
How to cope with the Gmail redesign - jasoncrawford
http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
======
pg
This article made me finally bite the bullet and convert. I've been using the
new design for the last several hours. I happen to have a window open with the
old design, so I know it's not merely my imagination that the new one is
worse. Not enormously so, but definitely worse.

Read mails are more legible in the old version, because there is more contrast
between black letters and the old light blue background than between black and
the new gray.

It's also harder to parse the list of emails visually in the new design. In
the old one, the 3D checkbox acted like a bullet point, and the name of the
sender was closer to it. Now the heavy checkbox has been replaced by a faint
square, and the sender's name is about 2x further away from it. So scanning my
email is no longer like scanning a bulleted list. It's just rows of text.

That's a big deal functionally. There's a reason bulleted lists exist as a
format, and removing the bullet points from the average bulleted list would
make it significantly less legible.

It's a bummer to see Google making things work worse in order to make them
look better (or worse still, more consistent). That's the sort of thing big
companies do. Which I suppose Google now is. But they had at least been trying
not to act like one before.

~~~
statictype
_or worse still, more consistent_

So you believe that consistency among UI screens should take a backseat to
usefulness? I agree with this but I know there are a lot of people who believe
the opposite - that consistency is more important to good design. And this
isn't limited to big companies.

~~~
damncabbage
Consistency is only a means to an end. That end can be a net positive, but I
think pg is alluding to _consistency for the sake of Google's convenience_ ,
rather than the convenience of its users.

------
twelvechairs
Its a constant wonder how Google and other large companies can't actually
realise that their design departments are not doing a great job. You'd think
that Apple's successes might actually make them realise that great interfaces
(especially if they can outdo the competition) are hugely valuable.

Some things about the new design are defensible, however others are definitely
not. My particular pet hate is that all the things that are not mail services
(but you can still access within gmail) are splattered around all corners of
the screen. Chat is in one corner (along with 'gadgets' - whatever they are).
G+ is in the opposite. And in a third (behind a button that is very
unhelpfully named 'gmail') are contacts and tasks. Where is the sense in
that???

~~~
Duff
Apple makes plenty of UI nightmares. Examples include Snow Leopard firewall
configuration dialog, the leather versions of iCal/Contacts, the finder, etc.

~~~
culturestate
Don't forget the apple.com online store - I can't even have multiple credit
cards on my account.

------
TamDenholm
Personally I really like the new design, despite the fact I have actually
implemented most of the things mentioned in the article. However, I thinks
that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this level of
customisation, and this doesn't include any of the stuff from the labs feature
set.

~~~
sho_hn
> I thinks that this shows that gmail is an amazing app that it provides this
> level of customisation

That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-
provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.

~~~
pbreit
I'm not sure I understand. Most desktop email clients have _very_ limited
customizability.

~~~
sho_hn
In my experience, they're usually far more customizable. Clients I've used
include KMail on Linux, The Bat! on Windows and Mozilla's Thunderbird, all of
which offer myriad options to customize the appearance and behavior of message
list, message pane and folder lists, though the first two apps much more so
than Thunderbird. You also get to modify things like toolbars much more
freely, and OS/toolkit theming usually also beats the GMail theming system.

You could argue that GMail has a higher customization potential given the fact
that you can muck around with the document client-side (though Thunderbird
extensions are similar, and if you really go down that road: I can also change
the source code of KMail and recompile it), but we're talking in-app options
here.

And so I find the notion that "GMail has impressive configurability because it
has the options described in the article" amusing. Somehow the world has
forgotten just how sophisticated an experience a regular old desktop app
running in the context of a regular old desktop environment can be.

I'd also argue that regular old desktop toolkits and libraries still require a
lot less investment of effort to achieve such levels of sophistication than
the web development environment does at the moment. Like I said, thought-
provoking.

~~~
cookiecaper
Also worth noting is that Thunderbird's layout can be thoroughly customized
with a bit of JavaScript hacking via its extensions interface, just as Firefox
can. While TB may not have tons of visual options by default, it can still get
them via third-party extension.

~~~
sho_hn
Aye, that's what I was talking about with "Tb extensions are similar [in their
capabilities] (to GreaseMonkey-style site hacks)".

~~~
cookiecaper
Hmm, didn't see that part. Maybe you edited? Maybe I just skimmed it. Sorry.
:)

~~~
sho_hn
I edited quite a bit (awful habit), but that part was in the original version
:).

------
davux
I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new
design works _really poorly_ with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed
in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really
worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are
a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the
web page becomes really really small. (I'm not usually one to complain just
because things changed, I didn't like the mystery meat icons either, but I can
get over something trivial like that.) It just doesn't work.

I couldn't really figure out where else to go, but OWA 2010 doesn't have these
problems, so I went to Office 365 for my own domain (and forwarded Gmail). I
never thought I'd pay for email but considering how vital mail is, having real
support is a nice piece of mind.

I remember how awesome webmail seemed in 2003 (when I switched from Outlook to
Gmail), but now that I've gone back to Outlook, I see all the awesome stuff
that I was missing. This is really not to credit Outlook though, I'm sure
Gmail (threading) influenced them greatly in the past 8 years. I know you can
just use Outlook+Gmail, but sadly IMAP isn't nearly as good as Exchange.

~~~
eternalban
Try <http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html>

~~~
davux
Thanks, I know about the basic HTML site. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for
me, though. The basic site is literally worse than the 2003 version.

~~~
mattee
I have always used the basic version of gmail. It works very well for me. The
site design has not changed.

------
dancesdrunk
I quite like the new design, and I've been using it since it was in "beta" a
couple of months ago.

It certainly provided a couple of frustrating days before I got used to it,
but I find it much more soft on the eyes - to me the old layout now looks
pretty harsh; giving the impression of being just "functional".

A lot of non-technical folks I work (and live!) with find the new design much,
much more pleasing. Bear in mind these are the folks that use hotmail, yahoo
etc - so they really are after the "eye candy" more than the functionality;
and with google's new social push I can assume this is now the target
audience.

My only complaint would be about the icons; regardless of wether you've used
Gmail before - you will get caught out; a few days ago it took me a good few
minutes before I could find out how to get to my contacts.

------
ck2
I am absolutely furious how my account was forced today to the new theme -
it's hideous.

I've tried several stylish options to no avail, I miss the old dark layout
with high contrast buttons.

Even the dark theme has a bright white message pane for no reason.

It also runs very sluggishly compared to the old UI, not sure why.

Well this should give me the kick in the pants to get off gmail anyway.

~~~
kevingadd
It's slow because all the UI elements in the new themes have alpha
transparency and rounded corners. It increases the amount of work your browser
has to do to paint it tremendously (though GPU acceleration will help).

~~~
nnethercote
Rounded corners? AFAICT the defining characteristic of the new UI is that
every single visual element is a rectangle with a pale grey 1px border. It's
all so _flat_ , ugh.

------
kfury
I designed the original Gmail UX and I have to admit I'd changed every pref in
my accounts exactly as Jason did. Good call.

~~~
pg
You did a great job. I didn't realize how quietly good the old design was till
I looked at it side by side with the new one.

------
kennethcwilbur
I have never been so frustrated with a UI redesign as I have been with Gmail
and Analytics. Unfortunately, I was already using all of the settings pointed
out in this post, and I still can't get comfortable with the new design. I
can't separate how much of that frustration comes from the large degree of
change and how much comes from my long history of use, but the frustration is
huge.

I know that many Google employees were similarly frustrated when they were
eating their dog food last august. Yet the new look was rolled out anyway.

So I can only assume that the company had solid UI data showing that their
target group of users prefer the new design. And I can therefore only assume
that the target group of users does not include users like me.

Consequently, there is an opportunity here for somebody to do email right for
the people frustrated by the new gmail redesign. I would happily pay for an
email interface that makes sense and doesn't change against my wishes...
especially if it doesn't require switching to microsoft.

Until then, I will be very grateful to the person who pointed out the 'slow-
connection' interface is still available.

~~~
sb
Hm, it seems strange though that they're not keeping the old interface, which
is what many people were using Gmail in the first place (even if their _target
group_ prefers the new interface.) Come to think of it, it's also kind of sad
that HN users are obviously not their target group...

------
teach
My biggest new-Gmail-design pet-peeve is that the Display Density setting is
_only_ respected if your browser window is wide enough.

I prefer the "Comfortable" setting. I have a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, but I
don't have my browser window maximized (it only takes up 65-75% of the screen
width).

So, GMail has helpfully reduced my display density to "Cozy", ignoring my
setting.

As far as I know, there's no way to "fix" this; it's a known issue but there's
no workaround other than making my browser window wider.

~~~
notJim
It took my months of using the new design before I realized this. My
impression before was simply that the design was “broken” on my desktop
computer until one day I resized the window and discovered this issue.

------
jan_g
I'm obviously in minority here, but I don't stress too much about the design
as long as unread messages are in bold text. But this might be due to me
working mostly in terminals and text/code editors, where design never was a
top priority.

The things I care about most in gmail are:

    
    
      1. reliability, speed and lots of space
      2. good spam filtering
      3. web view of various office documents (I used to cringe when someone sent me .doc or .xls, not anymore)
      4. fast search which also includes gtalk conversations (invaluable)
    

If one or two of these things goes away, then I'll probably switch.

------
andrewfelix
I was so busy using gmail I barely noticed the transition. Which for me says
everything. Great design shouldn't be noticed, it should just work.

Obviously this is just one anecdote. But for me gmail is still the
indispensable tool it always was. For all its shortcomings it is an amazing
product.

~~~
Jach
I'm finding this hard to believe. You didn't notice when the Send button went
from the bottom of the message to the top? Maybe you meant that you noticed
but didn't find it jarring enough to cause a lot of confusion?

~~~
taeric
I confess I haven't really noticed any of the button changes. This is mainly
because I am almost 100% keyboard in gmail, though. Send is a quaint tab-
enter. :)

I can say every now and then I look for the buttons, but the only one I really
ever find myself using is the refresh button, and that is simply if I wasn't
already positioned on the keyboard.

~~~
mattmanser
/facepalm.

So you've got no qualification whatsoever talking about the new interface as
you avoid it entirely.

What I love most is sometimes the important buttons are red and in the top
left. But sometimes they are gray and in the bottom right.

Which will it be today? Flip a coin! Consistency is an alien word to the
Google Design Team.

~~~
taeric
I'm not sure I follow. I don't avoid it. They just happened to have not
changed the way I interact with it. I confess I did find my old theme a little
more pleasant to deal with, but I'm already at the point where I don't
remember it anymore.

I'm curious what "important buttons" you are referring to.

I'm also curious how folks that get this worked up over their email client
don't go into shock when they get a new car. Consistency is not the norm in
life. Seems it is really only a norm when it was dictated by function.

Not that I feel you shouldn't get worked up over what ever you want to get
worked up over. I just don't understand it.

~~~
jaredsohn
When you get a new car, that's because of a choice you are making or a
consequence of your actions (such as if the previous one was totaled.) When a
website that a person frequents which "seems to work fine the way it is"
changes, people get worked up because they see the change as unnecessary.

Similarly, if you are a developer, you might feel the same way if the company
you work at randomly decides to switch bug trackers or wikis, when the new
ones aren't really any better than before.

~~~
DougBTX
I wonder if the anger could be redirected by the realisation that if they were
running their own client software, they would be in control of the interface.
To realise the dream of free software. But I suspect most of the "rage" will
blow over in fifteen minutes.

------
ajtaylor
I HATE HATE HATE the new design! I was dreading the day they took away the old
look, but these tips go a long way to making gmail usable for me again.
Thanks!

------
ticks
When I read this headline, I assumed Google had redesigned it again... didn't
realise people were still using the old design.

Personally, the redesign pushed me back to Thunderbird and I ended up deleting
thousands of emails. It was quite liberating.

------
no_more_death
I loved the new design. Much less clutter. A service I use every waking moment
need not label everything. I like the direction of Google's design efforts.

The Google+ design will continue to evolve, I'm sure (it is not quite there
yet).

------
Caligula
Its not just GMAIL. Google analytics is painfully ugly. The first screen
before showed a list of all the sites and traffic. Now it shows just the list
of accounts. Its awful. There is no way anymore to use the classic design.

Also, once I am in google analytics it is just a UI mess. They cram every
feature possible and make it unintelligible. They are ruining the UI for
gmail,google search and google analytics.

~~~
conradfr
I must be using wrong because I have to do so more clicks with the new
Analytics design to see things I want, it's frustrating.

------
surgi
I also hate the new design, even after few hours I've spent trying to get used
to it. With all the necessary settings (compact mode, text buttons etc.), the
main flaw stays - theres no freaking border between message body and ads!
C'mon Google, this is just too obvious. Wonder how users will switch to some
other webmail or desktop clients, how many of them will install some ad-
blockers, just because of this. You realise, Google, that this would mean
actually less clicking on your ads? Speaking of intentional clicks here.

------
dirkdk
besides the default theme and the high contrast theme, all others are useless
and look like the work of a 5 year old. Design has a function, namely to make
things clear and give the user a good experience.

~~~
soulclap
I agree. Really makes me wonder if all their themes have been made by
developers (like me). 'Work of a 5 year old', exactly.

------
jazzychad
I know I was probably 1 of 10 people that actually used (and liked!) the
Terminal theme with all green monospaced text... sadly that is now gone, and
Terminal theme is now just a lame white on black with variable-width font.
bummer :(

~~~
ominous
Yep. Only a blinking shell prompt remains, under "Google" (top left)

------
xtacy
I use the following changes to the style sheet for some more colour contrast:

    
    
        /* Increase contrast on some arrows */
        .T-I-ax7.T-I-JE .T-I-J3 {
            opacity: 0.1 !important;
        }
    
        /* Make new chat highlight red instead of blue */
        .Hz .k, .Hz .n, .Hz .l {
            background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(192, 0, 0) !important;
        }

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
oh god, obfuscated CSS...

~~~
xtacy
I doubt it was done on purpose. I think it's what minifying does to your CSS
files.

------
halayli
I stopped using it and moved to Mail.app. I cannot stand in-page scrolling.

------
rdl
I can't imagine using gmail for high-volume email; I've used it at various
times due to being lazy about setting up something better, but ugh.

mutt is so much better, using maildirs synced with imap (with mbsync or
something). Totally customizable, per-folder triggers, and works in a
terminal.

~~~
tome
Yes, I can't understand why highly computer-literate people use GMail. There
must be something very compelling about it because it's so popular, but no
one's ever explained to me what it is. If anyone here wants to explain, I'd
appreciate it!

I use mutt too, which I find incredibly flexible. The only downside I
experience compared to GMail is that searching is not as powerful. Am I
missing something?

~~~
comex
I've never used mutt, but I depend on Gmail's conversation view (a smoother
experience than going through messages one by one) and easy searching of
gigabytes of email; a proportional font, auto-linkification, and built-in
video chat don't hurt either.

~~~
rdl
Searching is the one thing I still need to figure out for mutt (I cheat now by
sending a copy of everything to gmail just for search). Linkification is
handled by the terminal program.

~~~
comex
To be fair, Gmail search takes several seconds for a basic query now, so I'm
considering switching to Mail.app, which has the all-important conversation
view.

------
joelthelion
Using a web-service and raging when it gets redesigned or closed is pretty
stupid. People who don't like when other people decide for them should use
real email clients with a standard protocol such as IMAP.

~~~
Rage
bot sure if i follow you here, gmail uses IMAP, i never read my mails on the
website, always in Mail (or sparrow, on osx)

~~~
joelthelion
Yes, of course, you can do that as well. As long as you don't depend on their
server-side UI, you're not subject to unwanted UI changes.

------
jlft
What concerns me more about the new design compared to the old original is the
readability: now it is much worse. Why not offer the most popular old themes
(adapted to the new layout) an option?

------
abentspoon
You can actually still use the old interface for a little while longer, even
if you've been forced over to the redesign.

<http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail>

~~~
esc
Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old
one feels and looks so much better.

My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the
buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less
intuitive than the old design.

Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave
the old one as optional as it was during the past few months.

~~~
Hurdy
The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a
development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two
different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on
cool new features.

~~~
esc
Thanks for the answer. Based on the discussion here, one especially cool new
feature would be a 'classic' mode that would mimic the look and feel of the
old design :)

~~~
Hurdy
It's not possible to please everyone when you do a UI change and have 300+
million users, but we do try to fix some issues people have with the new
design (e.g. setting for text buttons, high contrast theme). Of course it has
to look consistent with other products so there are some limitations. Our
community manager wrote a much more eloquent answer to that topic on reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get...](http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get_rid_of_the_new_look/c4eyaa8)

~~~
esc
The link was an interesting read, and you make a valid point that some of the
issues have been solved by features like the button texts.

Actually my point was exactly that everyone seems to have their own favorite
thing they miss about the old design. So for me it would make more sense to
build a mode (on top of the new codebase) that would mimic the old design
instead of implementing fixes one-by-one. Then everyone who liked the old
design better could just change one setting that is easy to find and be done
instead of playing with bunch of individual settings in different menus to
achieve the same thing. I think it would stop a lot of complaints even if it
would not be perfect.

I understand that there might be very good reasons why it is not feasible,
this is just my 2 cents.

------
dominik
My single largest complaint about the redesign?

When you search your messages, the buttons to go to the next page of search
result are inexplicably only at the top of the results, not at the bottom.

Before I realized this design oversight, I spent a few minutes perplexedly
scrolling to the bottom of search results, flabbergasted that those were all
the results.

You can imagine my frustration at the design team when I finally realized: Oh,
the pagination buttons are at the top...

------
xpressyoo
This could be of interest to some of the readers. I'm the developer of
Gmelius, a poly-browser extension that proposes a better and cleaner Gmail™
inbox, <http://gmelius.com> . The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox
and Opera.

NB: As you will surely notice I'm currently redesigning the homepage... Feel
free to leave me your comments/suggestions both on the extension and the new
website.

------
isnotchicago
Coincidentally, AskMetafilter has a good thread about fixing the redesign:
[http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-
go...](http://ask.metafilter.com/213264/You-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-
gone-Gmail-Im-looking-at-you)

------
Rage
I totally disagree, more blank space make it easier to read, the BIG problem
of the redesign are icons that doesn't clearly mean what they do.

But hey, it's nice that you can revert a bit.

(but i must be satan, i also like FB timeline)

------
ken
A year or two ago I got tired of my email UI changing every week, so I
switched to the "plain HTML" view. It's not as fast or smooth or javascript-y
but I don't think it's changed a bit in years.

------
polynomial
There are 2 distinct threads woven through this discussion. One directly
addressing Gmail's redesign which touches mainly on UX and implementation
issues. The other being the more perennial debate between desktop vs. web mail
clients. I wish HN allowed for comment collapsing at least which would make
this and other conversations easier to follow just the threads that are of
interest. (Reddit has this, not sure why HN doesn't)

------
rachelbythebay
You can talk IMAP/POP and SMTP, and you get to control your own user
interface, or you can talk HTTP, HTML, and JS and abdicate control to someone
else. I fell into that trap myself. I was a heavy user of Gmail for about four
years, and when they started changing things and told me "only 0.07% of users
use that feature we just removed", it was too late.

This mayhem ruined "the cloud" for me ... and I used to help run parts of it.
Blah.

~~~
ck2
What UI do you use?

I probably going to use newest Thunderbird when I leave gmail.

~~~
rabidsnail
Postbox (<http://www.postbox-inc.com>) is pretty solid.

------
kreitje
Their spam/filtering has gone down hill. It does a great job with the spam.
Unfortunately, several people I communicate with a few times a day, half of
their stuff goes straight to the trash and I don't see it. If I login to
webmail I can see they have both an Inbox and Trash label on them but my phone
and mail client to register the new mail and it doesn't show in the Inbox. I
just want it to pick one.

~~~
Hurdy
Can you rephrase that? How do these messages get the trash label?

~~~
kreitje
Forgot to mention how they get them.

Either someone has my login and is messing with me by somehow adding the Trash
and Inbox label or there is a glitch in the system putting both labels on it.
My guess is the glitch.

~~~
Hurdy
There is no glitch that just adds trash labels. Did you check if you have any
filters set up that might be responsible?

~~~
kreitje
I did. I cleared out a few filters even though I am 95% sure they wouldn't
match the emails. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong though.

The main thing I find irritating is that it contains the Inbox label as well.

Any filter to send something to the trash says "Skip Inbox, Delete It".

------
Jach
Another trick I found is to go into Labs and enable the one that moves the in-
browser chat box to the right side of the inbox. It's not as nice as before
where it just stacked on the left side, but with the new design it wanted to
show me one of the chat box or utility at-a-glance views like my Calendar, but
not both. Now I get both again, at the inexpensive cost of horizontal screen
estate.

------
Metapony
I do not like the new redesign, and will have to implement these tips just to
make it a little more usable. I wish Google wouldn't do sucky things like
this. Also Googe seems to have the worst branding. Google+, really? You think
that's more alluring than Facebook? Also, rebranding the android app
marketplace as "Google Play"? That's just terrible.

------
shad0wfax
I find it hard google took away customizing the theme. The classic theme
'Tree' is the only one that I feel a little good about.

------
mikebracco
I'd also add a tip to check out the Minimalist Suite
<http://minimalistsuite.com> \- It's Chrome extension for Gmail as well as
other Google properties that allows you to customize the UI and remove of
things you don't use. There are many that do this but this is the best IMHO.

------
irpap
I've always been using the Candy theme, and I like much better the way it
looks with the new design. It's quite girly though, which unfortunately might
exclude most of HN readers. But I agree that anything other than the compact
display density option makes the experience much worse.

------
lindablus
The android theme is quite good, better than the old one imo. Otherwise, I
love the text label.

------
_feda_
Just use thunderbird if you're on a desktop or laptop (ie. not an ios or
android device, although I'm sure they have equivalents).

I recommend installing muttator, the equivalent of vimperator for thunderbird.
It will make the time you spend with email much more efficient.

------
conradfr
Sadly for me I dislike the High contrast theme as much as the new default one.

------
koevet
I'm using Google Apps and the "high contrast" theme is missing from the list.

------
Kilimanjaro
Let me scroll the damn page and not just a viewport!!!

That's my only complain. Had to get it out of my chest. Move on.

------
bane
Wow, tremendously better. I wasn't even aware of some of these like text for
the buttons!

------
niels
This reminds me of when people complained about the new facebook design.

------
stock_toaster
I "coped" with it by switching to sparrow as my gmail frontend.

------
soulclap
I don't like change.

That said, any browser-based alternatives?

~~~
viraptor
I like zoho personally. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of gmail,
but it's at least decent and supports custom domains in free option.

------
adgar
This is more like a "how to revert to 2006 GMail" list.

I mean, he even goes out of his way to turn off Priority Inbox and important
markers. That has nothing to do with the redesign - it's just turning off
year+ old features, which is what a good portion of the post is. Luckily for
the author, options exist to turn off all the features that have been released
in the past many years.

Of course, there's some apportioning of valid and invalid frustration with any
redesign, and I won't invalidate any of that here. But this post just comes
off as "make all the scary new stuff go away!"

~~~
jasoncrawford
I tried Priority Inbox for a while when it first came out. It's an interesting
feature and maybe it works for some people, but I decided I didn't need it.

It didn't matter until the redesign, though. In the new design, the
"importance markers" are very similar in appearance to the stars, and they are
right next to each other. It's hard to tell them apart at a glance. That's why
I finally had to turn them off.

~~~
ericd
Thanks for the tips, I'd done most of these when they changed to the new
theme, but the the icon button/web clip tips escaped me. Thanks for those! I
couldn't find the high contrast theme, unfortunately.

As a random anecdotal data point, my inbox would be completely unusable
without priority inbox. My email volume is way too high without it.

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falling
how can that theme be high contrast? it goes from black on white to black on
gray!

