
Gmail's Simple Html Mode is much better than standard mode - codeulike
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h
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thrower123
The old new gmail was pretty excellent. I gave up completely on the new one
and reverted to the basic html version. It took forever to load, and I
continually ran into the "this operation hasn't completed yet" dialog when I'd
delete some mails and then tried to navigate to some other site. Just very
half-baked and sloppy, it should never have gotten out the door in the current
state.

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wetpaws
Same here. I wonder if there is any statistic of new UI vs simple mode usage.

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GroSacASacs
I see this too much nowadays, people who want to use cool technologies to make
new software, without knowledge if it is better for the user. It is not
progress, it is change.

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yardshop
I've been using the simple HTML mode myself for the past few weeks. Much
quicker and nicer, and refreshingly antiquated! Reminds me of my old
Mindspring webmail.

The new interface worked reasonably well for me on my work PC, but not on my
home PC (which is admittedly out of date). Clicking a new message would cause
the "Loading..." label to pop up and never go away. The message wouldn't load
unless I did a full Ctrl+F5 reload of the page.

I missed some of the automatic categorization of messages in the new
interface, but now think seeing things is one big list is clearer. And labels
still work to see subsets.

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catacombs
Shhhh. Don't let Google hear you. They'll remove HTML mode and force everyone
to use the new site.

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thedaemon
The new Gmail takes so long to load and organize itself. I really do like the
speed of classic html. It'd be nice if more web services had such "low
bandwith" modes.

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marcg
The new new gmail is flawed in many ways. In particular, the new gmail removed
the the method to hover over an email in list and quickly find all emails from
a sender. Am I the only user of that feature? Also, the number of times I've
had load errors on the newest version already exceeds the number of load
errors I've had in the last year for the previous version. Back to old school
html gmail is the solution.

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combatentropy
Many of you have been discussing speed, but one of the things I liked most
about the old GMail was the look. This is surprising, because my taste tends
toward minimalism and the muted colors of today. GMail used of a variety of
colors (blue, green, orange, etc.) but there was an elegance to them. It's not
just blue, it's a very specific shade of blue (#C3D9FF). The confirmation
messages aren't just "orange," they're #FAD163. I've spent my whole life in
art and have been a graphic designer, and these colors seem to me hand-picked
for maximal retinal happiness.

The style was not just in GMail but also Calendar, Google News, Reader, and
the main search itself. For a while Google hosted the articles for the
Associated Press, and I looked for them among the versions of each story in
Google News. The width of the text column seemed to me precisely right. The
image carousel, when included, was easy to use and lightweight compared to the
monstrosities in other news sites.

I always ascribed it to Google's data-driven design decisions. In 2009 a well-
known graphic designer quit Google shortly after starting, because Google made
him user-test every tweak. "Yes, it's true that a team at Google couldn't
decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to
see which one performs better." ([https://www.cnet.com/news/google-designer-
leaves-blaming-dat...](https://www.cnet.com/news/google-designer-leaves-
blaming-data-centrism/))

But I also think a lot of credit goes to Kevin Fox, Senior User Experience
Design Lead, 2003-8
([https://www.linkedin.com/in/person/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/person/)).
He recently tweeted a article showcasing several Google products at their
inception
([https://twitter.com/kfury/status/1045169856998305792](https://twitter.com/kfury/status/1045169856998305792))
though the subheading is, "Google didn’t always get design. In fact, the
earliest versions of some of its top products were downright homely." I
couldn't disagree more.

I'm unsure how credit should be distributed. Paul Buchheit is GMail's
"creator" (He's also a partner at YCombinator). A history of GMail is in Time
magazine, [http://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-
anniversary/](http://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/). He left Google
in 2006 to form Friendfeed, which bears a strong resemblance to Google's
products ([http://thomashawk.com/2009/04/friendfeed-is-for-winners-
frie...](http://thomashawk.com/2009/04/friendfeed-is-for-winners-friendfeed-
launches-simplified-new-user-interface.html)). Other former Google employees
cofounded Friendfeed: Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh. But they
also hired Kevin Fox.

Regardless, in the early 2000s I loved Google and all its user interfaces.
Around 2010 it began changing, and I've liked the changes less and less.

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prolikewh0a
So is the rest of the internet.

