

The new Google Contacts - matteos728
http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-new-google-contacts-bringing.html

======
peterjmag
A few first impressions:

1\. Why oh why must we always shove everything into modal dialogs? In the
"old" interface, each contact had its own separate page and individual URL.
Now that every contact is a "card" that appears as a modal dialog, I can no
longer link to it directly, and any card that I'm viewing is lost as soon as I
close the tab or navigate away from the page. (Note that I don't necessarily
believe that every possible application state should be represented by a URL,
but something as discrete as a single contact seems pretty important to me.)

2\. The JS captures my Cmd-F / Ctrl-F shortcut and focuses the search bar in
the header. To me, this is a huge no-no. Sometimes I just want to find some
regular text on a page, not send my every keystroke to Google via a search box
that gives me "helpful" page suggestions from Google+.

EDIT: Just noticed that you can still access the browser's built-in search by
hitting Cmd-F twice. A bit odd, but at least it's not completely overridden.

3\. The show-checkbox-on-hover behavior[1] in the list looks like something's
broken. It also doesn't look like a checkbox until you actually click on
it[2], which kind of defeats the purpose of a checkbox.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/f3AVYdv.png](http://i.imgur.com/f3AVYdv.png)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/aY5fPl7.png](http://i.imgur.com/aY5fPl7.png)

I don't mean to be super negative. I think there are a lot of nice
improvements here too, just a few things that bother me as a "power user".

------
currysausage
It looks nice. It doesn't work very well, not for me at least. I hope they do
a lot of work before making this version the default one.

Why does the search box search Google+ instead of my contacts? I don't even
use Google+. This is either a _huge_ bug, or it is insanity. And I thought the
Google+ creep was over already. (I can't even use Ctrl-F, because they hooked
that to the - currently useless - search box.)

Every contact manager that I have ever used gives me the option to sort
contacts by last name. I can't seem to find such a setting here. There are
futher sorting issues: Ö should go after O, not Z.

The overview looks nice and clean. When I click a contact with lots of
details, and when I click the Edit button, there is just one unstructured mess
of a table, crammed into a tiny modal dialog on my 2560x1440 monitor. Compare
this to the old Contacts, and you feel inclined to believe that they fired all
their information designers, and replaced them with interaction designers
exclusively.

Please don't read this as a criticism of Material Design. I really enjoy it on
my Nexus, and I think Material enables elegant interactions. But interactions
aren't everything. For a product like this, thoughtful information design
should be the priority. And I don't even see traces of information design in
this preview.

~~~
froskur
> There are futher sorting issues: Ö should go after O, not Z.

I'd just like to point out that this is not true in the two alphabets that I'm
familiar with that use Ö, Icelandic and Swedish. For both of these, Ö is the
last character of the alphabet. I don't know how it is for other languages
which use Ö but at least for these two the sorting is correct.

------
nodata
_please be fast, please be fast_

Edit: also please let us archive contacts. I want to keep someone's number,
but scrolling through hundreds of people just to call someone is not ideal.

~~~
taeric
If you are talking about for your phone. You can setup Android to only pull in
contacts in a given group. Convenient if you have groups for different cities
and whatnot that you might be in.

------
tgarv
My pre-coffee brain thought this would be contact lenses... I was so excited
for a second.

~~~
proexploit
Which also exists but is probably only exciting if you're diabetic:
[http://googleblog.blogspot.ch/2014/01/introducing-our-
smart-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.ch/2014/01/introducing-our-smart-
contact-lens.html)

------
koyote
Finally a refresh to the contacts site. I always found this to be quite useful
for managing my Android contacts.

It looks nice but there are definitely some improvements needed in terms of
merging of G+ data with existing data. For example, some of my contacts have
two birthday entries, one G+ (which might omit the year) and then one that I
have manually added.

------
nodata
[http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-new-google-
contacts...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-new-google-contacts-
bringing.html) has screenshots for the rest of us.

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the submitted URL from
[http://contacts.google.com](http://contacts.google.com).

------
solvitor
Gmail accounts only; no Google Apps (yet?). Yet another roll-out (ahem, Inbox)
where the paying customers get left behind. I realize businesses may want
stability with new versions for training, etc. but it would be great at least
to have the option by domain/account to be on the new products earlier.

~~~
CSDude
As I said before, paid users get stabler products whereas us the free loaders
are beta testers.

~~~
cujo
That's fine on paper, but the reality is that none of their "beta" products
come with any real user risk.

I think it's more of a "test drive" scenario for google. It's fully baked but
they want to see how it changes behavior on a wider scale where people make
choices independent of the organization.

~~~
eitally
That's not true. Google has hosed large enterprise customers many times by
rolling out new features or changes to existing products with zero warning,
and they have adopted a phased deployment process and a formal trusted tester
program to help mitigate it. Contacts is a waaaaaaay bigger deal for
businesses than individuals, and there are tons of edge cases Google has to
deal with re: Apps customers.

~~~
cujo
I honestly don't know of any google apps that have hosed enterprise customers.
Can you point me at some articles or something?

------
omnibrain
Ok, after mixing the birthdays the random people I follow on google+ into my
calendar they now mix the contact details of those people into my contacts
list. :(

~~~
currysausage
Things like these were my top reasons for leaving Google+ very quickly. If I
follow Linus Torvalds in the stream, that doesn't mean that I want him
everywhere in my PIM suite (Gmail, Calender, Contacts).

But yeah, Unified Experience matters, blah blah. They were probably thinking:
If not for the Unified Experience, why else would anyone use Google+ instead
of any other social network?

------
monitron
I got really excited about this, and then was immediately disappointed when
merging contacts in this interface didn't seem to sync to my Android phone. I
hate that I have to merge contacts separately on every device. Is it just me?

------
taeric
The one thing I have yet to find on any online contacts program (not that I
have checked that many...) is the ability to mark some numbers as "previous
number|address" for folk. This can be very convenient when someone moves.

------
binxbolling
Is there any easy to way to grab some contacts off my Google Apps account
(i.e. work) to add to my personal Gmail contacts? When adding contacts on my
phone, I often forget to attach them to the right account.

~~~
timdierks
You can export them into a file and reimport them into Contacts.
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/24911?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/24911?hl=en)

(Disclaimer: I haven't tried this with the new Contacts).

------
scrollaway
I like the new design, but it seems impossible to merge contacts that aren't
automatically detected as duplicates by their less-than-perfect algorithm.

~~~
mpgarate
I had that thought at first, but I figured out how to do it.

Check the box on the left for two contacts, and then in the upper right you
can click the merge icon, two arrows coming together.

~~~
scrollaway
... OH THOSE ARE CHECKBOXES?!

FFS, I have 2.5k pixels of horizontal space, and they're saving up space this
way? This isn't even a good idea on mobile where there is no such concept as
hover.

The UX designer in me is enraged right now.

~~~
anon012012
It's probably more a matter of simplifying the look, having portraits first.

If we're trying to one-up Google at design, here's my probably-lame attempt,
using the bevel to have the cake and eat it too, hopefully.
[http://i.imgur.com/X4LQD03.png](http://i.imgur.com/X4LQD03.png) (I changed
the names)

I guess it's still less pretty, I don't know.

~~~
scrollaway
I don't dislike the idea but it'd need more work graphically. Like this it's
barely visible. Making it obvious to the user that this part of the screen is
there for your to click on should be priority #1 when you design a nonstandard
checkbox.

Edit: And remember, something doesn't necessarily _have_ to be a checkbox for
you to select it, it can just be a bevel of some kind. You don't even have to
require clicking as an action: You can square-select items (like you would in
a file manager), you can long-press (like you would on mobile) etc.

~~~
anon012012
It's possible my monitor brightness is wrong (nevermind, you're right, I see
it now), and thanks for the feedback and sharing tips.

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wodenokoto
Can I edit the phonetic reading of my contacts name? I have a lot of Japanese
friends and believe it or not, you cannot read how their names are pronounced
from just reading the name. 井上 could be inoue or iue or ikami or a lot of
different things.

This is usually solved by adding a phonetic field to the names field, and
while I can do it on my iPhone, I haven't figured out hot to do it on Google
contacts, which I sync with.

~~~
ranmocy
Not sure it's new feature or not. When you edit it in the new version, click
"Show All Fields", and you will find phonetic fields.

My problem is that I added phonetic names on my Mac and synced to Google, but
the fields are missing on the web. Nor could be synced to my iPhone. Wired
thing is that my old phonetic data is synced. I suppose that they have some
compatibility bug.

------
lkbm
Was giving a loading error for me yesterday. Finally works now.

When you expand the groups or circles on the left, if there are too many to
fit on your screen, you're out of luck--no scrollbar appears.

All the same, if I no longer have to worry about Google Voice contacts being
somehow distinct from Google Contacts, it's an improvement.

------
mistermann
I wish Google would force app settings to comply to a framework / interface
such that you could manage the configuration of all your apps via a single
website (appsettings.google.com/devicename) as well.

------
fenomas
Meta-feedback: I just submitted a bug report, and the "Send feedback" feature
is damned spiffy. If you're into such things give it a look.

(I don't know if it's new or specific to Contacts though.)

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VSpike
I get this on my personal Google account, but our work Google Apps account
doesn't show the change. I'd guess it's rolling out gradually, presumably with
GA work customers getting it last.

------
stephane-klein
Is it possible to share contact group between different gmail user ?

------
Navarr
Previously posted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9140626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9140626)

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sjs382
As usual, Google Apps is late to the party.

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dandare
Automatic contact merging works for about 10% of my duplicates :/

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tdkl
Holy whitespace Batman.

~~~
dexterdog
Hey - you've gotta make it so that a 27" screen only shows as much information
as an iPhone.

------
abluecloud
Is there?

~~~
sjbennett
It's at
[https://contacts.google.com/preview](https://contacts.google.com/preview)

~~~
VSpike
404 on my work Google Apps account.

~~~
Navarr
Not yet availble for GApps users.

Because Google hates us :(

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h1fra
Nice, not a revolution though

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sauravc
About time!

