

Show HN: Official Release of Gmelius, A Better Gmail in Chrome, Firefox & Opera - xpressyoo
http://gmelius.com

======
Khao
All I see is "Gmail™, Gmelius™, Gmail™, Gmail™, Gmelius™, Gmail™". Is it
really necessary to put a symbol next to them everytime in every paragraph?
The whole page is littered with ™ symbols. I find it difficult to read with
all this, but maybe it's just me who's picky.

Aside from this, I see a lot of potential for a great plugin, but all those
features Gmelius claims to remove since they are annoying, are features I
like. And all the things Gmelius adds to Gmail, are stuff I couldn't care less
for.

This plugin is really not appealing to me and I think it's because, to me at
least, Gmail is simply great and there is pretty much nothing to add except
maybe enable a few Labs options. It seems to me that this plugin is really
useless because there is practically nothing to change to Gmail to make it
great in my opinion.

~~~
marcusf
There's a few things to object to in the plugin (like a comment below I find
that removing ads together with asking for donations a very distasteful
combo), but honestly, what value does your comment add except trying to put
down the authors?

There are ways to critique something without calling it "really useless".

~~~
Khao
I'm giving my honest opinion and I'm saying that I really love Gmail the way
it is without any extra plugin. I think it's feedback that matters to the
authors, maybe they will find that some of their potential user base find no
added value in their plugin and they will try to come up with other features
that will attract users such as me.

~~~
nollidge
> there is practically nothing to change to Gmail to make it great in my
> opinion.

Sounds like you're not even a member of their potential user base if you're
already happy with the Gmail interface.

~~~
Khao
Well it's a product that I use every day and I'm always eager to try new stuff
if I see it could be cool. I was really interessed by the article and headed
to the website to see what it offered, and I felt it wasn't a plugin that
would suit me. There is always place for improvement, even if I think Gmail is
great as it is right now.

Sometimes, you're so used to a certain interface that you don't even know you
can improve it until someone comes at you with something new and say "look,
here's a new feature we thought you'd like : " and you go "yeah! why didn't I
think of this first?".

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kjhughes
I find it distasteful, perhaps even unethical, to encourage removal of ads
from ad-supported services.

Google offers substantial functionality in exchange for the opportunity to
show its users ads.

~~~
jusben1369
That's interesting. If you DVR a show do you feel obliged to sit through the
commercials? This feels somewhat similar.

~~~
larrik
TV either comes over public airwaves, or through a cable service that I pay (a
lot) for.

So no, I don't feel obligated to sit through commercials.

My GMail account, on the other hand, is a great service provided directly to
me. The ads on it are well done and don't interfere with my usage. Sometimes I
even see ads I click on, since they are interesting. Seems like a good deal.

~~~
Drbble
Broadcast is forced into your home over public wavespace, yes. But cable is
something you signed up for, and ads are part in for the deal, like Gmail. You
are paying Comcast, not the content producer of the channel you watch. A
better argument against cable is that it's a monopoly product, so you feel
entitled to renegotiate against the anticompetitive agreement that got cable
in you neighborhood.

~~~
larrik
Given that my DVR is 1) provided by that same cable company, and 2) rather
awful (5 years old, and yet still the newest model available), I still don't
have any sympathy.

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primigenus
Two questions my dad would have if I showed this to him:

\- How do I pronounce this?

\- What does "poly-browser extension" mean?

It doesn't matter that it's cross-browser or even that it's an extension.
Those are descriptions of the technical architecture. What matters is how it
makes my life better: it improves Gmail by getting rid of ads, etc.

Perhaps my dad isn't your target audience. But it might be worth testing an
alternate design that includes more accessible copy.

~~~
evincarofautumn
I read it as G+melius /dʒiˑˈmɛliˌ(j)əs/, roughly like Gmail+ius
/dʒiˑˈmeɪɫˌjəs/.

~~~
frederico
i think you missed his point..

~~~
evincarofautumn
What, because I used IPA? You can’t reliably describe a pronunciation in many
other ways.

~~~
wjbr
I read the original as an indirect question.

Will anyone be able to pronounce this?

~~~
evincarofautumn
I’m not sure how much it matters. People mispronounce “Imgur” all the time,
yet it’s still widely used.

------
CWIZO
Can Google come after you in any way for disabling ads? I would think that you
are in the clear, otherwise AdBlocker would not exist, but I could be wrong.

The "icons for attachments" is the killer feature for me and would install an
extension only for that. It will really save me time. Cheers!

edit: can you remove the button? It does nothing but provide short-cuts to
options and update (which I don't really get since extensions auto-update). I
know I can hide it, but it would be better (IMO) to include the link to
settings/donate somewhere in gmail.

~~~
Drbble
You Gmelius, probably not, since ads are a private contract EULA thing, not a
public law thing. You the user, if Google got desperate and tone-deaf, and an
additional agreement were actually in the EULA.

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chrisacky
Is there a source for this? I'm not sure how to view source of extensions.

I'm sure nothing bad happens, I just wanted to see how some of what you do is
achieved. I wanted to make a similar extension for myself for browsing HN.
Cheers.

~~~
jessor
<https://github.com/xpressyoo/gmelius>

~~~
dserodio
I found it curious that this repo only contains the Chrome extension, but not
the Firefox extension.

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loudmax
I'm happy with the existing GMail UI, and the fact that people are
experimenting with custom modifications is a good thing. It's disturbing
though, that the first improvement touted is the removal of ads. For a free
service offered by an an advertising company, the GMail ads are about as
unobtrusive as they could be. And hiding the ads doesn't do anything for
privacy concerns. If it's ad-free email you're after, you really should be
looking to pay for the service from someplace else.

------
marknutter
My biggest gripe with Gmail is the lack of any ability to customize font sizes
for different sections. I'm on an 11" Macbook Air and fonts can be unbearably
small at times, but I see no way to increase the font-size of the emails I
read. Even hitting cmd+ doesn't do the trick; the fonts get a _little_ bigger
but the whole layout goes pear shaped, of course. More granular control over
font sizes would make this plugin a lot more valuable to me.

~~~
ominous
Maybe you could play with Custom.css ? <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3878589>

------
cool-RR
Here's what will make me use this: Keyboard shortcuts for everything,
including text-styling when composing a message. I want to be able to use 100%
of GMail's functionality without ever touching the mouse. If your product
would do that, and work well and not have any big issues, I'd pay $50 for it.

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overshard
Looks great but please don't remove the ads. I dislike ads as much as the next
person but it should not be the role of this plugin to remove them, if you
really don't want ads people can find another way to do that but it seems
wrong to bundle it in with this.

~~~
xpressyoo
Hey, as already emphasized, all the features can be enabled/disabled in the
extension's preferences. You're of course perfectly free to not remove the
ads.

~~~
overshard
And I understand this, it doesn't make it any less distasteful...

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alexyoung
"Experiment Gmail™ without ads"

Experience?

------
ominous
I like the part about the same font across emails, so I tried to mirror that
:P

Found this [http://blog.affirmix.com/2012/01/20/change-the-font-size-
of-...](http://blog.affirmix.com/2012/01/20/change-the-font-size-of-messages-
in-gmail-with-google-chrome/)

for Linux, default path is ~/.config/chromium/Default/User\
StyleSheets/Custom.css (Chromium) or ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/User\
StyleSheets/Custom.css (Chrome)

I don't know css, but it seems adding color:#<color_in_hex> makes all the text
have that same color.

~~~
xpressyoo
You should use "color:inherit !important;" in order for your tweak to be
applied and adapted to the Gmail theme you're using. The CSS selector should
look like : ".ii.gt.adP.adO font{}"

~~~
ominous
Thank you

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xpressyoo
Dear HN community, Gmelius developer here. Thanks for your comments, please
keep them coming.

Just to precise one point: every Gmelius feature can be enabled or disabled in
the preferences of the extension.

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option_greek
The UI modifications are great. Finally, someone else is providing UI features
that should have been there by default in Gmail.

------
dangravell
I would _pay_ for a GMail extension that allowed me to automate or semi-
automate actions upon some kind of matching... e.g.

When I get an email from so-and-so... Scrape some data from email Add as a new
row in Google Spreadsheet Reply with this data inserted or my own manual edits

Are commercial GMail add ins permitted?

~~~
icebraining
_Are commercial GMail add ins permitted?_

Convert to Google Apps (there's a free plan) and you get a full marketplace:
<https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/>

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xpressyoo
Looks like the HN community on the Pacific coast is going to miss the official
release of Gmelius (<http://gmelius.com>).

Fair enough and thx to you all who checked it out!

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arunoda
I would not use this for 2 reasons

1\. I love consider including. It's great 2\. I don't know how this affect
rapportive

If you have a feature to enable/disable tweeks. Then It would be awesome

~~~
davidradcliffe
You can enable or disable any of the tweaks. All disabled by default.

~~~
arunoda
Wow. Then it'll be great.

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xpressyoo
Hi HN, thanks for your valuable comments. Please do not hesitate to keep them
coming, proposing features/tweaks you would like implemented in your Gmail.
Florian (Gmelius Developer)

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mindprince
Gmail should borrow two features from this - Attachment Icons and Auto-Scroll
to top of inbox.

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twodayslate
Been using this for a while! Thanks! I love the labels with icons.

