

Google is testing a stunning Gmail overhaul - pandemicsyn
http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/05/10/google-trialling-beautiful-new-gmail-layout/

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derefr
This is another step toward confirming my hypothesis: Google didn't kill
Reader because they wanted to stop providing a feed-reader; Google killed
Reader because RSS is a knock-off version of email. You can subscribe to
regular updates on a topic over both RSS and email, but the updates that
actually get read are the ones that hit your email inbox.

So, gradually, Google are transforming Gmail into a capable feed-reader. First
they added the auto-categories; now they're rearranging everything into a
single chronological feed.

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abritishguy
I don't treat RSS like that, sometimes I'm too busy and don't check my RSS
feeds and when I do I won't "catch up". I use email subscription to websites
that I want to read every post.

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derefr
Yes, and you use email subscriptions that way because email clients are bad at
being feed readers: they effectively force you to "catch up" whenever you open
them.

My point was that, with these changes, Google are making Gmail _good_ at being
a feed-reader--adding features to interact with subscription emails the way
you currently interact with RSS feed items.

If your email client is good at being a feed reader, it _will_ be sensible to
use email subscriptions for things you currently use RSS feeds for.

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bpodgursky
1) I don't think it's possible this is the final version of the redesign,
because there's no way Google would remove Hangouts visibility from gmail

2) It seems like hipster designers are competing to find new and flashy ways
to waste enormous amount of my screen on useless whitespace

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derefr
On #1: They might remove Hangouts from Gmail-on-Chrome if they planned to
integrate them directly into Chrome/ChromiumOS. More likely, though, is that
that button in the top-right corner isn't a drop-down, but rather represents a
currently-collapsed Hangouts sidebar. That sidebar is probably expanded by
default, like Facebook's.

On #2: it's well known that people have a bad experience reading extremely
long (i.e. more than ~65em) lines of text. It's actually better to wrap a
subject line onto several lines than to let it go on all the way across your
2560px screen. Ideally, web pages could just specify a maximum width you could
stretch the browser out to. But, since they can't, they drop in some useless
whitespace.

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abritishguy
I'm not one to hate on redesigns - I can't think of the last redesign that I
didn't like but if this ships, or anything close to this ships I can
categorically say that I will stop using the gmail web interface.

The information density in the current design is just what I want from an
email client:
[http://cl.ly/image/0S2q0X0X3D3F](http://cl.ly/image/0S2q0X0X3D3F)

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jblock
All I want is a fast, functional Gmail.

Any shine they want to put on it is fine by me.

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withdavidli
Looks like a spaced out Outlook design. I actually like their current layout,
except for configuring settings, that can be made more apparent.

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pandemicsyn
Yeah color scheme threw me off at first. Thought it was outlook.com

