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Google Video Shows All-White Redesigns For Gmail, Google Photos, and More (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: This year, Google is pushing out a major revamp to its Material Design guidelines. The new design language is slowly creeping across Google's portfolio, and so far we've seen big changes for Gmail.com, early builds of Chrome, and for Android P. The Android side of things has so far only been the base operating system, but now a new Google design video has surfaced that shows off new designs for Gmail, Google Photos, Google Trips, and Google Drive.
[...] The Gmail screens strip the app of its trademark red UI elements and give us a white bottom bar and white background. The phone inbox shows attached documents and even has large thumbnails for images. The message screen appears to show attachments on a horizontal scrolling carousel, which looks a lot like the horizontally scrolling news articles in the Google Feed. This screen again places the important controls down at the bottom of the screen, where a bottom bar houses the usual "Mark as Read," "Delete," "Archive," and "Reply All" buttons. We even get to see the compose screen for a second, which shows previous replies above your compose field.
[...] The Gmail screens strip the app of its trademark red UI elements and give us a white bottom bar and white background. The phone inbox shows attached documents and even has large thumbnails for images. The message screen appears to show attachments on a horizontal scrolling carousel, which looks a lot like the horizontally scrolling news articles in the Google Feed. This screen again places the important controls down at the bottom of the screen, where a bottom bar houses the usual "Mark as Read," "Delete," "Archive," and "Reply All" buttons. We even get to see the compose screen for a second, which shows previous replies above your compose field.
Why an all white background?
What about my browsers of another color?
Can you dig it?
What is this horrible fascination with light grey text on white backgrounds?
Of this planet.
Site X got a theme update
White Power!
Don't get me started ... .... insert various political references ...
All white? The rich old white man approach?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
that everything will have the colour #FFFFFF, which means everything will be invisible.
This reminds me of the Douglas Adams novel "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" when an electric monk got stuck because he believed everything was pink and therefore everything was indistinguishable from everything else, so he got stuck because he couldn't 'see' any obstacles, until he stopped believing it.
Learn it google. Really.
All that color space going to waste. Heck, if they're going to go minimal on color, at least go with colors that make sense, such as green on black.
It's some sort of plot by Google to get people to quit using their services, I think.
Google Finance - used to be really good, loads of information, very useful. Now, it's a whole lot of white space with not a lot else. No need to visit that page any more.
Google News - used to be really good, loads of information, very useful. Now, it's a whole lot of white space with not a lot else. No need to visit that page any more.
Google home page - well okay, that one should be a lot of white space and a search box, I'll give them that one.
Hey google. Nobody likes material.
The new gmail interface sucks ass
I'm not a fan of a new Gmail web design (I'm trying it out on my test "@gmail.com" account) and this just carries that bad design into the mobile space. I loved the old red and white design. The icons were readable, and the color made it feel friendly. The all grey-on-white design looks kind of stark and lonely.
Too bad.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
There is nothing worse than trying to read text at 2 in the morning on a goddamn flashlight! These assholes are attempting to destroy our eyes, and should have theirs plucked out in response. It is self defense.
I absolutely hate the Grey and white layout of Google Maps. Hey Google, increase your contrast!
Consider this an official request from night owls across the globe. Screw your blaring white "wow I can see this in direct sunlight" scheme.
No, there are five that are white and five that are slightly brighter white.
It started out with the horrible fascination with the "flat" style whereby it was hard to tell buttons from boxes etc. It was hard to use, but art trumped* function.
But they were not satisfied whacking shadows and shading, they had to whack colors also. At this pace, we'll go back to monochrome uni-spaced character-mode UI's. Keep your ASCII art; it may get you a promotion from a young PHB who won't realize it's from 1982. "Wow, this is so modern and stylish. Good job! And can I have a copy of that 'visi calc' software you showed me? It's totally cray!"
After all, I've seen disco come back twice in my lifetime. UI fads seem in the same category as clothing and music fads. Oh right, it's not "UI" but "UX" now. Experience this!:
Git off my flat light-grey lawn! (drought made such fashionable)
* "T" word not intended to be connected with you-know-who.
Table-ized A.I.
An all white UI with invisible icons that need to be activated using weird gestures. When you hover the mouse in just the right way some parts of the display become pale grey.
If only I had the time to make it. But then again, maybe Google will do this for me in their next release.
I do like that they have moved the menu/search button to the bottom, where it's easily reachable one-handed.
I'm still waiting for white-on-white / "everything" white UX. White text on a white background. White buttons & controls. Oh yeah.
White is might; white is right.
Gmail app redesign shows even less information than before. Years ago gmail app displayed about dozen emails on one screen. During the last redesign they limited it to 6-7 emails. This white redesign shows 3 (and a half) emails. This smells like a ploy to make people stop using it.
:wq
When I read "design language", I have associations of torture and other crimes against Humanity.
I'm glad I avoid Google as much as I can.
He said it was all-white. I thought he had a lisp.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I hate changes like this - you now have a list that isn't a list and is becoming more like a 'view every email' mode. I see a lot less emails the new way and it's less easy to parse. Another triumph for someones sketchbook/CV over actual f*cking usefulness.
I like the list view as it crams all the info into a view and I can quickly scroll through a ton of emails to pick out only the ones I am interested in. No filter works, no grouping works. I just want a list.
Now, instead I have to see f*cking pictures, a lot less in the list and have to scroll more. It's not ideal, and I *REALLY* hope that this can be turned off. Whilst I applaud trying to take their apps/platform forwards, I hate the reduction in ease of use.
Oh yes, and then there's the burn your eyes with white theme. What's the f*cking fascination with that? Oh, it looks pretty rather than making it easy to parse, again a triumph for 'looks nice' over using it.
Fortunately these things have a habit of forcing people to consider using, and searching for alternatives (which, as they are trying to be better, place use over 'looking nice')
Go search for alternatives! You are not forced to use gmail.
Shame they can't make them all male and republican to keep the big nosed fucking freak happy!
"It's so ... white!" he said. "Like, white buttons and text on a white background. It's so white that light just seems to fall out of it!"
Clearly this is yet another example of Institutional racism that must be stamped out. We can not have anything "All white". Clearly if the injustice of slavery had never happened the superior "All black" option would be the only one available.
...because they are racist.
Or might it be because the GUI people have to justify their paychecks? How long has it been since the GUI problem, with the type of hardware generally used, has been solved? 15 or 20 years?
All these designers who think white backgrounds are a good idea should be forced to be oncall where they get paged every night at 2 or 3am and are forced to stare into a screen that has the brightness of a thousand suns so they can understand the pain I go through every time I have to do the same, which is most nights. And then maybe they will understand just how painful those white screens are when your eyes are adjusted to the dark and how once they adjust to the 8 million lumens of light you won't be getting back to sleep any time soon. This really needs to happen. Unsurprisingly, dark screens don't create the same kinds of problems, but do I get any dark screens at 3am? Listen, being oncall and getting paged in the middle of the night is bad enough, so let's not make it 10x worse with your stupid white screens, ok? Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
A white page is a searchlight aimed at your eyeballs. I've been preferentially using light text on dark backgrounds since the 1970s in order to pamper my eyes; it works.
But most workspaces are stupidly and wastefully overlighted, so you need a searchlight to be able to see anything.
Once you go Black, you ....are happy the text is white and you're saving battery power. DHUH
End of Line.
This is getting worse and worse. I am going to be trying Zoho. Seen that pop up on this site a few times as recommendations.
I have held off trying to get a different email service just because of ALL the stuff attached to the GMail one.
My Google account is pretty much going to be for YouTube to unblock videos with bad words and the Play Store.
Unless there is a good replacement for that y'all can recommend.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
The only possible reason I can see for this new idiotic direction of design is the most obvious: it requires less power to process and you can sell junkier hardware to people and claim it is faster than the old stuff. That new two color UI just screams through, now you can get those ads loaded and running faster than ever!
"The goggles do nothing!"
Everyone is going dark, even Youtube. I'm glad Google is doing something different but this is really straining my eyes.