Modify new Gmail interface to be more like classic Gmail | Hacker News Reader

Modify new Gmail interface to be more like classic Gmail

dedoimedo.com

54 pointsseverine33 comments

Is there really much more innovation to be had with email ux? Perhaps I'm getting old, but I'm getting frustrated with having to learn new interfaces that don't improve my experience.

Each new version of Android or iOS changes the UI in small but useless ways. I mean, why change the way the clock app works in Android so frequently.

It's not worth the cognitive overhead of relearning how to do simple. What is driving this? Is it that a bunch of engineers have what are essentially bullshit jobs, or do companies feel they need to keep fresh or die?

My parents are about to hit 70, and these types of changes for the elderly are even more stressful. Why should they need to relearn how to use an email interface?

We need software with super long term support release that just get bug fixed for ~20 years. Redesigning the UI for essential every day things is wasting time. Plus, unless you are 18 years old the even worse Snapchat style UI antipatterns create a huge impediment to doing things that should be dead simple.

> We need software with super long term support release that just get bug fixed for ~20 years.

So much this. You can have it though, by sticking with stable open source that no PM looking to make a mark can redesign every year. I've been using mutt for email since the mid 90s, no unnecessary interface changes.

In 1997 I set up my very non-technical mother (now almost 90) with a very simple system built around FVWM (very customized configuration), mutt (again customized for simplicity) and emacs (for email editing, custom keybindings). To this day she uses the exact same setup every day. Nothing has changed and nothing can change, so nothing new to confuse her.

> Each new version of Android or iOS changes the UI in small but useless ways. I mean, why change the way the clock app works in Android so frequently.

I thought the same, till I thought about it from a notch perspective. They moved it so that you could fit the system icons with a large notch like the Pixel 3 XL has. The clock was moved on the other side simply to make room for this.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the clock in the system tray. Sorry, I completely agree with the clock app. I would wake up every morning and the UI would be different. It definitely drove me insane because I would forget how to snooze while I am groggy in the morning and end up sleeping in longer than expected because I swiped the wrong way or whatever.

I’m not particularly looking forward to the day I’m forced into the new interface. It’s slow as hell on Firefox and is continually dropping keyboard shortcut events unless I type each. one. slowly. and. deliberately.

Yeah it takes like 20 seconds to load on Firefox.. Whats they deal with that; Is that on purpose to force people to use chrome?? I'd rather drop gmail, but I'll need to change my email for like 100 accounts which will be a massive pain...

Actually is there any way around that?

Enable forwarding to the new address. Update email contacts and accounts as needed.

Be sure to check that forwarding exists on your new provider, just in case you'll have to do the same when switching again.

Better yet: buy your own domain and use a service that allows you to use it.

You can set up gmail to forward messages to your new address.

> I’m not particularly looking forward to the day I’m forced into the new interface. It’s slow as hell on Firefox and is continually dropping keyboard shortcut events unless I type each. one. slowly. and. deliberately.

Use an alternate client, like Thunderbird or mutt on desktop and K9-Mail on Android.

I use FastMail at home, but we have G Suite at work. The worst is when opening a new message from a mailto: href, I used to be able to start typing as soon the text box appeared. Now I often end up sending a (nearly?) blank message, which I luckily have always caught with the undo feature (but still!). I don't know if it's catching my return after the greeting and triggering the send button or what, but it's annoying!

I'm just using Gmail in basic HTML mode now. It's blisteringly fast and there's no extra nonsense.

The problem is Gmail forces you to switch to the new interface. It doesn't stick with the HTML version, which, no surprise, is superior to the new dumpster fire.

Try the Basic HTML view linked at the bottom of https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049.

It's is web 1.0, but it sticks, and it is fast.

I have tried that, but Gmail forces me back to use the new interface.

You can bookmark the html version. Also whenever main gmail is loading, there is a link to load the html version in the corner.

You can set it as the default and it should save.

Wow ure right.. This is great!

It's amazing! Too bad they'll switch it off one day.

The font was probably the most jarring thing to me - it really is much less readable than the old one.

Google's started to use Product Sans in Google Maps on Android too, and it's just as bad there.

I use the basic HTML interface, so I almost stopped reading at "The new interface loads more slowly than before (especially in Firefox)".

My takeaway: nice info for helping friends & family, but I'm staying on basic HTML.

Just move to fastmail. I mean yes, the gmail load screen sucks, but the Gmail compose window is awfully slow too.

Fastmail does imap push in an ios compatible way, and their web client is fast and works.

Fastmail's import process for Gmail is stupid - it asks you questions it should already know the answers to - but it worked and ported my 5GB mailbox a week ago.

The speed issue is even more pervasive -- compose, but also labels (if you use L to label emails a lot, you have noticed it).

Two questions, if you do not mind --

(1) Does FastMail offer threaded email conversations? I cannot stand the left/right pane display of email UIs like Outlook (or Apple Mail).

(2) Does FastMail offer labels and filters that come close to those in Google Mail?

I am another disappointed by the new Gmail UI. A quick list off the top of my head: Compose and pause buttons are huge (and I never use Pause), side bar got much larger, new font is less readable, "Compact" density option is still less dense than previous design, notifications are at the bottom now, and it's slow.

I've disabled: Smart replies, nudges, hover actions, Smart compose, icon buttons, multiple inboxes, etc.

I just want a simple clean interface. I'm going to revert the font through the details in this article and then just hope Google UI teams start to come to their senses. So many broken UI's in their products in the last year.

After the new interface was brought out, I found that the most jarring thing was how the left-hand-side menu collapsed down left to a set of meaningless icons, then when you hovered over it, it expanded right to cover important details of the actual emails.

Either I disabled it using some obscure setting or Google fixed it within a few days. I wonder if they knew people weren't going to like the update, and intentionally added temporary extra annoyances with the goal of acclimatizing users to the smaller and more profitable annoyance of the "AI" autocomplete and autorespond. The cynicism comes from having been a Facebook user.

EDIT: typos

I immediately disabled the “smart completion”. It was wrong 100% of the time so far, and it’s just going to ruin my train of thought, or worse, train me to say what it thinks I should say.

Can someone make the opposite and make it more like Google Inbox?

99% of the complaints I've heard about the new Gmail haven't been about the interface, they've been about the speed.

I know it is old-fashioned, but you could always set up a mail client like Thunderbird to talk to Gmail and keep a consistent UI.

This new interface finally pushed me to use FastMail. The interface is way better, and I can use my domain name. No more Gmail.

All I want is one line per email interface. I refuse to use an entire screen width for the gmail window. The classic had a "comfy" (or whatever it was called) interface that did that. If the new ux can be forced to do resizing of the columns I would be happy again with gmail.

I dislike everything Google. Not only for this reason but for privacy reasons. So I confront this by using firefox klar and duckduckgo.com and gmx.com for my user combo.

Basic HTML mode is the way to go.

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