
Show HN: Gmail Classic – CSS for Reverting Gmail's New Look - andrew_
https://github.com/shellscape/gmail-classic
======
GhostVII
I would rather have some CSS to make the basic HTML Gmail look like the
classic Gmail. Adding CSS to the new Gmail doesn't make it any faster, which
is my biggest problem with it. The basic HTML version runs really fast, but it
could use a bit of CSS to make it look a bit nicer and add a little more
whitespace (at least on my 4k monitor it's somewhat cramped).

~~~
pixelrevision
Google is becoming really frustrating. I am trying to transition off inbox
because they are killing it. The performance of the new gmail is miserable
though.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I know this suggestion has been made a million times here by now, but you
should really try a service like Fastmail! A few weeks back I began
transitioning my data away from Google, and the performance and overall
quality level of Fastmail really blew my mind. It's probably the best and
fastest web app I've ever used.

~~~
mistermann
Gmail search often doesn't even work for me anymore, I simply can't understand
how decisions are made at this company.

Is there a way to migrate all your email and maintain your Gmail address
indefinitely?

~~~
socratesque
If I remember correctly (maybe four years ago) I just downloaded all my email
over IMAP using some desktop client then re-uploaded onto Fastmail. It's a one
time hassle but definitely worth it, especially if I had known what I had to
do yesterday. I sifted through 10 years worth of email looking for train and
plane tickets and hotel bookings etc because I needed to know exactly which
dates I crossed which borders .. anyway off topic, a huge pain of course, but
an easy task on Fastmail, where as my laptop gets brought to its heels every
time I have to open my gmail inbox.

Oh and you can set gmail to forward everything to your Fastmail. You can even
have it land in a separate folder to keep it all neat.

Lately I've had issues sending from my gmail account on Fastmail, I think
google changed their security practices a while ago..

~~~
chrismorgan
Our migration tools have at times been fragile (I myself tried and failed to
migrate from Gmail about a year before I ended up working at
FastMail—something about a Gmail security change that broke it), but I believe
that they’re all working properly at present. We have a guide for migrating
from Gmail in our documentation:
[https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/gmailimport.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/gmailimport.html).
We’re planning improvements to the procedures, too, to make it easy to use
rather than merely possible!

------
djsumdog
It's interesting how back when programs actually ran on your machine, you
could just use an older version. I knew people who never upgraded Winamp.
Today we do know this is problematic (due to security updates mostly) but when
it comes to web applications we don't have a choice. Don't like the new look,
well tough.

If the application has an API (like Reddit) you could write your own or use a
better client. I could say that about Gmail/IMAP but their IMAP implementation
is shitty and broken.

I moved entirely off gmail to self hosted in 2012 and I'm glad I did so I
don't have to deal with their interface. When I need webmail, I've got
roundcube and it's still nice and fast.

~~~
Arnt
What precisely is shitty and broken about gmail's IMAP implementation?

Gmail's IMAP implementation implements three RFCs I wrote; I haven't noticed
anything wrong in those areas. Are my RFCs unusual or am I overlooking
something?

~~~
lucideer
I'm curious if you've actually used an IMAP client witha Gmail account; if so,
which one(s).

A sibling comment has already mentioned the folder/flags mixup issue, but
while it sounds like one small feature, that one thing is so fundamentally
broken that I really can't see how any user of Gmail IMAP would overlook it.

I get duplicate notifications for the same mail in INBOX and [Gmail]/All Mail
and actions on one copy don't affect the other unless clients implement Gmail-
specific hacks (which many/most do).

What RFCs are you referring to?

~~~
mcv
I use Mail on OS X. I've never had any problems with Gmail. Folders work fine.
I never use flags. Notifications work fine. When I delete a message, it's
gone. Sometimes it takes a while for the deletion to propagate from one device
to another, but I've never had a message survive deletion long term.

~~~
chmars
IMAP drafts have never worked and still doesn't work. You have to use local
drafts as a workaround if you don’t want to end up with many drafts for a
single mail in progress …

In addition, many Gmail features, especially security-related features, don't
work with Mail.app.

~~~
mcv
> if you don’t want to end up with many drafts for a single mail in progress

That is absolutely a problem I've had with Mail and Gmail. No idea how I fixed
it. Or whether it's been fixed at all. But for some reason, drafts turned up
in searches, which made searching through my mail an incredibly painful
experience. Search is fine now, though. Maybe I turned IMAP drafts off; I
really don't know.

------
sehugg
I can handle the new design, but on my (albeit underpowered) Chromebook, new
Gmail takes ~30 seconds from initial page load to starting a reply to a
thread. This is not progress.

~~~
mrweasel
I have a new MacBook Pro, and while it doesn't take 30 seconds, there's still
a ridicules slow load time for Gmail now. If you live in Gmail all day it may
be completely fine, but if you just check your emails every now and then
during the day, it's pretty frustrating.

You almost get the feeling that something is broken when you load Gmail at
this point. The Gmail interface is... fine I suppose, but I'd much prefer a
native client. Sadly the best you can hope for these days is Apple Mail, and
that's also just "fine".

~~~
plg
Fastmail web interface is pretty darn snappy

------
andrew_
I present an Open Source, versioned, linted set of CSS rules for reverting
Gmail to the theme that was so forcefully taken away from us. Change is hard,
and sometimes change rubs like coarse sandpaper. I wasn't and still am not a
fan of the new design, so I put this together after not finding a well-rounded
complete solution. And that's what this aims to be. There are surely quirks
that haven't been adjusted, and if you see some, please open an Issue
(preferably with a screenshot) so this can be improved.

~~~
__float
Do you have a screenshot?

There's a fair bit of obscure CSS here; how long has it been working for? I
would guess the autogenerated class names change from time to time.

~~~
andrew_
I've uploaded a screenshot here:
[https://imgur.com/VaNpYhq](https://imgur.com/VaNpYhq). And I'll be updating
the README in a few with a screenshot.

I've been plugging at this set of CSS for about a month now. And you'd think
the classNames would change, but they're nearly identical to the old. Very few
changes between the old look and the new. Speculating, I'd say that Google
killed the old, classic theme so they didn't have to maintain CSS for new
features.

~~~
tyingq
Making it a standalone chrome extension might be helpful, then your css
changes over time will auto-update.

Edit: I went ahead and made one, did a quick test by loading it unpacked,
seems to work. [https://github.com/tyingq/gmail-
classic](https://github.com/tyingq/gmail-classic) All yours if you want it.

~~~
cimmanom
Oh, man, I want this for Firefox.

~~~
tyingq
It may just work. The differences in extensions are pretty minor:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-
ons/Web...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension)

------
petilon
To me, Gmail Classic is this original look: [https://techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/priority1....](https://techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/priority1.png)

I loved the "Original Classic". Every update since has worsened the look &
feel.

When Steve Jobs passed away, the whole software industry took a gigantic step
backwards in design. There are lots of great designers in the world (have a
look at [https://dribbble.com/](https://dribbble.com/) ) but the people who
hire designers often can't tell a great designer from a mediocre one, and
that's how we end up with the not-so-great design of the current generation of
software, including those from Google and even Apple.

~~~
crazygringo
Stop it, you're making me nostalgic :(

But you're totally right -- the use of color to clearly separate areas instead
of white everywhere? Buttons with clear text instead of inscrutable gray
icons? "Compact" lists that show your info instead of a whitespace
fetishization?

I miss the old days...

~~~
edwinyzh
Same here! I've never understand the unclear, indistinguishable UI design
trend, what a big step backward...

------
vortico
I think of "Gmail Classic" as what they call "Basic HTML".
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?ctx=gmail](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?ctx=gmail)
(click Basic HTML version of Gmail). I've been using that style for years.

------
coolgoose
My problem isn't with the design, but with the fact that it's blocking every
step of the way and being a buggy crap that not even the beta was.

------
sim-
Has anybody noticed the new Gmail feels way less responsive as well? Composing
a new email is affected (just hold down a key with a fast repeat speed and it
will not update for long periods), but also the prelight when hovering the
mouse over messages an an index is way more chunky than it used to be. "perf
top" shows some Chrome functions responsible -- probably something resulting
in too much recalculation?

Amusingly, it is way smoother in Firefox. Related, can paste large amounts of
data in sheets with Firefox, but Chrome grinds and hits some O(n^2) type of
issue after so many rows.

------
runn1ng
I don't have a problem with the new design, it looks pretty much the same as
the old one

BUT IT'S SO SLOW

------
fx1994
Forcing new and slow look forced me to move away from Gmail to private mail
and Roundcube, works fine and fast.

------
BenFrantzDale
Impressive. Personally I preferred the version before this, in which Compose
wasn’t “pay-attention-to-me red”.

~~~
burfog
I have a hard time understanding that one.

When I want to compose, I look for a normal button in a normal place. I can't
get used to a red button. My mind filters it out, like an ad. I pretty much
don't see it. Every time, there is a sort of disoriented and bewildered search
to find a compose button.

Was it supposed to have the opposite effect?

------
zhte415
I'm sure a lot of A/B testing has gone into the changes a lot of others are
complaining about.

Given GMail's mix of users, a subset of whom are probably power users that are
open to 'discoverable' features, would it not be sensible for GMail to allow
an option, an option that a vocal minority of power users do seemingly want,
to be selected and allow these users to retain these features they were used
to. Adding 3rd party hacks doesn't seem optimal.

A/B testing is like voting: It results in dissatisfaction for an often large
proportion of those affected. Using techniques like multivoting that don't
result in a single answer for everyone just seems like a better idea given
these audiences are sufficiently large enough to support.

------
prometheuspk
Now that Inbox is ending, anyone know of other clients with the Pinning and
snoozing capability?

~~~
plttn
Gmail now has snoozing, you could probably use stars and filters to get 95% of
the way to pinning.

------
ramenmeal
Was just implementing some email features on our application and we noticed
that what we call "Friendly Reply To" doesn't work in desktop gmail. Setting
the Reply-to field to "John Doe <john.doe@gmail.com>" won't show "John Doe" in
the to section when you click reply. It will show "john.doe@gmail.com". What's
odd is that google inbox, and gmail for android and iOS both will show "John
Doe".

Bug? Or opinion by Google?

~~~
momonga
Maybe it’s more of a security feature? What if phishing emails had a bogus
email for the Reply-To name, E.g., “service@paypal.com <hacker@evil.com>”

~~~
ramenmeal
That was my first thought, but if that's the case, then why is it implemented
in the mobile apps?

~~~
anoncake
Different people implementing them?

------
squarefoot
I didn't realize how bad the gmail interface has become until I had to help
some relatives with their accounts. I use gmail with a client (claws mail,
formerly sylpheed) since day one when it was invite only, and never had an
issue. That's like 13 years. To me being forced to use the web interface
-including the much better old one- would be a huge step backwards; there's
simply no contest on what's more powerful and fast to use.

------
thinkingemote
Nice I thought about doing something similar, to at least make borders between
things stand out better.

Some screenshots in the reader would be nice.

~~~
andrew_
I'll have a screenshot up shortly :)

------
jiveturkey
this is cool and all but what’s the point. it will bit rot soon enough,
despite current laudable intentions.

the only way to signal to google that they are making the wrong choice is to
stop using the web UI, not to skin it. eg with the recent Chrome signin gaffe
lots of people switched to FF and google had to react.

If there were no options I’d be more generous but there are plenty of mail
clients one can switch to. plenty.

------
brian_herman
Can we go even further with this CSS? I'm talking like about 2006 without
javascript and stuff.

~~~
codeulike
Just use Gmail Basic Html mode:
[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h)

------
xfitm3
Thank you for this. Now, all we need is to bring back the View Image button in
Google image search.

~~~
jedberg
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-
image/jpcmhce...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-
image/jpcmhcelnjdmblfmjabdeclccemkghjk?hl=en)

~~~
xfitm3
I have this, but the recent UI refresh broke it.

[https://github.com/bijij/ViewImage/issues/166](https://github.com/bijij/ViewImage/issues/166)

~~~
SpliffnCola
My experience is anecdotal of course but what is broken about it for you?

It is working fine for me on Firefox 63.0.3 (64-bit) using ViewImage 2.1

~~~
fireattack
Likely you are not on "new UI" yet, just like the dev of this extension.

(Myself don't even know there will be a new UI either.)

~~~
SpliffnCola
That makes a lot of sense. I forgot about the A/B testing Google does. Edit: I
noticed that Chrome defaults to using the new design even while logged in.

Logged in on Firefox though I’m not seeing the new design . Not sure if that
helps anyone having trouble with the extension.

------
darpa_escapee
Cool!

Naming might be a problem, however. Companies get litigious when you use their
trademarks/brand, even when modifying things on the client side.

Slack came after an HN user for using "Slack" in their GitHub repo that hosted
a client-side script for Slack.

------
londons_explore
Does google offer sufficient mail API's to be able to write ones own frontend?

If the storage, searching and tagging of mail are all handled by the backend,
building the web frontend seems like it could be 'hobby project' sized.

------
winrid
The old terminal theme was great. Wish they new one had the same amount of
effort put into it.

------
moocowtruck
really appreciate this, but i really hoped google would bring the old
interface back..new one is so slow and not very user friendly... this is the
first time in a very long time I've though...wow i need a different email
provider.

------
michaelmrose
I migrated to mu offlineimap, emacs and mu4e for my gmail. I'm quite
satisfied.

------
edwinyzh
Actually I like the UI of the first version of Gmail web better.

