You know, Google really did a great job with the gmail UI. Truly it's awesome.
But I'm starting to think it was a fluke, because holy fuck, browsing their "forums" is so painful.
But I'm starting to think it was a fluke, because holy fuck, browsing their "forums" is so painful.
It was great in the beginning indeed, but recent changes are also very disappointing. Well, they didn't touch the mail much yet, but the changes to built-in Google Chat were just bad.
I have got several thousand chat threads over the last six years, with many threads in excess of a thousand lines long - so I've used it quite a lot.
I really didn't like the changes they made as they went from the old GChat to Hangouts:
- probably the worst is that they stopped breaking down the conversation in separate chat sessions: now you get a neverending scroll, so there's no easy way to tell when the yesterday's discussion ends and today's begins;
- what's even worse, this scroll loads in small pieces. Before I could open a 800-lines long conversation and Ctrl+F the words I needed - not anymore, now I'd have to scroll through it all;
- the conversations are still separate in the history, but if I click on one, I get to its end, and actually look at the beginning of the next one. If I want to re-read the conversation from the very beginning, I have to either scroll up or actually select previous conversation. No biggie, but still annoying;
- less text fits in the new chat window;
- there's no timestamp by default now (they only show up on mouseover only).
Okay, now, what DID they add? Hundreds of cartoonish emoticons and user avatars instead of names.
Guys, I'm not a 7-year old, could you please take away that bright plastic rocking horse and give me back the tool that wasn't so shiny, but worked really well?
I'm sure there are better chat clients; but what was really awesome is that GChats were integrated with GMail, so I could search them both at once. That's a great help if you hold half the conversations in emails and another half in a chat - I won't have that with a separate chat client.
But enough ranting. Any pointers for a website/app/service that'd handle chats and email at once, like GMail used to? Preferably online or with a sync option, because having access to your whole history from anywhere is really great.
- what's even worse, this scroll loads in small pieces. Before I could open a 800-lines long conversation and Ctrl+F the words I needed - not anymore, now I'd have to scroll through it all;
- the conversations are still separate in the history, but if I click on one, I get to its end, and actually look at the beginning of the next one. If I want to re-read the conversation from the very beginning, I have to either scroll up or actually select previous conversation. No biggie, but still annoying;
- less text fits in the new chat window;
All of this increases their time-on-page numbers.
Could you please tell me what you like about it? I have very mixed feelings leaning towards unpleasantness (where the hell is CC and why does it take more than one click?).
Their hierarchy of boards & topics is confusing, too. There are two different types of hierarchy, but why? They are all clickable and filterable, yet they are almost visual opposites of each other [2].
These are just two, to me, glaring things. The UI is also crazy busy for something I would have though Google would have distilled and simplified.
I don't know what CC is.
edit: OH, I get it
I like Gmail because of the threaded view. It's old hat nowadays but the fact remains that the threaded view is quite simply leagues better than old-school email inbox views.
I'm not saying it can't be improved, but it's a very good ux. I even like the new compose, once I got used to it.
As for CC... why do you need it? Just add the address to the "To:" field. The result is the same. The only time you need to put it in a different field is for BCCs, and quite frankly I imagine most don't use that feature.
It's true that to a mail server routing the email, yes, the result is the same. That doesn't mean the distinction is pointless, as it carries semantic information useful to the human recipients. The difference between To: and Cc: is the difference between 'I'm talking to you' and 'I'm talking to X, but you can/should listen in (and I want X to know you can listen in)'.
(To be clear, I actually have no problem with the gmail compose window's implementation of cc and bbc - it does only take one click).
I'm just saying, the original Gmail UI guys were inspired by good email clients. :)
No consolation that some other Google products, such as G+, are even worse.
Are you kidding? It fills you with awe? Really?
Critique aside, that's to well worn now, some like it some don't, but what word would you use for child birth, Niagara Falls, the launch of a space rocket, a tsunami, a nuclear explosion, or a cure for cancer?
Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, people use the word "awesome" to describe things that don't literally fill you with awe? Or are you still stuck in that phase of growth where you think you've found enlightenment and feel the need to nitpick everyone around you because you haven't yet grasped that language constructs are mutable?
I mean, I can use it in the literal sense: Your pedantry and sour-puss-ness are awesome. I am in awe of how much of a pedantic sour puss you are.
But then again you might jump on me because sour-puss-ness isn't a word. I'll be sure to go read my Funk & Wagnall's from cover to cover before I post on HN again.