click here to learn about it.", my dad will somehow figure out how to close the dialog without reading it or the associated help and of course, he will think that email (or the Internet itself) is broken.
No, I can't just teach my dad to be more flexible. Unlike other compatibility issues as technology progresses, I can not replace or "upgrade" my dad. He is 78 years old and is not into learning new tricks. He is a smart guy and is capable off learning new things, but he is old and crotchety and complains a lot every time he has to...
Please please please remember that there is a segment of the user base that views even simple interface changes as a huge deal.
Every time the ASP changes shit for changes sake, or nixes needed features altogether, any money saved initially goes right out the window. Outsourcing is not the answer, no matter what the PHBs think.
How good would your car mechanic be if his tools were changed around, removed, added, altered every night before reporting for work the next day? Not very.
The thing that bothers me most with Google (not just Gmail, Android too) is the constant change in interface. I use the average app about 2-3 times between UI redesigns. I don't care how great the new UI is if it takes me more time to learn it than the time it's going to save until the next redesign. How about you make your new designs 3x better and update 1/3 as often? Seems like it would help the vast majority here.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
The bigger problem is all that the MBAs in charge do is twiddle with the tinsel, and do not address the deeper problems in semantics that people have asked for. Such as being able to break up mangled conversations. Or add notes to an important conversation to summarize it. Or to add a meaningful heading. There are several others.
GMail used to be innovative. Hard core slash dotters will know that all sent mail belongs in one place only, namely a folder called Sent Mail. GMail introduced conversations to emails, producing threads (just like Usenet...). They also introduced the idea that the same email could be put in more than one folder (label) at the same time. So it could go in Sent Mail, CustomerX, ScalingIssues, and Outsanding all at the same time. Way beyond traditional IMAP.
These things were not done as the result of some market research survey. They were done because the engineers involved thought it would be cool. It would be the way that they personally would like to use email.
But that was before the MBA and user interface experts took over. Just change the window dressing, dumb things down, target the idiot user.
I am actually looking to move to Zoho mail.
As to slash dot, how about just recognizing blank lines as paragraph breaks. That would be enough.
Google traditionally copies all user feeback to the round file. They go through the motions getting user feedback to satisfy some well meaning internal guidelines, but in the end Google decides all questions by the colors on the powerpoint slides. Redesign of the news site is a classic example, tens of thousands of negative comments in multiple forums and nearly nothing good to say about it, in the end a few cosmetic tweaks were made but user feedback was overwhelmingly ignored. It still sucks. I expect pretty much the same with gmail. How about fixing things that actually matter, like not being able to right click and open a mail in a new browser tab?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.