9 ms·

Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

255 points by onelovelyname 13y ago

bnejad 13y ago
Really, anxiety? Use a native/local mail client and I'm sure it will solve your problems.
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Yeah I'm kinda OCD about my email. Thanks, just found the HN thread about email clients. Checking out Airmail now.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    Perhaps the anxiety is because there was a change, and not specifically this change?
  - ProAm 13y ago
    I started using eM Client as a native desktop email app because of the new gMail reply feature. Feature-wise it does everything I expect/want for email. It drives me absolutely insane when a company makes an 'enhancement' and reduces usable window space. If I am writing a long email I want to be able to use the maximum amount of window space and not be crammed into something that is 25% of my monitor size.
  - RDeckard 13y ago
    Link to the HN thread with email clients?
    - onelovelyname 13y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286127
- jinushaun 13y ago
  The problem with that suggestion is that the old Gmail used to have the best UX out of all email clients—web or desktop. I preferred it over Outlook or Thunderbird. Now I'm begrudgingly using it unti something better comes along and hoping Google doesn't acqui-hire them out of existence.
uptown 13y ago
Why not just hold shift when you click "compose"?
- Sulfolobus 13y ago
  Using shift-click to open in a new window is a fairly standard behaviour in most browsers these days isn't it? Then again I guess it wasn't intuitive in this case. Edit: I should note that the above is actually a genuine question.
  - cheapsteak 13y ago
    Shift-click to open in a new window is a pattern for links. Gmail's 'Compose' doesn't look like a link, it looks like a button. Shift-clicking the 'search' button doesn't work on Google.com.
    - plorkyeran 13y ago
      > Shift-clicking the 'search' button doesn't work on Google.com. It does in pre-webkit Opera. One of the things I really miss in other browsers.
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Yep, just found this out from another comment. Thanks!
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Also just shift-c if you have the keyboard shortcuts enabled.
- mrtimo 13y ago
  this is close to the old functionality, but not the exact same.
res0nat0r 13y ago
Click the "-><-" arrows at the top and you can go back to the old style. I like the new version and wish they'd used it long ago, I want a large box to type my emails in, not a small rectangle.
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Clicking "-><-" brings me to a small chat-like box for my email. Agreed though, I like large boxes for email.
molecule 13y ago
To avoid being distracted by the gmail inbox and to have a clean composition interface, I always keep this URL bookmarked, and it still works w/ the new compose: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailto https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailt...
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Oh, wow! This is pretty beautiful. Thank you.
- pan69 13y ago
  Or hold down Control when you click Compose.
  - tjohns 13y ago
    Holding shift when you click compose is also a good one to know about. (Opens the compose dialog in a new, dedicated window.)
- lingben 13y ago
  not to be snarky but you know, this is 2013, not 1999. If the largest and best funded company can't get something as simple as email right, then they should just pack up and go home. Or at least fire their whole UX/UI department and start fresh. By right, I mean a clean, simple interface that you don't need to judiciously learn over dozens of hours of frustrating trial and error or by googling in support forums. The old gmail UX was fine. In fact, compared to the new compose it was the bees knees. It takes humility to be able to realize that. But Jason wants to leave his mark - unfortunately the mark is an ugly smear.
  - cdash 13y ago
    Thats funny, cause they got it right for me.
  - general_failure 13y ago
    Who is jason?
petercooper 13y ago
https://twitter.com/NewComposeSux https://twitter.com/NewComposeSux collects together a lot of sentiment about how great this new feature is. I kinda feel sorry for Jason Cornwell. He's been blasted with "feedback" on Twitter since it went live.
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Thanks, checked it out. Impressed that Jason takes the time to respond to many of the tweets.
laureny 13y ago
My problem with that is people who write emails in full screen windows end up writing poorly formatted emails (very long paragraphs) because they are now composing their emails with 300 columns. Besides, a CEO that can't focus on writing a message unless they don't have any other distraction on their screen should probably work on their focus skills.
- mrb 13y ago
  "should probably work on their focus skills" Terrible argument. "Let's add more distractions to the screen, because the user should be able to focus anyway". Also, Google broke the "Best Secret Gmail Feature" [1]. In the last few months, you can't select text and hit reply to quote it anymore. Grrr [1] http://gizmodo.com/5963768/the-best-secret-gmail-feature-is-hiding-in-plain-sight http://gizmodo.com/5963768/the-best-secret-gmail-feature-is-...
  - eli 13y ago
    I believe there is a Labs option in settings to turn that on.
  - Monotoko 13y ago
    Really? This still works for me, I use it a lot...
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Writing concise, properly formatted email is the responsibility of the writer, no matter the email client UI. It's also my responsibility to ensure I can focus and work efficiently, agreed. Whether I can do that well with Gmail's new Compose is the issue.
- leepowers 13y ago
  "Besides, a programmer who can't focus on coding unless they have a quiet office with with no interruptions should probably work on their focus skills" Everyone regardless of profession has a "zone" where they are the most productive. If a CEO needs to write 10 long-form emails in a day they should definitely have the best environment and the best tools for the job. It can be the difference between spending 5 minutes composing an email vs. 30 minutes.
billnguyen 13y ago
I could live with the new Compose... its the hidden/floating "Formatting Options" that really grinds my gears.
- jinushaun 13y ago
  A lot of people complain about the window size, but I agree. It's really the hidden options and extra clicks for me. Everything that used to be easy is now harder. And things that used to be hard are easier.
AznHisoka 13y ago
Gmail also seems to shorten the names of people you email to (at least for me). That makes me second-guess whether I'm really emailing the right person at times.
- acadien 13y ago
  It always shows last names for me (so long as they're available). Unless you've got some new feature, I'm guessing those contacts just don't have full names assigned. Spending some time in the "contacts" tab, cleaning things up really made things easier for me in this respect.
- enochroot 13y ago
  Agreed. It also is not showing the email address making it easy to mistakenly send a personal email to someone's work account and vice versa.
enochroot 13y ago
For my usage, the new compose has been a major step back. It now takes additional clicks to accomplish basic tasks (e.g. change the subject) and is less clear on what I am doing (e.g. when you cc someone and switch back to the body, the cc-ed names is now in To: line making it appear that you are sending it to them directly.) There are many other examples where the experience has become worse. I am not clear if Google truly believes the new compose is an improvement or if there is a behind the scenes reason that is making up for the decrease in usability. The new product is so obviously a step back (to me) that I am assuming it's the latter. Has anyone seen a write up that has an explanation other than "improved practicality?"
- rjbond3rd 13y ago
  Oh man, I wish I knew. Have you noticed this one? You're editing a wrapped paragraph, you use the right-arrow key to move, and once you're at the end of -any- line, it suddenly jumps down to the "..." (the toggle for displaying the quoted message). (Also, why hide the formatting bar...)
  - fluidcruft 13y ago
    Ah, is that what's happening? All I know is I go back to proof my email before sending and I keep randomly ending up at the bottom and cursing as I scroll back.
colbyh 13y ago
I'm actually quite fond of the new compose window and I fall into essentially the same category of email user as you. My anxiety was in fact lessened a bit by the chat-like (and therefore more casual) vibe, thanks to large expanses of white space making me feel like I /must/ fill them with text. Email anxiety is no fun, maybe a native client would be the best way to ensure your workflow is optimized?
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Makes sense. I do like it for casual mail - e.g., if I'm setting up a quick time to meet an advisor. But for more important things, it doesn't work well for me. I am checking out Airmail thanks to an older HN thread. Cheers!
md224 13y ago
Umm... powered by Storystrings, but features the Svbtle network's Kudos button (as "cheers")... is there a connection here, or is the former borrowing from the latter?
- rajivtiru 13y ago
  Using the github library here: https://github.com/masukomi/kudos https://github.com/masukomi/kudos Also from the sourcecode on this blog:  https://github.com/masukomi/kudos-->
  - dcurtis 13y ago
    Interesting that someone took my code, nearly character-for-character, and "open sourced" it without permission.
    - rajivtiru 13y ago
      I was not aware of that. I just saw the licence section of the github repo and decided that was good enough. Not sure how you want to deal with the repo owner, but I can stop using the code if you want.
    - ozh 13y ago
      Client side code is open source.
      - skeletonjelly 13y ago
        But open source doesn't imply a certain license. Does it?
      - qu4z-2 13y ago
        But not Free Software
ihnorton 13y ago
Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago. Two examples: - maps: new interface is so terrible that I am actively looking for a replacement. It is painfully slow, search results are no longer displayed on the same page as the map (what?), and in general the minimalism has gone too far: the interface requires too much hunting. - gmail: Previous/Next-message buttons flake out constantly (grayed out - clicking does nothing). New formatting options are hard to use and obnoxious. And an old one that I ran in to again today: - there is no (intuitive) way to copy a URL from google search results without all of the google redirect garbage. This fundamentally degrades the world-wide web. For example, I want to email a link to a pdf. If an in-browser pdf reader is not available, then the link downloads immediately and there is no way to get the de-obfuscated link. I clicked the "share" button in hopes that this might give me the link; but no, it wanted me to share on G+.
- rajivtiru 13y ago
  I just figured out that last point about google URLs today. I wanted to copy/paste a link in a chat window but the google redirect url is so long it takes up the whole chat window and more! Instead of the domain.com/word I wanted.
  - cheapsteak 13y ago
    If you're using chrome, you might want to check out this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-google-redirects/ccenmflbeofaceccfhhggbagkblihpoh?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-google-redi...
    - rajivtiru 13y ago
      Thank you. Installed. Exactly what I wanted.
    - 13y ago
dasil003 13y ago
The self-righteous anger about the irredeemable horror of the new Gmail compose is starting to get a bit old. First of all, it's not as one-sided as people are making it out. I was also annoyed when it first came out, but there are some clear benefits. Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win for my email workload (CTO for a 30-person company). There are some important philosophical reasons behind some of these changes that I strongly agree with: First, the small window by default encourages short emails which is always good. The OA seems to glorify long-winded CEO screeds, but by definition the vast majority of emails are going to be short (and if they're not I don't want to work with you), so it's correct to optimize for the short case. The two levels of pop-out (the second of which the OA appears to be completely ignorant of) scale up and out quite nicely. Second, the hidden headers and formatting options are encouraging simplicity in email. Most email should not have formatting, and arguably most emails don't have CCs, BCCs, or edited subjects either. Putting them behind one extra click is really not the huge usability nightmare people make out. It takes a little while to get used to and then you just subconsciously do the double click, it's not really any harder than finding them in a sea of icons, it's just that previously you were used to that sea of options. The optimization for the common case is done correctly. For me the new design (after turning on compact view) is a moderate improvement that did nothing to dilute the core value of Gmail which are the labels, keyboard shortcuts/navigation, conversation view and search/filters. Running it inside Mailplane makes it even better. There are definitely annoyances, but nothing that's even close to driving me to something like mutt, and forget about GUI clients, all of them feel like molasses compared to Gmail.
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Browsing email while composing isn't part of my workflow. Definitely makes sense as a use case, a few others mentioned it as well. Agreed, for short emails (setting up mtgs, quick reviews) it works fine for the most part. Personal preference wise - I feel more comfortable sending email when I'm able to see CC/BCC, text formatting, & attachments. Understand that not everyone feels the same way.
- olog-hai 13y ago
  > Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win It was possible to do this before the changes rolled out. Shift-compose opened it (still does) in a new window, and you could work with it and your mailbox side-by-side.
benjamta 13y ago
I do quite like the new compose - I get a bit annoyed by the in line editor when you reply though. Feels a little inconsistent.
alexholehouse 13y ago
The "full screen mode" is like a parody of poor user interface and false promises. That said, Outlook 365 is also bloody awful in terms of usability. Say I've sent an email to a list of people, there's no way (as far as I can tell, which is all that matters really) to then copy those email addresses. You have to literally click through each one and get the address individually.
gruseom 13y ago
I agree with this post's use of the word "ruined". That's what the new Compose did. It's a usability train wreck which I'm astonished they put out at all, let alone impose it on users against their will. There are big things wrong with it and there are little things wrong with it and the sum total is frustrating and disconcerting. It's one thing to redesign a website, but email is a huge part of my daily work, and this feels as if renovators just drove a post up through the living room floor.
- lingben 13y ago
  Jason Cornwell is a stupendous example of the Peter Principle.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    Let's not get personal. There are lots of ways this kind of thing can happen.
    - lingben 13y ago
      How is it personal to mention the individual who is responsible for the change?
      - goblin89 13y ago
        Three of four comments you left in this thread call Jason's name and attempt to discredit him, with little substantial criticism addressing Gmail UI.
        lingben 13y ago
        You are wrong. Jason's work discredits him rather well without any need for me or anyone to resort to personal insults. As for substantial criticism of gmail's new UX, why rehash what has been already discussed over and over again here and everywhere? just google for 50+ well thought out blog posts and comments to those blog posts and google forum discussions. I'm sorry if you are a googler and feel the need 'to circle the wagons' out of misplaced loyalty. Or if you fail to see that it is pertinent to mention the person responsible for the changes out of a perverse sense of 'white knighting'. Now please downvote this to prove how intelligent you are.
notatoad 13y ago
"My messages are important, god dammit." no, they aren't. get over it. The new compose does a great job of framing your sent emails in the way your recipients are probably viewing them: quickly, and often from a small screen/window.
- onelovelyname 13y ago
  Great point, thinking of it that way gives some insight into why Google may have changed the UI.
  - Demiurge 13y ago
    The insight being is that Google is now discarding the professional crowd who bought into their Apps for ADD teenagers. Time to look for alternatives.
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      Google Apps generates less than 3% of Google's revenues. (Probably much less.) Thus, not enough of a money-maker to influence the direction of Gmail.
- Demiurge 13y ago
  You can't possibly be serious? :) I can be replying to CC-style conversation and the way recipients are hidden now, I can easily make a mistake not removing key opponent when making comment to partners, a lot of money can be lost. Email is extremely important for a lot of people.
- aestra 13y ago
  Are you kidding me? I get emails from customers every single day, each one of those emails I read very carefully, from a large screen. Each one requires a response on my part, and if you were a customer you would expect the same. I also do a real lot of personal emailing. I have family all over the country, and email is one way we keep in touch. I can spend over an hour composing an email to one of my family members, or one of my friends. If I wanted to communicate a shorter message, I'd use SMS, but if I'm telling a longer thought email is my go-to.
ajanuary 13y ago
The shortcuts for CC and BCC help a lot with adding recipients. Obviously that doesn't do much to solve the problem of it squeezing them all onto one line when you focus out if you're paranoid about recipients.
RDeckard 13y ago
I still use the basic HTML client in many circumstances, esp. when tethering off my phone with limited reception: https://mail.google.com/mail/h/ https://mail.google.com/mail/h/ It approximates the first Ajax/DHTML interface that Gmail introduced when it launched in 2004.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  The basic HTML view of gmail has no latency hiding abilities of any kind. It is much slower for every action, and it gets worse the slower your connection is. If you have a high bandwidth, high latency link like "4G" mobile service, ordinary Gmail is almost certainly better. If course if you have something like GPRS then basic HTML is just the thing.
derefr 13y ago
I have a feeling that this new design ("docked floating div" instead of "new regular window"; "modal floating div" instead of "new fullscreen window") is an effect of Windows and OSX, in their latest iterations, pushing apps to fullscreen virtual desktops. If Gmail is the whole screen, you can't actually open a "new window"; it would open back on the primary desktop, instead of within the app's screen. Maybe Windows+OSX need to refine their "app-desktop" solutions with some limited form of window management, so that every app isn't having to reinvent its own window management just to keep its windows visible...
- rsynnott 13y ago
  > is an effect of Windows and OSX, in their latest iterations, pushing apps to fullscreen virtual desktops. Hrm, possibly Windows 8 does that; haven't used it. To do it on MacOS, you have to either click the strange icon in the top right, or hit the highly obvious key combination CMD-CTRL-F. Anecdotally, most people don't even seem to realise that the fullscreen thing exists, unless it's pointed out to them.
amerika_blog 13y ago
The new Gmail compose is 20 years worth of interface design learning, lost in a single poor choice.
- triplesec 13y ago
  google is good at that. See the latest iteration of google maps for android. Ugh.
  - krakensden 13y ago
    My favorite part is that it doesn't work with the hardware search or menu buttons.
thezilch 13y ago
Clicking the "Full-screen" button on the compose modal shows the following dialogue; perhaps the author just closed the tip? Click here to exit full-screen. (Shift + click to compose in a new window.) You can set full-screen as your default using the More menu next to Discard. Likewise, the tooltip on the "Full-screen" button states Full-screen (Shift for Pop-out). And for someone that spends so much time in email, like a developer and his IDE, it might be time to improve one's efficiency with keyboard coords -- gmail shortcuts (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594) -- and use Shift+c (popup) or Shift+d (tab) composition.
lnanek2 13y ago
I really hate that thing as well. Although it isn't just supposed to be quick, it is supposed to allow referencing several other emails while you write. Which I don't do so it is terrible for me.
ams6110 13y ago
Doesn't gmail still offer imap? Use a real mail client, not a web page. Much more fulfilling in almost every way. I like emacs, because I like to be able to write emails using the same editor I use for everything else. But that's a preference. There are many good mail clients to choose from.
- bcj 13y ago
  Of course that doesn't always protect you from Google's whims. Google purchased the company that made the mail client I like, Sparrow.
  - derekp7 13y ago
    This is actually a good thing. I've always wanted to get better at HTML5 / "web 2.0" programming. Now I have an incentive. I think I'll just go ahead and make my own web mail client, with imap support, and host it on my own server (or AWS account). Can't think of a better way to learn than to have a good project (necessity and invention, and all that).
- jfb 13y ago
  Exactly. A "startup CEO" for whom email is his most important tool and he's baffled by a change to his client? Switch clients.
loceng 13y ago
I just shifted my behaviours to different tools that Compose is no longer suitable for. It was a bit of an annoying shift, though in the end felt more helpful with forcing me to organize.
paul_f 13y ago
Seems there is an easy solution. Just use Thunderbird.
oulipian 13y ago
The idiotic modal window is bad enough, but the new Gmail Compose also breaks basic shortcut keys (such as Command+left or right arrow to skip to the end of a line), at least in Firefox on my Mac. And pasting text in "Plain text" mode often adds weird line breaks. Gmail used to be such a pleasure to use and I cringe to click Compose now.
newobj 13y ago
Holy cow. I'm starting to experience outrage outrage and this post may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
- colmvp 13y ago
  Indeed. Of all the 'usability nightmares' I've seen on the internet, Digg was by far the worst offender and deservedly so given the transition of users from Digg to Reddit. Gmail has made some odd changes (specifically compose on the bottom right) but ultimately it hasn't irked me at all. I mean, if people want a free e-mail service, they can still go to Outlook or Yahoo.
canthonytucci 13y ago
I'm not sure it's a good idea to take anyone's opinion of gmail seriously that doesn't use the keyboard shortcuts. If you really are composing so much, hit 'c', not reach all the way over to the mouse like an orangutan. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en Pop the window out and maximize it if you don't like the new interface. If you hit d, it will open the compose window in a new tab, _the whole thing_, dedicated to your awesome email that you really need to concentrate on writing. But as for the "hidden text formatting controls". Don't use text formatting; send plain text email like a decent human being. If you need to emphasize or: 1.e 2.nu 3.mer 4.ate that's why we have markdown. No one wants to see your fancy fonts and fuchsia signature. Content, yo. If it's that much of an issue, why not edit content in your favorite editor then paste it into gmail? If you're on a mac, you can format to your heart's desire in textedit (full-screen-mode-obviously) then copy it all and paste into gmail and all your stupid font size changes and bold shit will still be there. EDIT: minor changes, also imagine that the formatted stuff is the raw markdown, because I forgot that this does that. Edit 2: it's cool to hate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY
bane 13y ago
Something that gets me in a little trouble from time to time, forwarding an email includes the entire previous conversation chain...which isn't normally a problem, but gmail compresses the previous chain into a collapsed [...] box that I sometimes forget is there. So on occasion I forward parts of emails to other parties that probably shouldn't be seeing those other bits. I have to remember to expand it, then delete all the content I don't want to be included in the forward. Other comments here have pointed other gui foibles, I agree with all the maps complaints, I'm on the beta for it and switch back to classic almost 70% of the time because I can't get something done in the new one. And I won't repeat what I had to say about the absolute brokenness of the youtube interface. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314694 Even in search, lots of the nice sidebar utilities I used all the time like the search tools' time range are now buried two clicks deep. Searches give you quick options for web, images, maps, shopping and applications, but one I use several times a day, video, is buried.
- qu4z-2 13y ago
  Forwarding the entire thread with each email is also bad netiquette. If anyone still cares.
TallGuyShort 13y ago
I hated the feature at first as well, but I've found myself multi-tasking recently where I type multiple emails in parallel as I collect my thoughts for each. It's growing on me, but I definitely see the validity of the criticism. I do wish it was easier to get at the advanced features.
hobs 13y ago
I literally wrote dozens of complaints to google about this, obviously they go into a black hole of nobody cares, but I like their feedback feature because it says "What part of the screen is the problem" and I highlight EVERYTHING. The new youtube interface? Garbage. STEAMING GARBAGE. The new gmail interface? Sounds like you want a desktop client BECAUSE GARBAGE. EDIT: AAAAAAH SERIOUSLY HOW CAN YOU REGRESS SO BAD!
DigitalSea 13y ago
Google have taken quite a few missteps with their UI changes to Gmail and Youtube especially. I'm not a designer, but as a web developer know a thing or two about easy-to-use and decent interfaces. The new Gmail compose popup to me signifies the once predominately engineer led company is turning into a design led one. While being a design-led company isn't necessarily a completely bad thing, you need those engineers and developers guiding the designers and keeping things in check. Unrestrained creativity can be a dangerous thing. I feel the same way about the new compose popup. It's intrusive and distracting and I even emailed them about it sometime ago. I got some cookie cutter response about how Google are continually refining their products, blah blah. I would use a third party email client, but email is crucial for me and if the chances of something going wrong between the connection of the client and Google's servers are higher than that of losing an email composed within the Gmail interface itself.
Demiurge 13y ago
I don't understand, why can't they just have the 'show all options and full screen' mode as well? They had it optional for a while now, what does it cost to maintain the old composer?
encoderer 13y ago
tldr; Somebody moved her cheese.
habosa 13y ago
What gives me anxiety is complaining about minor UX changes for a class-leading free product on a site that's called "Hacker News". I hate to get all old-fogey but Hacker News has really turned into "the random opinions of people in the startup world". I learn a lot less on this site than I used to. Sorry to the OP, it's not your fault that you provided content the community likes and I have no personal issue with you.
- illumen 13y ago
  It's comments like yours that I don't like. Also, I don't like this comment I'm writing. Gmail had good UX, and people went to it for that. Now it has a few flaws. As people who care about UX, these flaws are worth discussing. Some 'hackers' don't do UX, which is fine. So those people may find the topic boring. But many people here are making things, and find the UX direction of the leading web email client interesting. If only to see future trends in web site development. Other reasons this is interesting is to see how they are monetising their apps more, and how they are trying to make email a worse marketing channel. Having worked at Google, it is understandable if you get annoyed when people bash your company. But that comes with being successful. So don't sweat it too much. xo
iak8god 13y ago
I accidentally deleted an email thread the other day. How? When replying in Gmail, there's a little button below the editing area that has a trash can icon and will discard a draft. There's a button with an identical icon on the same screen, just above the editing area that will delete the email/thread. I don't know much about design, but this strikes me as an extremely poor interface.
ww520 13y ago
The new GMail Compose is a horrible horrible interface. It's bordering unusable. After looking around to disable it without any success, I started looking for alternatives. I ended up installing Thunderbird and couldn't be happier! With IMAP I can run Thunderbird on different machines and got the benefit of moving from machine to machine and still be able to access mail accounts. Thunderbird is the way to go!
nnethercote 13y ago
The window size and position is fine; I like being able to easily refer to other emails. It's what they've done to the editing that bugs me. - It encourages top-posting. To bottom-post, you have to click the "..." button, and then remove the two blank lines at the top. - Fast selection of text with shift-Pg{Up,Dn} no longer works. - Firefox's "It's All Text" add-on, which lets you drop into a real editor to edit a textbox, no longer works with it.
ChrisArchitect 13y ago
"recently"? October 2012 this started rolling out....geezus.
- curiousdannii 13y ago
  And I opted out. I believe that it was only recently enforced on everyone.
  - GVIrish 13y ago
    I'd be curious to see what the opt-out rate on the new compose UI was. I like to adopt new UI improvements but that was one of the few that I immediately hated and switched back. I wonder if this feature was liked more or less than some of Google's other UI changes. I get the feeling that Google is ignoring user feedback for some of these types of thing so they can push users towards their corporate goals. Youtube badgering people to switch to their Google+ username is a good example. Clearly a lot of people don't want to do that, yet they persist.
dmourati 13y ago
You know what I like about the new Gmail compose? Nothing.
tghw 13y ago
I find it very hard to have sympathy for someone who says "For better or worse, email takes up a large part of my work life." and then chooses to use a free, ad-supported email service. If this is such a crucial tool for you, then you should be willing to pay a reasonable price for something you're happy with instead of just complaining about it online.
- human_error 13y ago
  Maybe she's a business user and pays for it. Business version also has the same bad layout.
cpeterso 13y ago
I sometimes wonder whether Google developers only use giant screens and don't realize how much the "comfortable" whitespace on Gmail and Google+ layouts detracts from the product on smaller screens or laptops.
mebreuer 13y ago
If you're such a heavy gmail user, I'd recommend using keyboard shortcuts for linking, formatting, adding cc/bcc, etc. Once you enable them, you can easily check if you've forgotten by hitting ?, and within a month you won't have to touch your mouse (or navigate the UI) for anything save for the esoteric features.
rattray 13y ago
One trick I use for composing messages: Add "compose" as a search engine to chrome. I use the url https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&su= https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&su= , which means I type "compose", hit `tab`, and then type the subject line of the email I want to send. Makes for a nice way to get quickly to a distraction-free compose window.
frozenport 13y ago
Thunderbird
dhruvbaldawa 13y ago
Google products changes recently have been a pain to use. Damn, its so annoying coping up with these crappy UX changes nowadays 1. First of all the new Gmail inbox with the tabbed interface, it does not show you the number of unread mails in each of the tab, once you have opened a tab, the new mails count vanishes. There should at least be an option for enabling that. 2. Hangouts, it just sucks. Does not work reliably on a data connection, messages are received late. Can't discover online contacts on the UI easily. Makes it easier to chat but harder to find people to chat. I still don't get why did it replace a fully functional chat client with a half-baked piece of crap !? I don't even want to get started about Google+, the connection model is very good, but the execution is very crappy. Why is Google forcing everyone onto Google+ ?
frank_boyd 13y ago
> Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose Anxiety over some feature? If your anxiety doesn't come from the fact that you agree to the concept of the surveillance state (by using products like Gmail), then something is clearly wrong.
- scrrr 13y ago
  Yeah exactly. This should be a top comment. But apparently everyone is moving on, business as usual, as if the case were closed. And a lot of people could not access your accounts. And read your email. Apparently some UI-issue is a bigger threat to user-satisfaction. Weird.
  - frank_boyd 13y ago
    > Weird. I'd say frightening. This is HN. Readers are people who understand and produce technology. People who also understand the nefarious potential it holds, if abused. The situation just doesn't compute.
comex 13y ago
I suppose this comment comes too late to have much visibility, but as for me, I can deal with the fullscreen popup thingy. The inability to default to replying in plaintext to HTML mails is annoying, but I can deal with that, too. What I can't deal with is the broken UX for the fake HTML elements, which were previously native controls that worked fine. The To field is now a magic list of clickable email addresses instead of a regular textbox. Great, but clicking and dragging to select no longer works, typing with a selection active does not delete it, and undo no longer works. The From field (for use with multiple email addresses), which used to be a native <select>, is now... a HTML reimplementation with no additional functionality. It sort of works from the keyboard - you can press space to bring up the list, up/down to choose an item, and enter to select. But it's not quite the same (as OS X, at any rate): the list starts with no selection rather than the current item, you can't press space again to close the list, and you can't choose an item by typing. In fact, if you try to do a few things in the new compose, including typing on the list, the keystrokes pass through to the greyed-out main window and you perform random email actions. These interactions are not inherently critical: I could easily learn to live without them in general. But they work for every other like control in the OS, and they used to work here, so naturally I have and will retain muscle memory for them; the result is infuriating. I'm actually quite surprised nobody has made a user script to fix these and the other issues in the three weeks since my account was forced onto the new compose; Gmail's obfuscation makes this a little more annoying, but not too bad if you stick to modifying elements rather than directly interacting with the JavaScript. I'll probably end up writing one myself.
workbench 13y ago
How do they cope when outside the browser and multiple windows are everywhere if even a popover causes them to lose concentration
robryan 13y ago
Personally I am a big fan of the new compose, although I can also understand why it isn't right for some people. My usage would be something like 80% very short emails, 5 lines or under with maybe a copy paste block. Occasionally I will want to add an attachment or a cc. The speed and the ability to still see the email list works for me. I should also add the majority of my gmail use is done on a 27 inch screen.
dcc1 13y ago
Whoever approved this change at Google deserves to be fired, its a serious usability fuckup
agumonkey 13y ago
Composing a new message should be a lot more RESTful and first class, not a modal popup. I understand the on-the-fly desire but not at the cost of manipulation.
noir_lord 13y ago
I logged into an old Hotmail account the other day. The new interface they are using is massively better than Google's, I fell in love straight away, it's actually quite lovely and very fluid to use.
tucosan 13y ago
If you have shortcuts enabled in gmail settings you can simply hit `d` (instead of `c`) and you get a full dedicated compose window in a new browser window. So this is simply a non issue!
niuzeta 13y ago
I don't mind designers and/or developers changing their products. If they think they have something better(disregarding the contrived-ness of the term for now), they're more than welcome to provide me the new stuff. Just don't take back my old stuff which I'm familiar with. Give us the choice, damn it.
goblin89 13y ago
If email is important to you, maybe you should take some time to set up an email client. I personally am using Gmail from OS X Mail via IMAP for a couple of years now. Once you get used to the software, you can focus on reading and writing the mail—there's no distraction caused by continuous UI evolution.
airencracken 13y ago
If you don't like being subject to changes in your UI, then stop using a webapp that you have no control over. Use a sane client over IMAP and be done with it.

255 points by onelovelyname 13y ago

bnejad 13y ago

Really, anxiety? Use a native/local mail client and I'm sure it will solve your problems.

onelovelyname 13y ago
Yeah I'm kinda OCD about my email. Thanks, just found the HN thread about email clients. Checking out Airmail now.
- scott_s 13y ago
  Perhaps the anxiety is because there was a change, and not specifically this change?
- ProAm 13y ago
  I started using eM Client as a native desktop email app because of the new gMail reply feature. Feature-wise it does everything I expect/want for email. It drives me absolutely insane when a company makes an 'enhancement' and reduces usable window space. If I am writing a long email I want to be able to use the maximum amount of window space and not be crammed into something that is 25% of my monitor size.
- RDeckard 13y ago
  Link to the HN thread with email clients?
  - onelovelyname 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286127
jinushaun 13y ago
The problem with that suggestion is that the old Gmail used to have the best UX out of all email clients—web or desktop. I preferred it over Outlook or Thunderbird. Now I'm begrudgingly using it unti something better comes along and hoping Google doesn't acqui-hire them out of existence.

uptown 13y ago

Why not just hold shift when you click "compose"?

Sulfolobus 13y ago
Using shift-click to open in a new window is a fairly standard behaviour in most browsers these days isn't it? Then again I guess it wasn't intuitive in this case. Edit: I should note that the above is actually a genuine question.
- cheapsteak 13y ago
  Shift-click to open in a new window is a pattern for links. Gmail's 'Compose' doesn't look like a link, it looks like a button. Shift-clicking the 'search' button doesn't work on Google.com.
  - plorkyeran 13y ago
    > Shift-clicking the 'search' button doesn't work on Google.com. It does in pre-webkit Opera. One of the things I really miss in other browsers.
onelovelyname 13y ago
Yep, just found this out from another comment. Thanks!
thrownaway2424 13y ago
Also just shift-c if you have the keyboard shortcuts enabled.
mrtimo 13y ago
this is close to the old functionality, but not the exact same.

res0nat0r 13y ago

Click the "-><-" arrows at the top and you can go back to the old style. I like the new version and wish they'd used it long ago, I want a large box to type my emails in, not a small rectangle.

onelovelyname 13y ago
Clicking "-><-" brings me to a small chat-like box for my email. Agreed though, I like large boxes for email.

molecule 13y ago

To avoid being distracted by the gmail inbox and to have a clean composition interface, I always keep this URL bookmarked, and it still works w/ the new compose: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailto https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailt...

onelovelyname 13y ago
Oh, wow! This is pretty beautiful. Thank you.
pan69 13y ago
Or hold down Control when you click Compose.
- tjohns 13y ago
  Holding shift when you click compose is also a good one to know about. (Opens the compose dialog in a new, dedicated window.)
lingben 13y ago
not to be snarky but you know, this is 2013, not 1999. If the largest and best funded company can't get something as simple as email right, then they should just pack up and go home. Or at least fire their whole UX/UI department and start fresh. By right, I mean a clean, simple interface that you don't need to judiciously learn over dozens of hours of frustrating trial and error or by googling in support forums. The old gmail UX was fine. In fact, compared to the new compose it was the bees knees. It takes humility to be able to realize that. But Jason wants to leave his mark - unfortunately the mark is an ugly smear.
- cdash 13y ago
  Thats funny, cause they got it right for me.
- general_failure 13y ago
  Who is jason?

petercooper 13y ago

https://twitter.com/NewComposeSux https://twitter.com/NewComposeSux collects together a lot of sentiment about how great this new feature is. I kinda feel sorry for Jason Cornwell. He's been blasted with "feedback" on Twitter since it went live.

onelovelyname 13y ago
Thanks, checked it out. Impressed that Jason takes the time to respond to many of the tweets.

laureny 13y ago

My problem with that is people who write emails in full screen windows end up writing poorly formatted emails (very long paragraphs) because they are now composing their emails with 300 columns. Besides, a CEO that can't focus on writing a message unless they don't have any other distraction on their screen should probably work on their focus skills.

mrb 13y ago
"should probably work on their focus skills" Terrible argument. "Let's add more distractions to the screen, because the user should be able to focus anyway". Also, Google broke the "Best Secret Gmail Feature" [1]. In the last few months, you can't select text and hit reply to quote it anymore. Grrr [1] http://gizmodo.com/5963768/the-best-secret-gmail-feature-is-hiding-in-plain-sight http://gizmodo.com/5963768/the-best-secret-gmail-feature-is-...
- eli 13y ago
  I believe there is a Labs option in settings to turn that on.
- Monotoko 13y ago
  Really? This still works for me, I use it a lot...
onelovelyname 13y ago
Writing concise, properly formatted email is the responsibility of the writer, no matter the email client UI. It's also my responsibility to ensure I can focus and work efficiently, agreed. Whether I can do that well with Gmail's new Compose is the issue.
leepowers 13y ago
"Besides, a programmer who can't focus on coding unless they have a quiet office with with no interruptions should probably work on their focus skills" Everyone regardless of profession has a "zone" where they are the most productive. If a CEO needs to write 10 long-form emails in a day they should definitely have the best environment and the best tools for the job. It can be the difference between spending 5 minutes composing an email vs. 30 minutes.

billnguyen 13y ago

I could live with the new Compose... its the hidden/floating "Formatting Options" that really grinds my gears.

jinushaun 13y ago
A lot of people complain about the window size, but I agree. It's really the hidden options and extra clicks for me. Everything that used to be easy is now harder. And things that used to be hard are easier.

AznHisoka 13y ago

Gmail also seems to shorten the names of people you email to (at least for me). That makes me second-guess whether I'm really emailing the right person at times.

acadien 13y ago
It always shows last names for me (so long as they're available). Unless you've got some new feature, I'm guessing those contacts just don't have full names assigned. Spending some time in the "contacts" tab, cleaning things up really made things easier for me in this respect.
enochroot 13y ago
Agreed. It also is not showing the email address making it easy to mistakenly send a personal email to someone's work account and vice versa.

enochroot 13y ago

For my usage, the new compose has been a major step back. It now takes additional clicks to accomplish basic tasks (e.g. change the subject) and is less clear on what I am doing (e.g. when you cc someone and switch back to the body, the cc-ed names is now in To: line making it appear that you are sending it to them directly.) There are many other examples where the experience has become worse. I am not clear if Google truly believes the new compose is an improvement or if there is a behind the scenes reason that is making up for the decrease in usability. The new product is so obviously a step back (to me) that I am assuming it's the latter. Has anyone seen a write up that has an explanation other than "improved practicality?"

rjbond3rd 13y ago
Oh man, I wish I knew. Have you noticed this one? You're editing a wrapped paragraph, you use the right-arrow key to move, and once you're at the end of -any- line, it suddenly jumps down to the "..." (the toggle for displaying the quoted message). (Also, why hide the formatting bar...)
- fluidcruft 13y ago
  Ah, is that what's happening? All I know is I go back to proof my email before sending and I keep randomly ending up at the bottom and cursing as I scroll back.

colbyh 13y ago

I'm actually quite fond of the new compose window and I fall into essentially the same category of email user as you. My anxiety was in fact lessened a bit by the chat-like (and therefore more casual) vibe, thanks to large expanses of white space making me feel like I /must/ fill them with text. Email anxiety is no fun, maybe a native client would be the best way to ensure your workflow is optimized?

onelovelyname 13y ago
Makes sense. I do like it for casual mail - e.g., if I'm setting up a quick time to meet an advisor. But for more important things, it doesn't work well for me. I am checking out Airmail thanks to an older HN thread. Cheers!

md224 13y ago

Umm... powered by Storystrings, but features the Svbtle network's Kudos button (as "cheers")... is there a connection here, or is the former borrowing from the latter?

rajivtiru 13y ago
Using the github library here: https://github.com/masukomi/kudos https://github.com/masukomi/kudos Also from the sourcecode on this blog:  https://github.com/masukomi/kudos-->
- dcurtis 13y ago
  Interesting that someone took my code, nearly character-for-character, and "open sourced" it without permission.
  - rajivtiru 13y ago
    I was not aware of that. I just saw the licence section of the github repo and decided that was good enough. Not sure how you want to deal with the repo owner, but I can stop using the code if you want.
  - ozh 13y ago
    Client side code is open source.
    - skeletonjelly 13y ago
      But open source doesn't imply a certain license. Does it?
    - qu4z-2 13y ago
      But not Free Software

ihnorton 13y ago

Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago. Two examples: - maps: new interface is so terrible that I am actively looking for a replacement. It is painfully slow, search results are no longer displayed on the same page as the map (what?), and in general the minimalism has gone too far: the interface requires too much hunting. - gmail: Previous/Next-message buttons flake out constantly (grayed out - clicking does nothing). New formatting options are hard to use and obnoxious. And an old one that I ran in to again today: - there is no (intuitive) way to copy a URL from google search results without all of the google redirect garbage. This fundamentally degrades the world-wide web. For example, I want to email a link to a pdf. If an in-browser pdf reader is not available, then the link downloads immediately and there is no way to get the de-obfuscated link. I clicked the "share" button in hopes that this might give me the link; but no, it wanted me to share on G+.

rajivtiru 13y ago
I just figured out that last point about google URLs today. I wanted to copy/paste a link in a chat window but the google redirect url is so long it takes up the whole chat window and more! Instead of the domain.com/word I wanted.
- cheapsteak 13y ago
  If you're using chrome, you might want to check out this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-google-redirects/ccenmflbeofaceccfhhggbagkblihpoh?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-google-redi...
  - rajivtiru 13y ago
    Thank you. Installed. Exactly what I wanted.
  - 13y ago

dasil003 13y ago

The self-righteous anger about the irredeemable horror of the new Gmail compose is starting to get a bit old. First of all, it's not as one-sided as people are making it out. I was also annoyed when it first came out, but there are some clear benefits. Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win for my email workload (CTO for a 30-person company). There are some important philosophical reasons behind some of these changes that I strongly agree with: First, the small window by default encourages short emails which is always good. The OA seems to glorify long-winded CEO screeds, but by definition the vast majority of emails are going to be short (and if they're not I don't want to work with you), so it's correct to optimize for the short case. The two levels of pop-out (the second of which the OA appears to be completely ignorant of) scale up and out quite nicely. Second, the hidden headers and formatting options are encouraging simplicity in email. Most email should not have formatting, and arguably most emails don't have CCs, BCCs, or edited subjects either. Putting them behind one extra click is really not the huge usability nightmare people make out. It takes a little while to get used to and then you just subconsciously do the double click, it's not really any harder than finding them in a sea of icons, it's just that previously you were used to that sea of options. The optimization for the common case is done correctly. For me the new design (after turning on compact view) is a moderate improvement that did nothing to dilute the core value of Gmail which are the labels, keyboard shortcuts/navigation, conversation view and search/filters. Running it inside Mailplane makes it even better. There are definitely annoyances, but nothing that's even close to driving me to something like mutt, and forget about GUI clients, all of them feel like molasses compared to Gmail.

onelovelyname 13y ago
Browsing email while composing isn't part of my workflow. Definitely makes sense as a use case, a few others mentioned it as well. Agreed, for short emails (setting up mtgs, quick reviews) it works fine for the most part. Personal preference wise - I feel more comfortable sending email when I'm able to see CC/BCC, text formatting, & attachments. Understand that not everyone feels the same way.
olog-hai 13y ago
> Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win It was possible to do this before the changes rolled out. Shift-compose opened it (still does) in a new window, and you could work with it and your mailbox side-by-side.

benjamta 13y ago

I do quite like the new compose - I get a bit annoyed by the in line editor when you reply though. Feels a little inconsistent.

alexholehouse 13y ago

The "full screen mode" is like a parody of poor user interface and false promises. That said, Outlook 365 is also bloody awful in terms of usability. Say I've sent an email to a list of people, there's no way (as far as I can tell, which is all that matters really) to then copy those email addresses. You have to literally click through each one and get the address individually.

gruseom 13y ago

I agree with this post's use of the word "ruined". That's what the new Compose did. It's a usability train wreck which I'm astonished they put out at all, let alone impose it on users against their will. There are big things wrong with it and there are little things wrong with it and the sum total is frustrating and disconcerting. It's one thing to redesign a website, but email is a huge part of my daily work, and this feels as if renovators just drove a post up through the living room floor.

lingben 13y ago
Jason Cornwell is a stupendous example of the Peter Principle.
- gruseom 13y ago
  Let's not get personal. There are lots of ways this kind of thing can happen.
  - lingben 13y ago
    How is it personal to mention the individual who is responsible for the change?
    - goblin89 13y ago
      Three of four comments you left in this thread call Jason's name and attempt to discredit him, with little substantial criticism addressing Gmail UI.
      - lingben 13y ago
        You are wrong. Jason's work discredits him rather well without any need for me or anyone to resort to personal insults. As for substantial criticism of gmail's new UX, why rehash what has been already discussed over and over again here and everywhere? just google for 50+ well thought out blog posts and comments to those blog posts and google forum discussions. I'm sorry if you are a googler and feel the need 'to circle the wagons' out of misplaced loyalty. Or if you fail to see that it is pertinent to mention the person responsible for the changes out of a perverse sense of 'white knighting'. Now please downvote this to prove how intelligent you are.

notatoad 13y ago

"My messages are important, god dammit." no, they aren't. get over it. The new compose does a great job of framing your sent emails in the way your recipients are probably viewing them: quickly, and often from a small screen/window.

onelovelyname 13y ago
Great point, thinking of it that way gives some insight into why Google may have changed the UI.
- Demiurge 13y ago
  The insight being is that Google is now discarding the professional crowd who bought into their Apps for ADD teenagers. Time to look for alternatives.
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    Google Apps generates less than 3% of Google's revenues. (Probably much less.) Thus, not enough of a money-maker to influence the direction of Gmail.
Demiurge 13y ago
You can't possibly be serious? :) I can be replying to CC-style conversation and the way recipients are hidden now, I can easily make a mistake not removing key opponent when making comment to partners, a lot of money can be lost. Email is extremely important for a lot of people.
aestra 13y ago
Are you kidding me? I get emails from customers every single day, each one of those emails I read very carefully, from a large screen. Each one requires a response on my part, and if you were a customer you would expect the same. I also do a real lot of personal emailing. I have family all over the country, and email is one way we keep in touch. I can spend over an hour composing an email to one of my family members, or one of my friends. If I wanted to communicate a shorter message, I'd use SMS, but if I'm telling a longer thought email is my go-to.

ajanuary 13y ago

The shortcuts for CC and BCC help a lot with adding recipients. Obviously that doesn't do much to solve the problem of it squeezing them all onto one line when you focus out if you're paranoid about recipients.

RDeckard 13y ago

I still use the basic HTML client in many circumstances, esp. when tethering off my phone with limited reception: https://mail.google.com/mail/h/ https://mail.google.com/mail/h/ It approximates the first Ajax/DHTML interface that Gmail introduced when it launched in 2004.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
The basic HTML view of gmail has no latency hiding abilities of any kind. It is much slower for every action, and it gets worse the slower your connection is. If you have a high bandwidth, high latency link like "4G" mobile service, ordinary Gmail is almost certainly better. If course if you have something like GPRS then basic HTML is just the thing.

derefr 13y ago

I have a feeling that this new design ("docked floating div" instead of "new regular window"; "modal floating div" instead of "new fullscreen window") is an effect of Windows and OSX, in their latest iterations, pushing apps to fullscreen virtual desktops. If Gmail is the whole screen, you can't actually open a "new window"; it would open back on the primary desktop, instead of within the app's screen. Maybe Windows+OSX need to refine their "app-desktop" solutions with some limited form of window management, so that every app isn't having to reinvent its own window management just to keep its windows visible...

rsynnott 13y ago
> is an effect of Windows and OSX, in their latest iterations, pushing apps to fullscreen virtual desktops. Hrm, possibly Windows 8 does that; haven't used it. To do it on MacOS, you have to either click the strange icon in the top right, or hit the highly obvious key combination CMD-CTRL-F. Anecdotally, most people don't even seem to realise that the fullscreen thing exists, unless it's pointed out to them.

amerika_blog 13y ago

The new Gmail compose is 20 years worth of interface design learning, lost in a single poor choice.

triplesec 13y ago
google is good at that. See the latest iteration of google maps for android. Ugh.
- krakensden 13y ago
  My favorite part is that it doesn't work with the hardware search or menu buttons.

thezilch 13y ago

Clicking the "Full-screen" button on the compose modal shows the following dialogue; perhaps the author just closed the tip? Click here to exit full-screen. (Shift + click to compose in a new window.) You can set full-screen as your default using the More menu next to Discard. Likewise, the tooltip on the "Full-screen" button states Full-screen (Shift for Pop-out). And for someone that spends so much time in email, like a developer and his IDE, it might be time to improve one's efficiency with keyboard coords -- gmail shortcuts (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594) -- and use Shift+c (popup) or Shift+d (tab) composition.

lnanek2 13y ago

I really hate that thing as well. Although it isn't just supposed to be quick, it is supposed to allow referencing several other emails while you write. Which I don't do so it is terrible for me.

ams6110 13y ago

Doesn't gmail still offer imap? Use a real mail client, not a web page. Much more fulfilling in almost every way. I like emacs, because I like to be able to write emails using the same editor I use for everything else. But that's a preference. There are many good mail clients to choose from.

bcj 13y ago
Of course that doesn't always protect you from Google's whims. Google purchased the company that made the mail client I like, Sparrow.
- derekp7 13y ago
  This is actually a good thing. I've always wanted to get better at HTML5 / "web 2.0" programming. Now I have an incentive. I think I'll just go ahead and make my own web mail client, with imap support, and host it on my own server (or AWS account). Can't think of a better way to learn than to have a good project (necessity and invention, and all that).
jfb 13y ago
Exactly. A "startup CEO" for whom email is his most important tool and he's baffled by a change to his client? Switch clients.

loceng 13y ago

I just shifted my behaviours to different tools that Compose is no longer suitable for. It was a bit of an annoying shift, though in the end felt more helpful with forcing me to organize.

paul_f 13y ago

Seems there is an easy solution. Just use Thunderbird.

oulipian 13y ago

The idiotic modal window is bad enough, but the new Gmail Compose also breaks basic shortcut keys (such as Command+left or right arrow to skip to the end of a line), at least in Firefox on my Mac. And pasting text in "Plain text" mode often adds weird line breaks. Gmail used to be such a pleasure to use and I cringe to click Compose now.

newobj 13y ago

Holy cow. I'm starting to experience outrage outrage and this post may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

colmvp 13y ago
Indeed. Of all the 'usability nightmares' I've seen on the internet, Digg was by far the worst offender and deservedly so given the transition of users from Digg to Reddit. Gmail has made some odd changes (specifically compose on the bottom right) but ultimately it hasn't irked me at all. I mean, if people want a free e-mail service, they can still go to Outlook or Yahoo.

canthonytucci 13y ago

I'm not sure it's a good idea to take anyone's opinion of gmail seriously that doesn't use the keyboard shortcuts. If you really are composing so much, hit 'c', not reach all the way over to the mouse like an orangutan. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en Pop the window out and maximize it if you don't like the new interface. If you hit d, it will open the compose window in a new tab, _the whole thing_, dedicated to your awesome email that you really need to concentrate on writing. But as for the "hidden text formatting controls". Don't use text formatting; send plain text email like a decent human being. If you need to emphasize or: 1.e 2.nu 3.mer 4.ate that's why we have markdown. No one wants to see your fancy fonts and fuchsia signature. Content, yo. If it's that much of an issue, why not edit content in your favorite editor then paste it into gmail? If you're on a mac, you can format to your heart's desire in textedit (full-screen-mode-obviously) then copy it all and paste into gmail and all your stupid font size changes and bold shit will still be there. EDIT: minor changes, also imagine that the formatted stuff is the raw markdown, because I forgot that this does that. Edit 2: it's cool to hate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY

bane 13y ago

Something that gets me in a little trouble from time to time, forwarding an email includes the entire previous conversation chain...which isn't normally a problem, but gmail compresses the previous chain into a collapsed [...] box that I sometimes forget is there. So on occasion I forward parts of emails to other parties that probably shouldn't be seeing those other bits. I have to remember to expand it, then delete all the content I don't want to be included in the forward. Other comments here have pointed other gui foibles, I agree with all the maps complaints, I'm on the beta for it and switch back to classic almost 70% of the time because I can't get something done in the new one. And I won't repeat what I had to say about the absolute brokenness of the youtube interface. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314694 Even in search, lots of the nice sidebar utilities I used all the time like the search tools' time range are now buried two clicks deep. Searches give you quick options for web, images, maps, shopping and applications, but one I use several times a day, video, is buried.

qu4z-2 13y ago
Forwarding the entire thread with each email is also bad netiquette. If anyone still cares.

TallGuyShort 13y ago

I hated the feature at first as well, but I've found myself multi-tasking recently where I type multiple emails in parallel as I collect my thoughts for each. It's growing on me, but I definitely see the validity of the criticism. I do wish it was easier to get at the advanced features.

hobs 13y ago

I literally wrote dozens of complaints to google about this, obviously they go into a black hole of nobody cares, but I like their feedback feature because it says "What part of the screen is the problem" and I highlight EVERYTHING. The new youtube interface? Garbage. STEAMING GARBAGE. The new gmail interface? Sounds like you want a desktop client BECAUSE GARBAGE. EDIT: AAAAAAH SERIOUSLY HOW CAN YOU REGRESS SO BAD!

DigitalSea 13y ago

Google have taken quite a few missteps with their UI changes to Gmail and Youtube especially. I'm not a designer, but as a web developer know a thing or two about easy-to-use and decent interfaces. The new Gmail compose popup to me signifies the once predominately engineer led company is turning into a design led one. While being a design-led company isn't necessarily a completely bad thing, you need those engineers and developers guiding the designers and keeping things in check. Unrestrained creativity can be a dangerous thing. I feel the same way about the new compose popup. It's intrusive and distracting and I even emailed them about it sometime ago. I got some cookie cutter response about how Google are continually refining their products, blah blah. I would use a third party email client, but email is crucial for me and if the chances of something going wrong between the connection of the client and Google's servers are higher than that of losing an email composed within the Gmail interface itself.

Demiurge 13y ago

I don't understand, why can't they just have the 'show all options and full screen' mode as well? They had it optional for a while now, what does it cost to maintain the old composer?

encoderer 13y ago

tldr; Somebody moved her cheese.

habosa 13y ago

What gives me anxiety is complaining about minor UX changes for a class-leading free product on a site that's called "Hacker News". I hate to get all old-fogey but Hacker News has really turned into "the random opinions of people in the startup world". I learn a lot less on this site than I used to. Sorry to the OP, it's not your fault that you provided content the community likes and I have no personal issue with you.

illumen 13y ago
It's comments like yours that I don't like. Also, I don't like this comment I'm writing. Gmail had good UX, and people went to it for that. Now it has a few flaws. As people who care about UX, these flaws are worth discussing. Some 'hackers' don't do UX, which is fine. So those people may find the topic boring. But many people here are making things, and find the UX direction of the leading web email client interesting. If only to see future trends in web site development. Other reasons this is interesting is to see how they are monetising their apps more, and how they are trying to make email a worse marketing channel. Having worked at Google, it is understandable if you get annoyed when people bash your company. But that comes with being successful. So don't sweat it too much. xo

iak8god 13y ago

I accidentally deleted an email thread the other day. How? When replying in Gmail, there's a little button below the editing area that has a trash can icon and will discard a draft. There's a button with an identical icon on the same screen, just above the editing area that will delete the email/thread. I don't know much about design, but this strikes me as an extremely poor interface.

ww520 13y ago

The new GMail Compose is a horrible horrible interface. It's bordering unusable. After looking around to disable it without any success, I started looking for alternatives. I ended up installing Thunderbird and couldn't be happier! With IMAP I can run Thunderbird on different machines and got the benefit of moving from machine to machine and still be able to access mail accounts. Thunderbird is the way to go!

nnethercote 13y ago

The window size and position is fine; I like being able to easily refer to other emails. It's what they've done to the editing that bugs me. - It encourages top-posting. To bottom-post, you have to click the "..." button, and then remove the two blank lines at the top. - Fast selection of text with shift-Pg{Up,Dn} no longer works. - Firefox's "It's All Text" add-on, which lets you drop into a real editor to edit a textbox, no longer works with it.

ChrisArchitect 13y ago

"recently"? October 2012 this started rolling out....geezus.

curiousdannii 13y ago
And I opted out. I believe that it was only recently enforced on everyone.
- GVIrish 13y ago
  I'd be curious to see what the opt-out rate on the new compose UI was. I like to adopt new UI improvements but that was one of the few that I immediately hated and switched back. I wonder if this feature was liked more or less than some of Google's other UI changes. I get the feeling that Google is ignoring user feedback for some of these types of thing so they can push users towards their corporate goals. Youtube badgering people to switch to their Google+ username is a good example. Clearly a lot of people don't want to do that, yet they persist.

dmourati 13y ago

You know what I like about the new Gmail compose? Nothing.

tghw 13y ago

I find it very hard to have sympathy for someone who says "For better or worse, email takes up a large part of my work life." and then chooses to use a free, ad-supported email service. If this is such a crucial tool for you, then you should be willing to pay a reasonable price for something you're happy with instead of just complaining about it online.

human_error 13y ago
Maybe she's a business user and pays for it. Business version also has the same bad layout.

cpeterso 13y ago

I sometimes wonder whether Google developers only use giant screens and don't realize how much the "comfortable" whitespace on Gmail and Google+ layouts detracts from the product on smaller screens or laptops.

mebreuer 13y ago

If you're such a heavy gmail user, I'd recommend using keyboard shortcuts for linking, formatting, adding cc/bcc, etc. Once you enable them, you can easily check if you've forgotten by hitting ?, and within a month you won't have to touch your mouse (or navigate the UI) for anything save for the esoteric features.

rattray 13y ago

One trick I use for composing messages: Add "compose" as a search engine to chrome. I use the url https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&su= https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&su= , which means I type "compose", hit `tab`, and then type the subject line of the email I want to send. Makes for a nice way to get quickly to a distraction-free compose window.

frozenport 13y ago

Thunderbird

dhruvbaldawa 13y ago

Google products changes recently have been a pain to use. Damn, its so annoying coping up with these crappy UX changes nowadays 1. First of all the new Gmail inbox with the tabbed interface, it does not show you the number of unread mails in each of the tab, once you have opened a tab, the new mails count vanishes. There should at least be an option for enabling that. 2. Hangouts, it just sucks. Does not work reliably on a data connection, messages are received late. Can't discover online contacts on the UI easily. Makes it easier to chat but harder to find people to chat. I still don't get why did it replace a fully functional chat client with a half-baked piece of crap !? I don't even want to get started about Google+, the connection model is very good, but the execution is very crappy. Why is Google forcing everyone onto Google+ ?

frank_boyd 13y ago

> Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose Anxiety over some feature? If your anxiety doesn't come from the fact that you agree to the concept of the surveillance state (by using products like Gmail), then something is clearly wrong.

scrrr 13y ago
Yeah exactly. This should be a top comment. But apparently everyone is moving on, business as usual, as if the case were closed. And a lot of people could not access your accounts. And read your email. Apparently some UI-issue is a bigger threat to user-satisfaction. Weird.
- frank_boyd 13y ago
  > Weird. I'd say frightening. This is HN. Readers are people who understand and produce technology. People who also understand the nefarious potential it holds, if abused. The situation just doesn't compute.

comex 13y ago

I suppose this comment comes too late to have much visibility, but as for me, I can deal with the fullscreen popup thingy. The inability to default to replying in plaintext to HTML mails is annoying, but I can deal with that, too. What I can't deal with is the broken UX for the fake HTML elements, which were previously native controls that worked fine. The To field is now a magic list of clickable email addresses instead of a regular textbox. Great, but clicking and dragging to select no longer works, typing with a selection active does not delete it, and undo no longer works. The From field (for use with multiple email addresses), which used to be a native <select>, is now... a HTML reimplementation with no additional functionality. It sort of works from the keyboard - you can press space to bring up the list, up/down to choose an item, and enter to select. But it's not quite the same (as OS X, at any rate): the list starts with no selection rather than the current item, you can't press space again to close the list, and you can't choose an item by typing. In fact, if you try to do a few things in the new compose, including typing on the list, the keystrokes pass through to the greyed-out main window and you perform random email actions. These interactions are not inherently critical: I could easily learn to live without them in general. But they work for every other like control in the OS, and they used to work here, so naturally I have and will retain muscle memory for them; the result is infuriating. I'm actually quite surprised nobody has made a user script to fix these and the other issues in the three weeks since my account was forced onto the new compose; Gmail's obfuscation makes this a little more annoying, but not too bad if you stick to modifying elements rather than directly interacting with the JavaScript. I'll probably end up writing one myself.

workbench 13y ago

How do they cope when outside the browser and multiple windows are everywhere if even a popover causes them to lose concentration

robryan 13y ago

Personally I am a big fan of the new compose, although I can also understand why it isn't right for some people. My usage would be something like 80% very short emails, 5 lines or under with maybe a copy paste block. Occasionally I will want to add an attachment or a cc. The speed and the ability to still see the email list works for me. I should also add the majority of my gmail use is done on a 27 inch screen.

dcc1 13y ago

Whoever approved this change at Google deserves to be fired, its a serious usability fuckup

agumonkey 13y ago

Composing a new message should be a lot more RESTful and first class, not a modal popup. I understand the on-the-fly desire but not at the cost of manipulation.

noir_lord 13y ago

I logged into an old Hotmail account the other day. The new interface they are using is massively better than Google's, I fell in love straight away, it's actually quite lovely and very fluid to use.

tucosan 13y ago

If you have shortcuts enabled in gmail settings you can simply hit `d` (instead of `c`) and you get a full dedicated compose window in a new browser window. So this is simply a non issue!

niuzeta 13y ago

I don't mind designers and/or developers changing their products. If they think they have something better(disregarding the contrived-ness of the term for now), they're more than welcome to provide me the new stuff. Just don't take back my old stuff which I'm familiar with. Give us the choice, damn it.

goblin89 13y ago

If email is important to you, maybe you should take some time to set up an email client. I personally am using Gmail from OS X Mail via IMAP for a couple of years now. Once you get used to the software, you can focus on reading and writing the mail—there's no distraction caused by continuous UI evolution.

airencracken 13y ago

If you don't like being subject to changes in your UI, then stop using a webapp that you have no control over. Use a sane client over IMAP and be done with it.