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Google Video Shows All-White Redesigns For Gmail, Google Photos, and More (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

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.

13 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Light-grey text on white?! by hazem · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is this horrible fascination with light grey text on white backgrounds?

    1. Re:Light-grey text on white?! by Maxwell'sSilverLART · · Score: 2

      "‘It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me out,’ said Zaphod, whose love affair with the ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. 'Every time you try and operate these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you’ve done it.’"

      --
      Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
    2. Re:Light-grey text on white?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What is this horrible fascination with light grey text on white backgrounds?

      Honestly, it's just yet another symptom in the down slope to even shittier interfaces designed by morons where everything in the world is a tablet, phone, or webpage.

      Everything from Windows to pretty much most native apps are suffering from this. Huge chunks of whitespace around things, unused space where they just don't put content, or dumbing down interfaces for teenagers with smart phones.

      It's especially frustrating to be sitting in front of a multi-monitor setup on a desktop with a screen which has been maximised, and a huge chunk of the screen is unused. Google did this with their News, going away from the ability to have 2 columns of stories, or apparently the ability to have custom sections.

      I look at Google News these days in a full screen browser on a large monitor, and fully 50% of the screen is just dead space. The information density is half of what it used to be.

      About 25 years ago, a friend said that the web had pushed back user interface design by 20 years. And now, apps are doing that even further.

      My only conclusion is the people who design interfaces are drooling idiots, designing interfaces for drooling idiots. And with each iteration the utility of an interface if you're still on a desktop gets even worse.

      Even Office has been doing this .. an increasingly flat looking interface which looks like a bad web page, not a native desktop application.

      The fascination with bad backgrounds is just a further step in making lowest-common-denominator interfaces optimised for small touch screens. It's lots of marketing and style, but very little substance and utility.

      Personally, I absolutely loathe modern interfaces on a desktop. Because they are no longer useful for navigating with a mouse.

  2. Re: Material Design Sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Otherwise you might be comfortable looking at it.

    Hopefully they will put light gray text over the white background, white borders, and white title bar.

    Maybe it is for better compatibility with CGA monitors, but even on those you get four fucking colors.

  3. Anyone surprised? by CharlesAKAChuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Anyone surprised? by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is what happens when you move from providing a useful product to people with lots of options that are easy to configure. To providing a "tailored user experience" which tells you what they want you to hear, while hiding those useful options that were once easy to configure.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  4. Re:Vintage Green on Black Must Be Revolutionary! by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Funny

    My eye strain! The amber CRT screens do nothing!

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  5. Original Mac called, wants its look back by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is this horrible fascination with light grey text on white backgrounds?

    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.
  6. Re:Good choice, Google by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    White Power!

    Let's counter with an ethnic look. I personally dig Mayan art. I can see it with a sort of Next Generation (Trek) feel.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  7. Re: The problem with an all white design is... by ElitistWhiner · · Score: 2

    It called â Snowblindâ(TM). It occurs when the background is white, foreground is a few grayscale shades off-white and the screen, book or map is also within the same grayscale range.

    Driving this occurs not only in whiteout snow conditions. It also happens in fog, cloud filled conditions in mountainous terrain and night time driving where inversions fill-in lower altitudes.

    You develop blindness driving, then look down at you map or white phone depiction of a route and itâ(TM)s blind to you. You cannot see a thing.

  8. Re:Material Design Sucks by pete6677 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because stupid hipster designers have to ruin everything. God forbid any modern app be usable, it must only be stylish.

  9. I asked a friend if it was any good? by MrKaos · · Score: 2

    He said it was all-white. I thought he had a lisp.

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  10. obHitchhikersGuide by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

    "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!"