
Why do people hate the new Gmail compose window? - nscheffey
pg tweeted last night that it is "so awful", and I've seen similar comments elsewhere. Genuinely curious as to what the complaint is.
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munaf
\- It feels cramped and crowded with my inbox as a backdrop

\- Vertical reading space is limited

\- The toolbar is aligned at the bottom of my screen which causes me to run
into the OS X dock, which I set visible on hover

\- It compresses all message recipients (To, CC, ...) into a single row which
makes you have to double-check if everyone's in the right place

\- The formatting popover appears over your content if you want it to persist

\- I feel verbally limited by its small writing area

\- They haven't solved the "too many IM and compose windows are open" problem.
When you get into this situation, things feel really crowded and messy.

\- The hover state on the formatting toolbar "+" is jarring because the item
you hovered over changes underneath you, making you (sub?)consciously worry
about a misclick since it will launch a damn-obtrusive Google Drive dialog

\- Between the appearance of Gmail as a whole, and this as an addition, my
feeling of information overload when dealing with email has only increased.
Gmail just isn't very "zen."

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raghava
>> Gmail just isn't very "zen."

Sums it up the best. Going through the points mentioned in their review list
(on
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/2645922?p=newcompose&...](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/2645922?p=newcompose&rd=1)),
I feel by 'clean', it's just an attempt to Appleify* the gmail experience.

*designing stuff specifically preventing individual users from using it as they desire

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mooism2
A particular nit: It's harder to change which e-mail address I'm sending from.
Old way: use drop down list to select the from address I want. New way: click
To field. From address drop down list magically appears. Use drop down list to
select from address I want. This was so intuitive I had to look it up in the
online help.

More generally, I don't like that there's a window within my Gmail tab. I
don't like being invited to mess around with window-sizing and -placement
instead of just being left to write my e-mail. It reminds me of MDI, but
without the saving grace of being able to maximise the child window. Why have
I got to use a horrible little subwindow instead of something closer to full
width?

I can't see how it's supposed to be an improvement. What does it do better
than the old way?

~~~
asafira
I think I'm missing something --- when I click "compose", the window I get
allows me to change my sending e-mail address with a dropdown right away.
Right?

~~~
mooism2
I usually don't remember to change the From address until I've started writing
the text of the e-mail --- the From address dropdown has vanished by then.

~~~
asafira
Yeah, good call --- I agree that's a little too opaque. Maybe a typical user
has only 1 e-mail address, but I am sure there is a huge population of users
otherwise. Plenty of less tech-savy friends of mine have a couple of e-mail
addresses configured in gmail.

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asafira
I think there are some pretty unintuitive "features" it has. Example: reply to
someone that has sent you an e-mail. Gmail sends you to a new section of the
page below their e-mail, and allows you to start typing your response (just
like it used to be!). Now, change the subject. How? Well...press the "back"
button, of course. But then what happens? Apparently that compose view isn't
right anymore, so it pops it out into a window. Why? I'm not sure.

But in general I also feel that things just seem really cluttered when you
compose e-mails in a window alongside your chats. I usually have 4+ chats
going, and it usually hides a couple when I compose the e-mail. It also just
_appears_, as fast as a popup, over my field of view on the page --- I don't
find that transition very pleasing, TBH. One might argue it's the same for
gchat windows, but maybe I just got used to those. Or maybe it's time for a
revamp for those, too. (Which might actually be coming soon, anyway)

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plinkplonk
Why the ____does the (tiny!) window open aligned to the bottom right of the
screen? I _hate_ this feature. When I compose an email, I want the typing area
front and center, not squished to the bottom right of my screen. Who composes
email in a miniscule squished-to-a-corner text area?

The 'user interface designer' who came up with this, and the Product Manager
who approved this should (imo) be stood against the nearest wall and shot.
GMail has been on a steady downhill path from when the 'new design'ers ran
amok.

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JustARandomGuy
It feels like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

What does the new compose window gain you? Nothing. It's smaller and more
cramped for no good reason. Oh sure, you can see the emails in your inbox
while composing, but I almost never need to do that.

I contribute a lot to tech mailing lists on Google Groups, so I spend a lot of
time writing long, detailed technical responses to emails. I prefer having a
big screen to do my composition. Making it smaller for no obvious benefit
annoys me.

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beering
If the new Compose interface was actually that awful, it wouldn't have seen
the light of day. What do you think Google employees use for all their email
all the time?

The window is not that tiny - compare it to the chat window, for example. And
since so many of my emails reference other emails, it's nice to be able to
browse my inbox at will without opening new browser frames.

I was thrown off a bit by the auto-hiding of CC and From fields, but it's
habit by now to use Tab and Shift-Tab to navigate the form elements.
Thankfully, it's still about as keyboard-accessible as before, since I don't
like to use my mouse much.

~~~
ricardobeat
It is tiny compared to the old one, or any e-mail application you might use;
being tucked in the corner only makes it worse.

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DanBC
I feel stupid when using gmail.

I have no idea how to do simple things, and each time I want to do those
things I spend a few minutes noodling around the interface hovering over
various parts of the UI hoping for a tool tip.

~~~
asafira
Ha -- I still remember getting so confused as to how I go to my contacts when
they changed gmail's look a year or so ago. I was actually starting to think
the only way was going to "www.google.com/contacts", but eventually I got
curious as to what the drop down arrow with the completely uninformative
current choice of "gmail" was gonna give me.

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mansigandhi
I actually love it and have been using it for months now.

1\. You can compose multiple emails at a time

2\. You can copy-past from/to draft/existing emails/new emails

3\. You don't need to change windows when you need to write an email. Works
just like how google chat and facebook chat work embedded within the main
page....it doesn't interrupt your flow.

When they came out with it months back, my first reaction was -- "wow that's
brilliant!".

~~~
ScottWhigham
I think that your #1 is pretty "you specific". In other words, what percentage
of gmail users need to "compose multiple emails at a time"? I'd guess it's
right around 0.0000000001% (which represents you specifically hehe). I'm
joking around a bit but seriously - that's not a "feature" that most people
need, is it?

Personally, I like changing my flow to work on an email. Chat is different - I
want to do that inline with other things. Email though requires a different
focus level (or it should) thus having a dedicated page works better for me.

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sherm8n
It's only awful because I've been used to the way they've been doing compose
for years. They only made very gradual changes so it didn't affect my flow too
much.

With the new interface, it makes me pause for a second when I want to get
something done quick. I imagine I'll get used to it and you all will too.

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pasbesoin
More work to accomplish the same things. More "undiscoverable" UI.

But, particularly regarding the latter, I don't know yet how many phone calls
to explain this to my parents and walk them through it repeatedly until they
remember it (for lack of having an effective reference to consult).

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woodchuck64
Old compose let me use Vim with "It's All Text" in a plain text window. I
don't see any options for Vim on the new compose.

~~~
NathanCollins
Yes, this is the only change I care about :( I used "It's All Text" with
Emacs. Maybe it's time to start using a separate email client?

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msamiry
for me it's that when I'm writing an email I want it to be on the focus, on
the center of the screen, the new compose is positioned in the lower right
corner and it just doesn't feel right.

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sliprat
\- I often read my mail on a second monitor. The new compose shows up at the
furthest place from my eyes. \- I often drag attachments onto the upper
portion of the old compose and it would attach it for me. Now the only way I
can drag seems to be inline with my mail. Some recipients find it difficult to
download attachments that are in line with the email. \- Once I enter my
subject, there doesn't seem to be a way to switch my from to another email.

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cgopalan
I have been using it for sometime and while initially jarring at first, I
found that I like it better mostly because:

\- Its small but not tiny.

\- It allows me to reference previous emails while composing a new email. I
think this helps a lot.

They could have had a tab-based solution too where the new email would be in a
separate tab. But this one keeps the new email in view which is better.

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dragonwriter
There's only two things I can see that might be the issue:

The rich text toolbar is gone (the keyboard controls are still there), and the
toolbar that is there hides most of its icons until you hover over the '+'
icon, even though it doesn't save any space.

The second is the only one I see as negative, but I can understand that people
would dislike the first, too.

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codegeek
Looks like a chat window. Enough said!!

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meerita
I don't use the web UI since they made IMAP available.

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daniel-cussen
I saw that last night too, but come on, are we following the guy's every
tweet...hmm...yes, I suppose you and I literally are.

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justhw
feels like chat

less focused

hate popups

