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Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

I usually append /h/ to the URL (/mail/h/) and get a HTML version. It can work even without JS and it has classic design with small rows that works well on my small screen. No Material Design and no huge elements with large offsets.

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I hate material design. I don't want more vacant space, I want density.

Ive always loved Japanese website layouts. Content is beauty.

I hope you have noticed that in GMail you can swtich between different "density" modes. In your Inbox, click on the cogwheel on the right-hand top corner and select the second option "Display density". The "Compact" setting is actually rather dense. Although, it mostly affects the density of rows (conversations) in your inbox and does not scale e.g. the search box input field above.

do you have any examples or resources on Japanese style web design?

It's everywhere. Simple example: Compare the differences--and even the subtleties--in information density between yahoo.co.jp and Yahoo.com.

Oh wow that is a stark contrast. yahoo.co.uk, yahoo.co.in, yahoo.co.id, etc. are all incredibly low-density as well. I have always loved the Japanese aesthetic, I wonder if any other cultures have a similar preference for websites.

Only downside being that it's common to see people walking around in Japan with their phone about a foot in front of their face.

Sounds like me. On the couch or walking around I'm at 10-12 inches away. I wonder--do people who don't prefer high information density hold their devices farther away?

It's not just Japanese, Chinese also. An article not long ago theorized some reasoning behind it: https://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so-differe...

I just tried that, and noticed promotions in the inbox, the non-HTML version separated the "primary" from the "promotions". Are they merging them to keep HTML version annoying?

The HTML version is the legacy UI from a few generations ago, before features like inbox categories were implemented.

I always assumed the behaviour and categorization was in their backend. I think its weird that the view (HTML vs javascript) is not decoupled from the model?

While that is possible it would make no sense. Why spend time refactoring code to improve a legacy UI for old browsers almost nobody is using? Legacy UI doesn't know anything about categorization because it was added later.

Actually Gmail's approach is sane. They just keep old UI working as it used to many years ago although the backend could have changed completely.

Maybe the categorisation is metadata against each email. Maybe even so they could use it without breaking the old legacy systems.

what exactly are they supposed to do in the backend?

they probably have an api in which you can limit the results by category. As the old interface doesn't have any limiter implemented, they're getting all the results back.

you can also disable categories in the newer interface and the effect would be the same (everything in the inbox)

Now this is what I call a sane UI!

this does not work for me. when I type "gmail.com" it redirects to:

    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox

where should I put the /h/?

    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/

https://mail.google.com/mail/h/

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