
I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something - taigeair
http://www.taigeair.com/why-gmail-2013-sucks-terribad-user-experience/
======
mixmax
Here's another total usability fail: Tab sends the e-mail you're currently
writing instead of indenting text. Everywhere else tab indents text, and when
you write an e-mail in gmail you'd expect it to act consistently with how it's
used everywhere else.

Start writing in gmail, hit tab to indent some text. Congratulations you've
now sent half an e-mail to you boss....

I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea.

~~~
missing_cipher
The default behavior for "Tab" on the web is to move to the next element on
the Tab order.

~~~
oinksoft
The default behavior for Tab in rich text editors has been to insert a tabstop
for quite some time. I think this is just a casualty of goog.editor.Editor's
unconventional default behavior, which is to tab out of the field. If that is
truly an oversight (not overriding this behavior), it says a lot about how the
Gmail project is being run these days, because previously they did override
this.

~~~
esrauch
Is it really unconventional though? Tab for navigation is the default behavior
for HTML form inputs and contenteditable. I can't think of a website that I
use that has input boxes that have tab do indent actually.

~~~
oinksoft
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a widely used rich text editor, be it
TinyMCE, CKEditor, YUI Editor or ExtJS' HtmlEditor that doesn't map the Tab
key to insert a tabstop or a number of non-breaking spaces. goog.editor.Field
is absolutely in the minority in that regard.

There are good design reasons for this. The goog.editor package is designed to
be modular. This tab-to-indent behavior is instead provided by the
goog.editor.plugins.SpacesTabHandler plugin.

As I mention before, I find it questionable that the GMail developers elected
to omit this plugin. I'm not suggesting that there are some fools on the
project who can't read an API. Rather, it strongly indicates that GMail is
catering less and less to any approximation of the "power user", and assuming
that most emails could just as well be composed in a <textarea>.

~~~
isaacaggrey
I'm not sure if it's because they are demo versions (and my experiences echoes
esrauch's), but every rich text editor you listed except YUI Editor actually
does _not_ map the Tab key to insert a tabstop or spaces.

[1]: <http://ckeditor.com/demo> [2]: <http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/basic.php>
[3]:
[http://try.sencha.com/extjs/4.1.1/docs/Ext.form.field.HtmlEd...](http://try.sencha.com/extjs/4.1.1/docs/Ext.form.field.HtmlEditor.2/)

------
ebbv
I can't remember the last Gmail change that was actually an improvement.

In general Google's changes since the Google+ rollout have been 90% terrible.
There's been a couple of changes to Youtube that are better (like the really
big mode), but overall changes to all Google services have been bad. I feel
like they've really lost the plot.

~~~
shrikant
I may be in the minority here, but I actually think most changes to the Gmail
interface have been improvements.

My biggest gripe was when they did the overall visual refresh, which reduced
the information density on my small laptop screen. Then they added a "Density"
switcher, which made things alright again.

I actually like it when interfaces change. Even when I was super busy I
wouldn't mind learning and adapting to changes interfaces. Oh well, I guess I
just like change for its own sake.

~~~
taigeair
I love trying new things and I love learning new software but I've learned the
new gmail UI and I don't like clicking 2-3X more for things I do pretty
regularly. Like getting someone's email address.

~~~
Draiken
I agree that for you it's 3 more clicks, but for the millions of other regular
users, it's less useless info on the way.

People have to get that it's a product for many, not for all. You can agree
with hiding emails or not, but a company as large as Google wouldn't hide it
just for the sake of it. Obviously there was research and data that backed
that change.

Bottom line is, if it was your company, you'd hide stuff to improve the
experience of 90% of your customers at the cost of a few without another
thought.

~~~
neop
While that may be a good point, you also need to consider that Gmail is part
of Google Apps for Business. I don't really mind the changes for my personal
Gmail account since most of the emails that go through there are quite simple
and these changes don't have any real impact on my workflow. But for my work
account, it's a whole different story. Most of these changes make my
experience quite annoying when dealing with business emails where I often need
to copy email addresses, modify subjects, CC people, etc.

Breaking Gmail for business users doesn't seem like a good idea since they are
the ones who are actually paying for the service.

------
Fuzzwah
I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment
pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake,
but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some
getting used to however.

Responses to the points made in the article:

1) I can’t easily delete my signatures.

Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent
email clients do this on their own and are we really that worried about a few
extra bytes of data these days?

2) I can’t easily change my email subject.

If its time to edit the subject of an email thread maybe it is time to hit the
big read "compose" button and start from scratch anyway.

3) Ok, so what if you want to insert a link or something.

Drag and drop from the address bar. So easy.

4) Rapportive doesn’t work.

I've never used rapportive, it sounds awesome. Bummer on this one.

5) You can’t easily get access to people’s emails. (Also fonts and formatting)

This one does bug me, because they've all become 3 clicks (or new shortcut
keys to learn). An option to just always display these things would be
good.... but I've evolved and learned the hotkeys.

In conclusion, I've also been a long time gmail user who got cranky at the
fact that the new compose form forced me to change my habits. I learned
hotkeys and feel it has made me more efficient. Since I try to spend as little
time in life being cranky and optimize efficiency I evolved and moved on.

Full list of hotkeys: <https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en>

~~~
kevingadd
Saying 'hit the big red compose button' totally misses the point of why
subjects get edited.

If you'd ever participated in a discussion list, you'd know that sometimes a
single discussion thread branches out into multiple smaller threads. The best
way to handle this is to reply with a new subject so that threaded
conversation views in email clients show it as a new thread, but all the
participants stay on the reply-to list and the conversation history remains in
the quotes.

Drag and drop from the address bar to insert a link? What is this, Mac OS 9?
I've literally never observed a user drag and drop from the address bar. _I_
know it works, but I'm a power user. Do you really think it makes sense to
remove an obvious button for a common operation (inserting a link) just
because you assume that users know how to drag-and-drop a text selection from
a 16 pixel high rectangle?

Maybe all Google's user testers are dragging and dropping fiends so this
actually is the reasoning behind it. I don't know how you would find precision
drag-and-drop convenient on a typical laptop/chromebook touchpad, though.

~~~
toomuchtodo
What you're arguing for is better parent-child discussion relationship
management in Gmail. Something like Gmail + Google Group at a much deeper
integration level, with the Google Groups part not sucking like Google Groups
does now.

Also, I'd love if I could take a mailing list thread (like from NANOG), and
with one-click blow it out onto a thread on something like Stack Exchange.

Email needs to continue to evolve. It's role is to remove the friction of
communicating tasks, thoughts, ideas, concepts, etc. We need work refining how
those things are defined and moved between communication mediums.

/endRant

~~~
endersshadow
A la Google Wave?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Sort of? I can definitely see design elements from Wave in what I'm
suggesting; maybe more like a collaborative/group version of
www.mailboxapp.com.

------
rayiner
Gmail is now a cluster fuck of terribleness. Who the hell decided it was a
good idea to make you type your email in what is basically a slightly larger
chat window? Who decided it would be a good idea to put the "reply" edit box
at the end of a potentially very long email? Oh, and make it fit like six
lines of text. I swear, this is what happens when you let a bunch of kids run
the show. "My emails are rarely ever more than 'kthx' or 'heh' so lets get rid
of all that useless space!"

~~~
imjared
Probably the same team that has usage data for hundreds of millions of users.

~~~
rayiner
I'm gonna quote @kevingadd from down below because I can't say it better
myself: "The new gmail is streamlined for particular purposes and not for
others. You'd think that one of the biggest data companies in the universe
would be able to gather actual data about how people use their software and
ensure they aren't making it significantly worse to use for subsets of the
customer base. Maybe this is what Google actually did, and they decided they
don't care about the 1-10% of their users who use gmail for anything other
than sending glorified SMS messages to people."

The new gmail is a toy for kids.

~~~
imjared
Glorified SMS? I get that the compose window is smaller but this is pretty
unbelievably hyperbole. On my main screen, I get over 4000 characters before
having to scroll and even on my 13" laptop screen, I can fit close to 1700
characters in the compose window before I get a scroll bar
(<http://cl.ly/image/0H1A2O3u251U>). In contrast, the "old" version only gives
me about 650 characters on my small screen
(<http://cl.ly/image/0h3O2H3g0P21>). Perhaps I'm missing something but this
seems to free up real estate.

~~~
ijk
It's glorified SMS in that the designer of the feature has explicitly said
that they changed the design so that it would basically be glorified chat:

> What it looks like, really, is a slightly oversized version of Gchat. And
> that’s no accident. Google’s actively trying to make email less fussy and
> formal--or, in other words, to make it a little more like instant messaging.
> And as Jason Cornwell, Gmail’s lead designer, explains, one of the ways to
> do that is simply to "give you permission to write shorter messages." [...]

> "It was a space that was sort of intimidating, I think, to write a message
> like 'Hey, wanna get lunch?'" he explains. "We wanted the new compose to
> facilitate these quicker messages. Or at least make it a space where that
> felt appropriate."

[http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-
compose-w...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-
window-could-reinvent-gmail)

~~~
exodust
"hey, let's meet for coffee soooooooon! your shout? :-)"

Dear Google, please don't feel you need to give me permission to write the
above. And definitely don't remove or change handy features to achieve such an
objective. It's my business how I compose email, and my responsibility for
justifying the occasions where a formal style is needed vs casual. Just make
the interface useful and stop trying to turn email into something it's not.

------
tomkarlo
Does anyone really think Photoshop is a good UX for mass consumption (which is
obviously the target for Gmail)? I've been using it since version 2, and I
think it's a great product, but for new users it's a miserably difficult
product to learn, especially for any kind of casual use.

There's a reason why users love apps like Draw Something or (more relevantly)
Instagram or Paper. They're able to easily achieve the results they want
without investing a huge amount of time in learning the software. Why is that
so hard to understand? Not everyone wants to invest 40+ hours in learning
Photoshop.

~~~
cmircea
Nobody thinks Photoshop has a good UX, but that's not the point; the point is
it's been consistent, with only small, helpful changes.

If Adobe redesigned the Photoshop interface they'd instantly love half their
market share, as people using software professionally don't like or have the
time to learn something new just because it's better in some odd way.

Microsoft did that with Office, the whole Ribbon fiasco, but to their defense:
\- Office 2003's UI was extremely complicated; GMail's new extra steps are
nothing in comparison. \- The Ribbon UI was well designed from the start. \-
All (or most) keyboard shortcuts stayed the same. \- Microsoft actually did
extensively test the new design and, being Microsoft, it will be supported for
a long time.

Adobe probably wouldn't be able to pull that off, and it looks like even
Google can't anymore.

~~~
tomkarlo
Yes, but Photoshop has a totally different target market from Gmail, which is
why the article's comparison is nonsensical if not entirely wrong.

Gmail is designed for _everyone_ and has to support the full spectrum of
users, in particular the new ones (because they're the ones picking new email
accounts - consider that they're partially trying to target people who _still_
don't have email). Photoshop is designed for a very select set of power users.
Saying Gmail's interface is becoming less like Photoshop and that's bad makes
no sense at all.

You probably wouldn't recommend Photoshop to your Grandma - you'd tell her to
use Picasa or iPhoto, both of which I suspect have far more users.

~~~
ebbv
If your point is that his analogy wasn't great, I think we'll all concede that
point.

~~~
tomkarlo
Well, my point was that the analogy shows the problem with the rest of the
post - he's applying a faulty standard to judging if the changes are good ones
or not.

If it's just griping that he doesn't like the changes, fine, but if his point
is that these are _bad_ changes that don't make sense for the product, then he
needs to pick a better analogy.

Everyone wants simpler, more intuitive products, unless it disrupts _their
particular workflow_. <http://xkcd.com/1172/>

~~~
ebbv
I think despite the weak analogy, his point is obviously valid and solid.
Gmail has gotten shittier for _everyone_.

~~~
tomkarlo
That's a pretty broad statement. It seems like what he's written is that it's
gotten worse for someone with _his_ use cases, which I'm not arguing (and I
fall in that camp.) But we're also not representative of the average email
user, which we sometimes have a tendency to forget when judging product
changes.

~~~
taigeair
@tomkarlo

Photoshop is extremely customisable and full-featured which is what I was
getting at. Draw Something is fun and light which works well as a mobile app.

I don't know about the average email user but after 10,000+ hours of using
email, I feel like I'm pretty proficient at email :)

~~~
tomkarlo
Understood... but all your points are about the negatives of that, and none
are about the positives.

It's pretty easy to come up with a bunch of arbitrary gripes about any major
UX change. But you haven't made any effort to contemplate why these changes
might make a lot of sense.

For example, you're complaining about the need to do two clicks to make a
link, but it seems to me that 90% of the time people just _paste in a URL_ and
gmail deals with it properly. Separately entering a link and URL is more like
writing HTML and I don't expect regular users do that... and frankly, I'd
rather just have the URL anyway. If you knew that users were only using the
"add link" icon maybe 1% of the time, wouldn't you move it down a level as
well? Or just get rid of it?

I'm a super, super heavy Gmail user - I average ~6,000 emails a month received
on my work account, and a smaller but similar flow on my personal gmail. I
know and use the keyboard shortcuts. I generally find the mole and the new
text formatting UX a bit annoying - but from a product usability perspective -
not a design perspective - I can see why they make a lot of sense.

~~~
taigeair
Well we all know gmail is great that's why we use it so I didn't want to
convert the converted.

It's just I'd like my gmail web app to be more full featured. We can make it
chat-like for mobile. I'm glad you're not encumbered by it though.

~~~
tomkarlo
The line between mobile and desktop is rapidly blurring into irrelevance at
this point... I'd guess gmail is used from mobile more than desktop at this
point, and "mobile" devices are starting to look more and more like "desktops"
when it comes to things like tablets, Android laptops (more of which are
reportedly coming from the major OEMs over the next few months) and the
Surface.

Expect to see more web services looking more like mobile, because while it
used to be they were primarily web sites with mobile access, they're turning
into mobile apps with some desktop web access. Installed base on PC vs. mobile
should cross over this year, and usage trend is already ahead of that for lots
of services.

------
bborud
On a related note: did Google hire some broken UX person with an immense
fetish for annoying popups and interruptions? It seems that almost every
product has some sort of "oh, let me intrude into your day and tell you about
some annoying UX misfeature that you have to stop everything you are doing and
look at right now"-popup nowadays.

Of course, since I have 3-4 Google accounts (work, personal, hobby projects
etc) I get each and every one of these popups at least 3-4 times.

Whatever clown is responsible for this at Google: stop it. Fucking stop it
right now. And if you work for Google and you read this and you have something
to do with UX, please quote me in the next meeting you go to and be sure to
include the word "clown" and the word "fuck". If that doesn't help I have a 4
by 6 foot poster of my ugly mug looking disapprovingly down on you mailed to
you. I can mail that to 1600 amphitheatre parkway mountain view ca 94043 and
whenever someone gets the urge to make a popup: point to the poster and shout
"BJØRN SAYS NO POPUPS!" until their ears bleed.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
4 feet by 6 feet, you say?

~~~
x3c
Do you have spam filters for traditional corporal mails as well, Matt? It'd
never bypass them in that case.

------
georgefox
I'm normally pretty easy to please with UI changes, but even I'm a little
frustrated with some of the new compose quirks.

Personally, I've had a very hard time putting together bulleted lists in the
new compose. To start the list, you need to click the underlined _A_ (for
Additional Formatting), then the familiar bulleted list icon. I can live with
that, though I'd certainly prefer one click.

To do a nested list, though, I often get confused and frustrated. With your
existing list, you need to click the underlined _A_ , then click what appears
to be the left align icon, which is the Align Menu. From there, Indent More is
what you're looking for. It took me quite a while to figure this out, and I
still find myself forgetting it frequently. Even when I do remember, I'm
frustrated by the maze of clicking I have to go through.

I also have trouble with hyperlinks, often clicking the attachment button
instead of hovering over the plus to reveal the chained hyperlink icon. I
don't know that I've ever used the attachment button (other than mistakenly),
as I always drag files onto the message to attach instead.

For me, pretty much the only formatting options I want are lists and links,
and those are pretty inconvenient to access.

~~~
kpanghmc
Learning the following keyboard shortcuts for formatting bullet lists made the
transition to the new compose UI much less painful for me:

    
    
      ctrl + shift + 8 to create a new bullet list
      ctrl + ] to indent right
      ctrl + [ to indent left

~~~
cmircea
Ctrl + Shift + 8? You gotta be shitting me!

Ctrl + ] & [ to indent? What's wrong with Tab & Shift-Tab, like in _every_
other app?

~~~
DanBC
Uh, [tab] usually switches focus to next control, and shift-tab switches focus
to previous control.

Thus, when I hit [tab] now focus is taken out of this text box and to the
reply button.

~~~
gcr
HN discourages formatting. We don't indent posts, we don't have nested lists.

Gmail and email encourage formatting. You're writing a letter, not a twitter
post.

~~~
DanBC
That's irrelevant to the point in the parent that I was responding to - that
every app uses tab to format text. Most apps don't. There are a limited
section of apps that use tab for text formatting. I'm pretty sure most web
browsers never have, although I welcome examples of web browsers that do.

If people want to write real email they can use a real client, not a web
interface.

~~~
gcr
I think it's relevant. I expect app designers to use the keybindings that make
sense based on what the user wants to do instead of blindly adopting whatever
guidelines the OS suggests.

If you're in the shell, "tab" should tab-complete, not move to the next
terminal you have open.

If you're in a shooting game, "tab" should reload your weapon or show scores
or whatever, not advance your cursor to the next target.

If you're in MS word, tab should indent the next line, not move to a different
control.

If you're writing an email, same thing, because "writing" is most like
"writing in MS word."

Re: your second point, Gmail _is_ a really good "real" web client, at least
for most people, and this is a small step away from that.

~~~
jodrellblank
None of your other examples have the conflict of running within a browser, and
the browser already having an expected behaviour for tab, including an
expected behaviour for tab inside a text box / edit field.

------
Blinkky
I wouldn't consider myself a gmail power user, but I do use it as my every day
email. I love the new updates. Most of the things that gmail makes hard (and
when the author says hard he means an extra click) are things that are rarely,
if ever, done by me. This is exactly how I think email should function, make
the stuff you use most easy.

The author mentions things like "It's hard to delete my signature." I've never
done that, and if you find yourself deleting your signature all the time you
might want to figure out a different work-flow / change your signature.

Most of the time when I'm trying to send an email I want to get in and out of
the editor as fast as possible. I feel like the new gmail is streamlined for
that exact purpose.

~~~
sp332
When Gmail first launched, they made a big deal of the fact that their user
testing revealed ~11 different types of user with distinct workflows. They
made sure the Gmail interface supported all those workflows well. It seems
like the new interface is going after just one or two, and making life harder
for everyone else. I think I will switch back to a desktop email client for
day-to-day use and only use the web interface when I'm on a different
computer.

~~~
msrpotus
Do you have a link? Curious to see what kind of user I am (I also generally
like the new interface; seems perfectly fine for me).

~~~
bornhuetter
I'm pretty sure I'm not on that list. I've never liked the way the gmail web
client works.

* I've always disliked conversation view, and I keep ending up turning it off whenever I try it

* The lack of ability to sort emails is really annoying

* The layout of emails, particularly when trying to reply to an email, I find confusing - in particular it would make far more sense to have the text box at the top of the page

That being said, I probably dislike it less now than when I first started
using it so I think the changes have generally been positive.

On a side note, I think Photoshop is also a UI disaster area.

~~~
therandomguy
* I've always disliked conversation view, and I keep ending up turning it off whenever I try it

>>I hated it deeply, thoroughly till I used it for a while. Now I can't live
without it.

* The lack of ability to sort emails is really annoying

>>It took me some time to rely on search.

* The layout of emails, particularly when trying to reply to an email, I find confusing - in particular it would make far more sense to have the text box at the top of the page

>>Neutral on this.

------
zaidf
Yes, yes, yes. What the fuck is going on with design/UX at gmail? It just
becomes suckier progressively.

Yesterday I attached a document 3-4 times during the course of my writing the
email because there is no way to know if a document has been attached already.
But if you start uploading another document, it will list out the documents
already attached. What an incredible fail. And sadly, this is a trend, not an
edge case complaint.

This reeks of design-by-committee fail. It seems like an experience built on
compromises to merely accommodate ideas of many different individuals even if
those ideas together make the experience suckier.

~~~
recursive
This is what I see after attaching a file. What do you see?

~~~
recursive
Oops, forgot link: <http://imgur.com/b3iW4p5>

------
notatoad
I feel like a lot of people are mistaking gmail's opinionated UI design for a
design failure. Changing the subject isn't difficult because the designers
failed at making it easy, it's difficult because the designers succeeded at
making it difficult. They really, really don't want you to change the subject
because consistent subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation
threading functionality, so they've made it as difficult as possible.

similarly, the hiding of all the formatting options: they have all that space
available, and they've quite deliberately chosen to hide things anyways.
there's no way they just did it to make the compose window prettier, they want
you to stop using so much formatting in your emails. Read the interview[1]
with gmail's designer, they are trying to use a simpler UI to encourage faster
and smaller responses and lower friction conversations. By and large, people
are using email as a messaging tool, not to sit down and spend half an hour
composing a letter, and they are adapting gmail to cater to this behaviour.
you might disagree with their goals, but don't mistake your disagreement with
their direction for a failure to advance their direction.

[1][http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-
compose-w...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-
window-could-reinvent-gmail)

~~~
saurik
> They really, really don't want you to change the subject because consistent
> subject lines are essential to gmail's conversation threading functionality,
> so they've made it as difficult as possible.

So, as someone who doesn't use Gmail, I'm finding this (not just your mention
of this, but others as well) confusing: what happened to In-Reply-To and
References? I thought that using the Subject for threading was something you
only did in a worst-case fallback scenario if you see something that looks
like a reply but is somehow missing the required headers to establish the
threading.

------
chetanahuja
Google has been infected by the "minimalistic design" disease in the last few
years. The term evidently means "hide everything from the user and present
them with a pure white surface". It looks beautiful. The sensitive artist
types running google UI now love that. Look at all that negative space.
Orgasmic. Ship it.

------
aaronbrethorst
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that attaching large images makes the
composer completely unusable. It is so bad it makes me wonder if anyone in
Google actually uses the new composer.

They've fixed one bug where the image wouldn't scale to fit the size of its
container (i.e. if you had a 3000x3000px image it would render 1:1 as opposed
to being shrunk down), but even with the scaling it's still incredibly hard to
navigate emails with more than one picture in it. I mean, I have a 1080p
monitor, _let me use it!_

------
benaiah
To all the people complaining about text formatting in Gmail, I strongly
recommend Markdown Here: <https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here>. It lets
you write emails as markdown and compile them to HTML in the email composition
form. (I have mine bound to CTRL-ALT-Q). It works extremely well, I can easily
store my emails in plain-text if I need to, I write emails in my text editor,
and the Markdown utilities there make formatting much faster. It's great.

Chrome extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-
here/elif...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-
here/elifhakcjgalahccnjkneoccemfahfoa) FF/Thunderbird extension:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/markdown-
here...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/markdown-here/)

As for the UI complaints, I haven't hit too many of them, but those that I
have have been very irritating. I don't use an email signature ATM, but I have
run into the hard-to-change-sending-address quite a bit (I use
<email>+<category>@gmail.com quite a bit), and didn't even know you could do
it until just now. I only started using Gmail recently, so I can't say if it's
worse, though it seems to be from what I've heard.

------
alayne
I have new compose disabled. It's just more incompetent UI design from Google.
Even their search page is bad. There are two menu bars after I run a search
including two More drop downs and the poorly named Search Tools which seems to
change frequently as they A/B test ever worse designs on me. I was hoping
Marissa leaving would allow them to hire real designers.

~~~
iamshs
I agree. I am annoyed by the two menu bars, and also +You thing. Further i
used Google Scholar regularly, but now I cannot find it even in the drop down
menu. I cannot customize those menu bars, according to my use case. Also,
there used to be an option to search videos, instead it has now been replaced
with a Youtube option. It is amazing, Google used to be so custom friendly,
atleast I perceived them to be...and with advent of G+..........

~~~
CamperBob2
You guys should see what they've done with Groups. :( The inmates have truly
taken over the Googleplex asylum.

~~~
iamshs
Well, no going back now. With upcoming Google Glass this behavior will become
even more prevalent.

------
hdragomir
Considering Google made all those changes to make the experience better and
managing mails easier for most people, I think the author should recognise
that he's in the minority - an edge case - and maybe consider switching to an
email client that suits his needs rather than whine about one that works just
great for many other people.

~~~
jen_h
How difficult would it be, though, for Google to hide some advanced options in
settings for power users to enable? Always Expand Header, Always Expand
Collapsed Content, etc.

When you're handling more than one or two emails in succession, every
keyboard-shortcut that became a triple-click-drag adds up and takes time.

I don't believe the author is an extreme minority - Google should cater to all
of its customers - requesting that Google add a few options to enable power
user mode isn't unreasonable in the slightest.

~~~
chch
I realize it's from a different product, but I find that these 'minority'
cases in Google products are often summed up by:

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=223070#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=223070#c7)

"Why was this closed if we're leaving it for future consideration?"

"Because it's asking for an option and we don't do options."

------
grownseed
As far as I understand, these UI changes are there to empower "multitasking"
and bring Gmail closer to the way social networks and chat work. Now, I loathe
the new compose, I like writing my emails in a structured way, with proper
formatting, which this new feature doesn't let me do easily (or comfortably);
I often use them as reference for docs and whatnot.

I'm not saying this doesn't work for some people, but when I see that a large
number of people I communicate with can barely read or write properly as it
is, I fail to understand how empowering multitasking will make things any
better. I'm a bit tired of the "social networks way" becoming the end-all, be-
all.

~~~
chflamplighter
"I'm a bit tired of the "social networks way" becoming the end-all, be-all."

Hear, Hear!

------
rschmitty
Honest question, why would someone use the gmail ui at all, even before the
2013 changes?

I have rules setup in gmail, and sometimes when I need _very good_ search I
will login to search, but everything else Outlook covers fine/better. Mac guys
at the office use Mail.

I've always thought of gmail.com as nice for vacations or using someone elses
or crazy times when I dont have laptop/phone/tablet by some act of god

~~~
Fuzzwah
My personal response:

I use outlook for my work email, where I am an "inbox zero" guy. I get an
average of around 10 emails a day, so this isn't hard.

I use gmail for my personal email addresses (I have a heap of gmail and other
hosted accounts all pointing to one central gmail account). I get HEAPS of
emails a day. I read the important ones and skim the rest by having my browser
window nice and wide and just reading what is displayed on the inbox screen. I
treat my gmail inbox unread emails count as a highscore. I have 12,440 unread
emails in my gmail inbox. I'm winning my little game.

------
mpowered
As always, I feel like people are more averted to a change to a product than
the product itself. People complain in droves about how "everything is RUINED"
in Facebook or Gmail, but simple fact of the matter is that you can do far
more in both than ever before.

Gmail features like fulltext label search make me prefer it over almost every
other email client. And the author's comment about it being "too hard to
change the subject" is by design, because it both breaks threading and pisses
people off when you change the subject of an ongoing thread. New subject?
Write a new email, idiot.

------
hawkharris
Every UI designer knows the backstory of the QWERTY keyboard, how the
designers arranged the keys to intentionally slow down the users, to prevent
typing errors.

Well, Gmail's new pop-up Compose window makes me wonder if designers sometimes
need to create interfaces that slow down users' cognitive processes as well.

In theory, it's more efficient to write emails using the pop-up window because
you can easily reference other messages. But in practice it makes me less
productive because I feel distracted by seeing all of the other messages.

~~~
Gurrewe
Actually, the QWERTY-layout made typing a lot faster, since the keys didn't
jam together.

------
sharjeel
Gmail is the application which has made me realize a big weakness of web
applications. The web was supposed to make "application upgrades" painless and
instant. After GMail's recent changes, I would really love to "download old
version of Gmail"; however its web, I can't do that!

~~~
curiousdannii
I was given the option to go back to the old version..?

~~~
mikro2nd
So was I, and I took it, and I'm still using the old version. Thankfully. The
day they force me onto the new version I'll go back to Thunderbird, using the
gmail backend only as a searchable archive.

------
joering2
The biggest disappointment was to kill drag and drop attachments. Now you have
to click the paper clip and pick the picture (one by one!) form your PC.

In my opinion that's an indication that Google wants to discourage you from
adding a lot of attachments to your mail because they don't make money off the
bandwidth you are using. To me its another indication that Gmail at some point
in near future may be doomed to sunset.

~~~
iamshs
Bang On. I encountered this a week before too. I had to pick the pictures,
drag and drop just in-lined them. On attaching the pictures, there was hardly
any space in the window left to write any words. I am in transition to another
email provider, but I am being forced to do so, and at a critical juncture for
me personally.

~~~
taigeair
Seriously I don't want to inline pictures sometimes. And guess what? If you
delete it? You don't know if the picture is still attached because there is no
visual feedback. Try it.

1\. hit c 2\. drag a picture into email 3\. delete picture from email body 4\.
now i don't know if it's in attachment still or just removed from body.

~~~
iamshs
Yes. I had to double check too, since the pictures were of wide dimensions. I
totally agree with the original post, I am also personally annoyed by this
change. Another thing i hate is how it hides the "sent from" address, when the
text focus is in the body. I use lots of emails aliases, and want to double
check the address that I am sending the e-mail from. I have to click on the
field, to see the address again. It is just one more click involved, instead
of a glance.

This is exactly why, I am moving onto outlook.com or maybe as another poster
suggested use it as a spam filter and set up my stuff.

------
wtvanhest
"I can’t easily change my email subject." This is so crucial since threads are
created using the subject. Easily the most frustrating thing about Gmail.

SHOW THE SUBJECT! I have sent 3 emails before which all said "TIME SENSITIVE"
only to find out later, that only the first was really time sensitive. For
non-gmail users getting those emails, this is terrible.

------
vanderZwan
_There is a tradeoff in HCI that is between ease and efficiency. It seems
Gmail is less easy to use AND less efficient. The only improvement seems to be
design._

Speaking as an Interaction Design student, please don't confuse looks with
design - the whole article is essentially about how the author thinks this is
bad interface design.

------
wkral
I don't know if anyone else has this problem but since I use VI for code
editing I have a twitch reaction to hit escape a lot when I'm editing text.

This actually closes the compose window now. Which is incredibly frustrating.
I know it's not a mainstream user problem just something that effect my
perception of Gmail on a daily basis.

~~~
pseut
If you use firefox, try the "it's all text" plugin (although I don't know for
sure if it works with the new gmail compose). You can write in the editor of
your choice.

~~~
anonite
Nope, new compose breaks that as well, and it used to work fine. Guess it's
finally time to switch to mutt.

------
jl6
Am I the only one who finds email signatures entirely obsolete nowadays?

~~~
taigeair
how do people know your phone number and twitter otherwise?

~~~
jl6
99% of the people I email already know me, and can look up any of those
details in an address book or social network. On the rare occasion I'm making
first contact, I'm more likely to take care over communicating further contact
info in the body of the email.

------
c--misura
I understand how some of these changes could frustrate users, but, honestly,
the analogy ( used in the title ) of 'Photoshop' being user friendly just
doesn't hold water. Also, the idea that every choice in UX needs to fit neatly
into some Jakob Nielsen checklist is antiquated. I don't think
developers/designers should blatantly ignore proven UI methodologies, but
there does need to be a balance between standards, and aesthetics, or else, an
application runs risk of becoming steril.

------
lovehashbrowns
Google is great at ruining their UI. Starts out really well; you get a lot of
power tools, the simple stuff is really easy to access and there's nothing
confusing about the UI. And then it takes a nose dive after a few updates.
Just look at how awful Youtube is. It's a disaster in there. It's almost as if
the UI staff has a quota of changes that they have to fulfill every quarter
lest they get tossed into a cauldron.

------
nsns
How can this - <http://i.imgur.com/0mTa36W.png> be better than this -
<http://i.imgur.com/FvnkaWX.png> ?!?

There should be some serious psychological research into the possible causes
for such glitches of common sense.

~~~
turing
One definite advantage: with the new design you can still navigate around your
Inbox, open and reference other emails, etc. I've found this useful since the
redesign.

------
manicbovine
For whatever it's worth, it's possible to temporarily switch back to the old
compose [1]. Perhaps this is well-known, but I just discovered it.

[1] [http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/01/switch-to-gmails-old-
compos...](http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/01/switch-to-gmails-old-compose-
window/)

------
CurtMonash
I hate the new interface for a simpler reason -- why would I want to take the
size of my writing area way down???? So I haven't used it.

Any word on when Google will force users to switch? That's my deadline for
finding an alternate email client.

------
mtalantikite
Just make the switch to a desktop client. Lots of friends have been
complaining about the new GMail UI and each time I recommend the same thing.

I personally use Sparrow, but it seems like it has been abandoned since Google
bought it.

~~~
taigeair
But the cloud...

------
cmircea
I agree with you. The newest updates annoy me a lot, especially the signature
one - I commonly write emails in two languages and I need to check if the
signature is the correct one; a pain now.

Furthermore I use the web client to manage all my email addresses, because it
is, well was, convenient. Now if I need to send from a different address I
have to take extra steps. WHY?!

But what alternative is there?

I'm on Windows 8. The built in Metro mail app is... not that great. Outlook
2013 has some parts Metro, some parts leftover from all the way back in '95.
I'm not particularly fond of Yahoo either.

------
sebastianavina
1\. I never change my signature, really, who cares? I've registered several
domains on my google apps, and when I change the email address I'm using, the
signature changes automatically.

2\. If you need to change the subject, maybe you need a new email.

3\. Attaching a file?, just drag and drop from the download bar, or from the
folder... Links really dont need to click the button.

4\. Maybe your contacts use tweeter, but most of the industries dont, dont
mess our email system with tweeter. It's awesome and anything you say, but
it's almost exclusive of IT/media industry.

5\. It's quite rare for someone to change the sending email address. I've
several but I only change the email address when I really need. Most of the
time, everybody knows my main address. (I happen to manage several companies,
each of them with a simple webpage, I always receive my email at r __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __*a.com, but I also have the other addresses just in case. Anyway, I
always use the same. (Does Bill Gates used @microsoft.com @xbox.com
@hotmail.com @….. =

In conclussion, Gmail is awesome for bussines, try Streak for managing your
mail chains with other parts of your company and you will love it. The only
thing I really need is an option to attach a Google DOC directly as PDF on a
Email on Gmail, and chain it up to Streak.

EDIT: Sometimes I'm writing an email, and then I have to search for another
one, or I receive a call. Sometimes I can be redacting an email for 4 hrs
because I get busy. It's neat to minimize it and keep work rolling.

------
antonpug
Time to try Outlook.com buddy. That product beats GMail anytime.

~~~
cmircea
I gave it a 5 minute trial. Can't figure out if it supports multiple
addresses.

~~~
pullo
it does. setting icon>more mail settings>managing your account

------
black4eternity
The whole redesign seems to based on the idea that I need to look at my inbox
when composing an email. Well, I don't.

And I personally use inbox in one tab and the compose email in the other. It
is easier to switch tabs than learning to use the new interface. Also, it is
frustrating to type in the smaller compose window. Seriously Google has
screwed up the interface of Analytics and Gmail in the last year.

Who ever has been doing there UI is surely not getting the User Feedback.

------
motters
I was once a big Gmail fan and have had a Gmail account since 2005. However,
in recent years I think they screwed with the user interface too much, turning
something which was once very simple and elegant into a confusing mess.
There's always the temptation to add more and more features. Now I just use
Gmail as a glorified spam filter and forward mail to my own local server.

~~~
lostlogin
This. And mine is a backup dump too - if all else fails, its in gmail.

------
wonderyak
> "There is a tradeoff in HCI that is between ease and efficiency. It seems
> Gmail is less easy to use AND less efficient. The only improvement seems to
> be design."

I would argue that the improvement is the arrangement of pixels to be more eye
pleasing -- design improvement would be addressing all of those issues
outlined. In fact, this is a design failure.

------
api
There seems to be this tendency for good UIs to degrade over time. A good UI
usually comes from someone who knows the basic principles of good UI design:
unit economy, intuitiveness, ergonomics, simplicity/minimalism, uniformity,
etc. But then, later, people "improve" on this original design template.

------
Tomis02
I'm planing to move to fastmail.fm in the near future. I find the Gmail UI
very sluggish and quite the opposite of being user friendly, and I also don't
have any guarantee I won't become a horror story about how Google
automatically shut down my account without me doing anything wrong.

~~~
oinksoft
The FastMail UI is the best webmail interface I have used. It has keybindings
for just about everything, and the UI is snappy and intuitive. Did I mention
it doesn't hit me up to join Google+ or give it my mobile?

Moving to FastMail from GMail for personal emails, and self-hosted (via
Thunderbird) for business emails, has been nothing but a pleasure.

------
taigeair
wow you guys totally crashed my little wordpress site. sorry it's down now :(

~~~
josefresco
This is the place to ask if you need advice on how to optimize WordPress to
survive traffic surges.

~~~
taigeair
@josefresco Really haha? I thought it was just because I have a cheap hosting
service. But yes, advice would be great :)

~~~
josefresco
Sorry for the late reply, the lowest hanging fruit with WordPress assuming
your theme isn't bloated is to implement a caching plugin.

This will serve static HTML instead of hitting your DB every page request.
There are others but since this post has now aged I'm assuming you have moved
on. Contact me if you want specific help.

------
guilhermetk
One thing that annoys me in GMail is the fact that it doesn't support .eml
files. Every time someone sends me an .eml I have to open my desktop mail
client, wait for it to download all mails and then check what's in the file.
Exporting mails to .eml would be nice.

------
lnteveryday
There are many keyboard shortcuts available for gmail. You have to enable
keyboard shortcuts in the settings though. See this link:
[http://gizmodo.com/5995218/a-cheat-sheet-of-every-single-
gma...](http://gizmodo.com/5995218/a-cheat-sheet-of-every-single-gmail-
keyboard-shortcut) Or enable keyboard shortcuts in gmail and press shift + '/'

Some of these keyboard shortcuts address some of the issues pointed out in the
post, but I did not see any shortcuts that allow you to edit the subject in a
composition window though.

I have not been terribly inconvenienced by the changes to the interface.

------
speeq
I never really used this Gmail design in the first place, I'm in love with the
"basic HTML" version which you can choose as default interface.

------
myfonj
Consider even task to "open the contacts list". Who would guess it is hidden
under "Gmail logo with dropdown arrow"? [0] Yes, after such recall it is
single 'clickdrag' operation, but still, recognition just passed out.

[0] [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1571982/shots/gmail-
open...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1571982/shots/gmail-open-
contacts.gif)

------
maximz
My major gripe is that some formatting is completely hidden, making it
impossible to deal with.

I've often tried to copy-paste from an email thread to a new compose window,
which looks like it works. But then the resulting email has a line break after
each word!

The clear-formatting button doesn't reveal this, nor does plain-text mode -
this has led to a number of embarrassing emails.

------
guillermovs
The spell checker used to be great. It was a one-click feature (even if you
needed to change language). Now, with the "improved UI" it's hidden away under
a drop down menu, which on click brings yet another floating menu where you
have to click a second arrow to change language. It's a mess. I hope they
don't take away the old compose UI.

------
mzeshle
I think Yahoo mail beats Gmail at many levels..especially the newest UI. It
feels like working from desktop email client.

~~~
alan_cx
I've been using yahoo mail for so long now I cant remember. 15 years, maybe.
I'm not going to wave flags for it, but in all these years I have never seen a
half decent reason to ever consider changing.

------
mccolin
Completely agree. Still clinging onto my old GMail UI for dear life in both
gmail.com and hosted flavors.

------
mscarborough
Try your native email client. gmail has IMAP for free over HTTPS, and is
available on every Android device, so I don't understand what this post is
trying to say. If you don't like the web interface, go try one of the other
hundred options that are also free.

------
mwcampbell
Maybe it's time more of us thought about the drawbacks of relying so much on a
program that is proprietary, that we can't even hold onto a particular version
of, and where the users are (mostly) not customers but part of the product
offered to someone else.

------
quattrofan
It doesn't suck, but its certainly not as good. I was holding on to the old UI
as long as I could but now that option is gone.

I've grudgingly got used to the new compose UI but I agree its nowhere near as
quick and easy as the old one was in an effort to be "cleaner".

------
therandomguy
All great points. I'm surprised that I never experienced these problems till
you pointed it out. Could be because my usage of Gmail is strictly personal. I
would have run into these I used it for work (deleting signature, modifying
subject etc.).

------
nano111
I switched back to hotmail after using gmail for so many years because of this
...

------
vxNsr
My biggest gripe is the lack of a shortcut key to refresh/check for new mail
without refreshing the page... everything else is just background noise
compared to the lack of a shortcut key for refresh/check for new mail.

------
ceph_
People expect email to be instant now, despite SMTP not exactly being built
for it. I'm sure there is a non-zero number of users who would think the undo
delay was the gmail service being "slow".

------
axelfreeman
That's the thing what can happen with all the cloud services. They say it gets
better over time but it can also get worse and you can only begging, hoping
and crying that it will get fixed.

------
kleinishere
To quickly access the signature and (when applicable) the cumulative email
thread text, press Ctrl/Cmd + a to bring them into the compose editor.

This is often faster than "click[ing] on three tiny dots."

------
loser777
I see this as a good motivator for moving away from webmail and using some
offline e software, perhaps Thunderbird or mutt that will be more likely to
keep its UI experience consistent.

------
dudus
It's become a common topic to just pown any change to any service from google
or any large company alike. And I just don't see the point.

Google knows people that dislike changes are always louder than people that
like changes. It doesn't mean they are in larger number. So no matter how hard
you scream, don't fool yourself into thinking companies take these change
decision lightly. The article claims it lack of UI tests which is an ignorant
assumption.

The goal of the new compose is very clear. Allow you to write an email while
still reading others. It undoubtedly completed the goal. Of course there are
some drawbacks like having to remove fields that would be visible by default
otherwise.

------
cargo8
Regarding email formatting, I'm pretty sure that for a given message once you
click on the formatting tools once, the bar stays open because they know you
are formatting things.

------
gcb0
Gmail got where they are for:

\- being offered by 2000 google, a company everyone loved and trusted

\- having a slick and useful UI

it's not missing both those points. That means the market it serve is there
for the taking!

~~~
philtar
Gmail got where it is because it offered a 2GB inbox when everyone else
offered 25MB. It basically created a whole new market and got first mover
advantage.

~~~
gcb0
which would mean nothing if it was offered my hotmail.

the 2GB is a huge falacy. it only matered for us nerds. the bulky just moved
because it was "google email"

------
nbloom
TLDR: Gmail, my favorite email program, rolled out the "new compose
experience" and then forced everyone to change to it, and everything about it
sucks.

------
clarkston
we recently switched to MailQuatro.com, you can keep your gmail and you can
also create customized email addresses at your domain

------
CatMtKing
Would certainly be nice if Gmail had pins (or some config page) to optionally
keep minimalized/hidden stuff open by default.

------
kwijibob
I agree with all the criticisms in the article and in the HN comments.

But my biggest gripe with the new Gmail - it is UGLY.

------
twodayslate
> Internal Server Error

~~~
pfg
I made a screenshot (seems like the pictures aren't working for the cache
links): <http://i.imgur.com/lSC4g0C.jpg>

~~~
cmircea
Surely you could've made it a PNG!

<http://awesomescreenshot.com/00e18gxe65>

~~~
pfg
Damn you, imgur! I actually uploaded a PNG :(

------
plg
pine

------
shizzy0
Use a real mail client. The web is terrible for non-CRUD work.

------
ninjazee124
My biggest gripe is not being to reply all with a single click!

~~~
dudus
You can change the default to reply to all in the settings.

------
k4rtik
Adding links really is a huge pain in the Compose window now.

------
tosh
Rapportive still works for me in the new Gmail

------
felipelalli
For me the worst change was the new Compose email. Very fail because before it
was in center of screen, big, easy to compose. Now, it's in the screen corner,
so bad!

------
amerika
Gmail used to have a single concept, and do very well at that. Someone thought
up a vision for how an ideal simplified email client should work, and made
that as a web application.

Then the usual cruft built up. People wanted to "add features," not realizing
that doing so changes the concept of the whole. The interface became non-
consistent.

In general, as companies grow, so does the cruft. Projects are no longer in
the hands of a single visionary, but a committee. That committee makes demands
of programmers, who graft on the new changes. These accumulate and soon
inconsistency is the norm.

At that point, users flee to other projects.

