
Gmail is a Usability Nightmare - moron4hire
http://moron4hire.tumblr.com/post/77384411853/gmail-is-a-usability-nightmare
======
tobyjsullivan
Given that keyboard shortcuts are off by default, I don't think it's at all
fair to claim gmail is a usability nightmare (based on that feature). They are
an option for power users and you've chosen to enable them. The recommendation
to turn them back off was quite correct.

If you find the task of turning that option off too difficult on your own,
might I suggest taking the classic approach of "Googling it"? Again, for power
users --> make option hard to find for less fluent users. That's intentional.

For what it's worth, I've enabled the keyboard shortcuts and never experience
these issues. I'm personally quite happy they exist.

~~~
moron4hire
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "boiling the frog slowly".

EDIT: I enabled keyboard shortcuts whenever they were first introduced, like,
8 years ago. They were actually good back then. They morphed into a demonthing
in that time, just like the rest of Gmail.

~~~
Oletros
E for archive has been there since the beginning of 2008.

And, by the way, it is E because Y just removes the label, inbox label if
you're reading the mail in the Inbox or the label where you're reading the
mail from if you're in a label.

------
mattmanser
My code editor keeps opening a totally useless dialog when I happen to clip
ctrl-b instead of ctrl-v. My microwave insistently beeps every 2 minutes when
I've put something in it even though I'm in the middle of doing something else
and can't get to it. My washing machine won't let me open the door for 2
minutes if I've stopped it, even though all it was doing was anti-crease.

Computers and tech are just so bullheaded stupid, so completely and utterly
idiotic.

They just don't learn and I know they can't.

The day when you can say to a computer or bit of tech, "don't do that again"
and it not to blankly completely ignore you and do it again and again and
again will actually be one of the great days in human history.

I don't want a singularity, I don't want to converse with my computer, I just
want to be able to say 'stop it' and it to listen.

~~~
moron4hire
Soooo many times all of _this_.

~~~
cbsmith
Whoosh!

------
jellicle
Gmail currently has some sort of keyboard icon in the top right, that lets me
choose between "English", "English Dvorak", "English" and "English".

There's no explanation of what it is or what it does. Since I know what a
Dvorak keyboard is, I can guess it's some sort of keyboard settings. I deeply
fear switching from "English" to "English" (or perhaps to "English" instead)
because it seems likely it will be hard to recover from, so I haven't tested
to see what it actually does. Perhaps "English" is the right setting for me
instead of "English" or "English". I'll never know.

~~~
moron4hire
you seem to have been the only person to get the complete spirit of my post.
Thanks, you made me grin.

------
dguaraglia
Hah, don't get me started on the new "automatic categories". It made my work
e-mail basically unusable. Github and JIRA messages would get sent to
Forums/Spam/Inbox/Archive seemingly at random, even before hitting my custom
filters.

Add Mavericks' Mail problematic integration with Gmail to that mix and what I
had was useless filters, lots of important messages going to "the archive"
without me ever knowing, and useless desktop notifications popping up for
messages I didn't give a crap about. Pull requests mentioning me? Those would
go to somewhere in the Archive. Completely random comments or commits on other
projects I'm not working on? Yup, here, have a notification. Aaarggh!!!

Luckily I found a completely random rack that restored some sanity.

~~~
nilkn
I actually like the new automatic categories. They work decently well for me.

The main reason I like them is because I set it up so I only get notifications
on my phone for the Primary category. Before, every random social network or
promotion was giving me a notification on my phone, which I hated. Now I only
get a notification for email I care about, and when I open up the Gmail app it
fills me in on the random social and promotional crap I've "missed" out on in
the meantime.

If important email ever ended up in the other categories, this would bother
me, but so far it's worked well.

Notably, I don't use Gmail for work, and very rarely do I get truly critical
email through my personal Gmail account.

~~~
dguaraglia
The problem is that the definition of "important" is highly dependent on
context. Github messages are not "important" in my general mail (I have, on
occasion, contributed to some open source repos, that doesn't mean I want to
receive an e-mail every time a contributor makes a commit), but they are
rather important in my work e-mail. I guess Gmail, optimizing for the most
common case, broke all the others. That is acceptable for a freebie (my
personal Gmail), but not for a corporate tool you pay for (my company's
Gmail).

------
coldcode
I rarely if ever surrender my sanity to use gmail online. Of course it's a
"free" service and we have no right to complain. We are after all the product
not the customer. Products do not complain. When's the last time your can of
tuna said anything? We are Google Tunafish.

~~~
awj
Ugh, I really wish this overly simplistic view of the relationship would die.
It only _feels_ clever because it appeals to the big-companies-screw-everybody
sentiment.

------
AznHisoka
I'm very critical of Google's products, but I do like the UI of Gmail,
especially the ability to search emails w the main compose window still
opened. That single feature has me 10 times more efficient.

Although I always have a tough time finding filters, even after creating them
so many times - they really do need to show it more clearly.

It's the Gmail iPhone App that has a horrible experience imo, always laggy,
and crashing at random times.

~~~
mh-
that's because Gmail's iPhone app isn't really native, it's a webview wrapper
like so many shoddy bank apps - just a better-made one.

~~~
AznHisoka
Really? Wow... no wonder it's so awful. They should invest in a native one.

------
The_Double
It doesn't help that it changes UI every week.

Especially the top right of the page. I tried to lean my mom how to change
accounts, but the way to do that keeps changing, and because of A/B testing
isn't even the same for everyone.

Watching her struggle with gmail made me realize what a cluttered mess it is.

~~~
moron4hire
Yeah, even _I_ have been completely thrown by whatever is going on in the
upper right corner of this window. At least 3, but probably 4 of these icons
are G+ related. Either I use G+ (which I do) and I go there to use it, or I
don't use G+ and no amount of pushing more icons in my face is going to make
me.

------
carlmcqueen
I thought with time I'd get over the dislike of change and prefer the new
gmail.

I hardly ever check my email from a computer anymore and the iphone app still
feels so dumbed down that I have to go to the PC to make basic changes I an
use on the app. Very frustrating. When they got rid of push for the native
mail app is when all my frustrations started and I felt I had to move to the
gmail app. It really hasn't been the same.

~~~
moron4hire
I continue to use Gmail because I have all of my important contacts setup in
meaningful groups. The majority of my emails go to more than one person at a
time. It's very rare that I send an email to a single person. Desktop-Web-
Gmail includes group names in the auto-complete list of contacts in the To:
line. This is a huge timesaver for me.

And it does NOT do it in Android-Gmail. It is so annoying to me that I will
often write the email on my phone and just wait until I get back to a real
computer to set the addresses on the saved drafts.

------
levosmetalo
Every time I think that Gmail usability is so bad it can't get worse, the
Gmail UX manages to surprise me. I have my own domain, so why am I still using
Gmail? Don't know, probably because of integrated contacts and calendaring
which sync so seamlessly with all of my Android devices.

Anyone has a good alternative free web based email + contacts + calendaring
that syncs seamlessly with Android and allows custom domains?

~~~
danieldk
Not free, but Fastmail supports custom domains, is very fast, and now has
calendars with CalDAV:

[http://blog.fastmail.fm/2014/01/23/calendar-now-available-
on...](http://blog.fastmail.fm/2014/01/23/calendar-now-available-on-beta-
fastmail-fm-for-testing/)

Unfortunately, CardDAV is not yet supported for address books, but apparently
they are working on it.

The advantage of paying is: no ads, no data mining, no privacy problems :).

------
thwest
A Fastmail account was the best technology purchase I made last year.

~~~
moron4hire
What's the story here? I'm always willing to purchase software if it's
actually good.

~~~
wlesieutre
It's a paid email service, with personal accounts starting at $10/year.
Formerly part of Opera Software, but it's recently split off.

I think the main selling point is that there's actual support when you have
trouble. And it'll get some of your data out of Google, which has become a bit
of a trend among techies.

~~~
levosmetalo
No, it starts at $40/year, unless you want to be wlesieutre_2111@fastmail.fm
instead of wlesi@eutre.com.

~~~
danieldk
Yup. But GMail starts at $50 per year if you want levos@metalo.com, rather
than levosmetalo_42@gmail.com. Unless you are grandfathered in via the old
Google Apps.

It seems that the probability of needing a number is also relatively small,
since Fastmail has many domains available:

[https://www.fastmail.fm/help/signup_domains.html](https://www.fastmail.fm/help/signup_domains.html)

Of course, the $10 account is not really useful, since it comes with only
250MB space.

~~~
levosmetalo
Yup, grandfathered. I remember I also had fastmail account when it was free,
but lost it long time ago.

I'm not complaining about 40$, but the laziness and friction on changing
provider of my identity is still there. And I can't really test how it would
work until I switch completely to it with my primary account, since using
secondary account is not a real world test.

~~~
danieldk
I feel your pain. I am also grandfathered in a free Google Apps account.

I like Fastmail, but I need contact syncing, so I cannot fully switch until
they've implemented that. And I'd miss the excellent GMail Android app.
Especially it's search functionality.

------
twelvechairs
Its obviously not a 'nightmare' in that people will still use it gladly but
its not great and has been getting worse for some time. Big problems it
suffers from include:

* filling your screen by default with a plethora of things that an average user won't use and is vaguely terrified to touch because they aren't sure what they will do.

* lack of logical ordering of things. the structure behind screen real estate areas is poor.

a good case is the drop down below the Google logo to top left that says
'gmail' \- does anyone use this? maybe a tiny percentage. would you even know
what menu options might be hiding underneath a drop down that says 'gmail'?
didn't think so.

~~~
gdulli
If people weren't locked in by the pain of having to give out new contact info
and the inability to migrate years of email and attachment history to another
service, I can't imagine that gmail wouldn't have been disrupted by now. We
were bribed with "free" disk space and now we're paying the price for it. (If
I'm wrong about being unable to migrate the data, please let me know.)

~~~
wonderzombie
> (If I'm wrong about being unable to migrate the data, please let me know.)

IMAP has been supported since '07\. Takeout support was added last December.

Exporting contacts to CSV has been supported for as long as I can remember,
though I cannot find a citation.

------
sidcool
And still Gmail is used widely. I personally love Gmail. Even Yahoo's new
design borrows a lot from Gmail.

------
callesgg
You can't use folders as an analog to labels.

If I tried to understand English with a Swedish dictionary I would have
problems as well.

------
rodd19
G Mail works just fine for me.

------
af3
Yeah, fuck that shit!

