> “Go look at any desktop app and tell me how many have a huge fucking logo in the top left,” rants Leggett. “C’mon. It’s pure ego, pure bullshit. Drop the logo. Give me a break.”
Sure, not many desktop apps have a huge top left logo, but almost all websites do. Acting like this is a unique failing of Gmail is strange to me.
To compare, FastMail has no such logo. Just a big giant menu button that is easy to find and click, unlike the five different tiny menu buttons, only some of which are actually menus, hidden behind obscure icons and littered about GMail's interface.
Your FastMail is different than mine somehow. Mine just says "Mail" with a drop-down arrow in the upper-left corner.
Note also that, in GMail, the logo isn't a menu. It is just a link to the page you are already on. There's a hamburger menu next to it, but that just opens the sidebar.
I'm not on a machine I can access Gmail from right now, so I can't say if it appears the same size on my screen. However, just for perspective, HN's logo with name is ~122x22. I like that it stays at the top of the page and can go out of view with scrolling. Gmail's logo is always in view, taking screen space.
I think his point is that we've been trying _really_ hard over the past decade to make these web apps behave as much as possible like desktop apps. So if we're going to continue to do so then we need to break with the things like the giant fucking logo in the top left.
I'm going to admit I wasn't even aware of the current design, probably because other apps function well for my phone, and I've been using the basic HTML alternative on my desktop for many years.
Neither of those examples actually look useful, the fix is definitely more easy on the eyes though. The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake, and yes it looks 'pretty' and 'light' in the flat minimalistic way, and otherwise you'd have this dense chunk of the screen. I still think having twice (or comparing to mine, even three times more) the emails displayed on a per row basis makes scanning for things easier at a glance.
That fix actually resembles something I do to websites, ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements, siderails, wrappers, navbars, footers, etc. It's very cathartic spending a few seconds resculpting a website to reveal only the relevant content. And the end result always convinces me that less is more when it comes to web design, that regular text and simple formatting should be prioritized higher.
I also use the basic HTML view on desktop because 1) I don't want to leave the tab open with the modern UI since it inevitably uses up over a GB of ram by itself and 2) I don't want to close and reopen the tab with the modern UI since it takes O(10)s of seconds to be responsive.
I remember getting access to gmail when it was in the invite-only phase and thinking that it was absolute magic, that this was the future, and that I'd never use anything else. It only took a huge pile of JS to undo that. I use basic HTML now for gmail and I've switched a lot of what I do to fastmail.
Any way to get the dark/terminal theme on Basic HTML? I am not getting any theme option in Settings. I used to have the Terminal theme for years before the new GMail.
Standard Gmail does allow for a dark background, would like that in Basic HTML.
Not a Gmail user myself, in case there's really no setting for it there are some userstyles (to be used with the 'stylish' browser extension) that seem to put gmail into dark mode:
The amount of space that messages take up can be configured in Settings > Display density. The screenshots look like they're using "Comfortable". I use "Compact".
I think it is almost a non feature that gmail provide a choice of white space. As though a manager was too magnanimous in deciding so told his underlings— surprise! You’re all right! Let’s give the users a choice! Meanwhile the average user clicks whatever word they think is best and never looks at it again. Nothing solved. I really wish they just let the nerd who started gmail be a dictator for life. Don’t fuck with success.
What's the easiest way to get access to the basic HTML view? I used to be able to switch to basic HTML following the link in the footer, but it's gone now.
It's mostly something I do after discovering a useful site I'll likely be revisiting in the future, sites with appreciable content but are otherwise marred with poor visuals. When you've been doing it for years revisiting the same sites, I think it pays for itself in terms of delivering more presentable information.
Addons for Firefox include Aardvark, (generic) Element Hiding Helpers, Lizard, Nuke Anything. You press whatever shortcut is assigned and highlight the element your cursor is over (or highlighted text/section), an interface pops up, you specify the domain filter (twitter.com), and filter by attribute (import-prompt), OK, and the rule "twitter.com##.import-prompt" now forever hides twitter's annoying import flex module.
The addons for Firefox I've seen are mostly GUI-based. An exception is Nuke Anything, which I believe can be done through keyboard and context menu options.
I’m not that user, but you can set a key bind to the uBlock element picker so you can quickly select and create rules all graphically. It’s like a scissor through a newspaper, not a lot of work at all!
> The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake
Careful when complaining about spacing - when it comes to text, spacing is a functional decision, yes it will make it look pretty when done "right" but this is often also because it is more legible - function and aesthetic are the same when it comes to typography.
Similarly others have complained about the spacing left and right (i.e it being excessively padded to be centered), but this is also for legibility - the very same reason newspapers have columns and not full width text.
the very same reason newspapers have columns and not full width text.
Newspapers also do not have 6-inch margins on either side.
Another irritation of mine is fixed-width sites. If I'm making my browser window wider, chances are I'm trying to widen the text, not expect it to stay in a narrow column in the middle with useless space on either side. If I wanted it narrow, I would've narrowed the window.
Typography often takes into consideration the width of the text explicitly and how it influences the style and tone of the document. While I don't imagine that everyone is doing this, it is a thing. The nearest analog I think of is maintaining the aspect ratio of an image. You might still understand the piece of media if it's not in its original format, but that was not the intent.
It's not for legibility. GMail has plenty of padding to be readable even when set to "compact" density. If there's any functional justification at all, it's about being touchscreen friendly, even if you don't have a touchscreen.
I don't use gmail so I'm surprised at how low the (useful) information density is, in either version.
Extrapolating from that screenshot, it looks like that window could hold about a dozen emails. I use the no-frills Mail.app on macOS and a window that's takes about half or two thirds of my screen, and fits 40 emails. In my case I also get to see the "To" address in the list, helping me quickly triage the emails that are not sent to me alone.
Do people really prefer low density interfaces these days?
Removing the visual clutter is certainly an improvement but desktop apps have the menu bar where they can put all the actions, whereas a web app is more limited: it's either a mess of buttons or hamburger buttons which often end up a bit clumsy.
I blame mobile, and the desire to reuse design (and often code) between devices. Touch interfaces need big things because phone screens are small relative to fingers. On desktop, such interfaces are unbearable to me; I hate them to the point I actually installed Stylus extension and now hot-fix websites I visit frequently with quick CSS work, to increase information density (and by increase I mean double or triple).
I think its some stupid side-effect of mobile environments, where for touch interaction, stuff needs to be big and hence low density of information.
New version of gmail is so much worse for me on PC - lower density, much slower to work with on Firefox (I ain't switching to Chrome due to this, no thank you).
Something akin to Microsoft putting that idiotic (sorry but I can't be polite with this specific topic) mobile-like interface into Windows 10 for desktops. Unifying what shouldn't be unified.
I'm curious if the HN crowd knows how one maintains such extensions sustainably...
Just by glancing at it, I'd imagine that it's tightly coupled with the markup and styling of Gmail. If Gmail changes anything about its layout, the extension has to change, too. Does this mean that your extension is periodically broken (and you have to be available to fix it after every layout change/tweak) or is there a better way (e.g. some Gmail-specific APIs or some such)?
Jeez, I just googled their name and it's just page after page of blogspam written either by someone in their company or some block chain blog. "oh you mean I can buy carbon credits AND make money?"
Oh man, I thought the same thing! I though to myself "all that electricity needed to maintain the blockchain, and they want to handle climate change?!"
No, not if they expressly are finding a renewable source of electricity. Say they have enough rooftop space to install solar panels to cover their needs (don't nitpick that; just say it is true).
Yes, this company could have bought the solar panels and then sold their electricity on the market, perhaps displacing some conventional energy source, but that isn't their business.
Their business is this crypto market for carbon credits; they have a need for power, they fill that need with a renewable source.
I think that was even more telling, my experience with it was awfully reminiscent of how some social media are ordering their news feed by some biased weight instead of the default chronological order.
I'd actually use that clutter around gmail and I have my settings on for the densest text, so this isn't an extension for myself or everybody. That G-mail logo on the upper left on the screen needs to go though. He's right about that.
Cool, but it would have been nice to see that effort go to improving a non-Google mail reader (Thunderbird, whatever) instead of furthering Chrome's dominance.
Most of this seems like a perpetual problem for UX designers. Feature creep doesn't (usually) happen in a vacuum. Each feature exists because somebody somewhere wanted it. OK, sometimes it happens because a mucky-muck wanted to roll out a new product release, for income or attention, but that's not GMail's line, since they make their income from ads rather than sales.
I honestly can't tell you whether the decluttering here is better or worse for the average user. It's the kind of thing that's hard to measure, and the aesthetic judgment is subjective. I can say that desaturating some of the widgets looks nice: I myself have to constantly fight with my team who wants to draw attention to their new feature by giving it a color pop.
But I myself don't feel that GMail's UX is so radically broken that it's worth the effort of installing a browser-specific extension, thus binding me to that browser and requiring me to re-install on every device.
This change doesn't even touch Inbox. It removes the surrounding "chrome" and adjusts the whitespace. That's not nothing as it focuses the UI, but Inbox was far more than that. Not that I don't appreciate the time invested.
The design was welcome, to be sure. But there were far more important features to getting email out of the way. Automatic, inline message grouping by travel, priority, sender, etc; Advanced snooze that included "snooze until delivery date" for packages; Infinite Snooze, which was great for bookmarks with notes; Big, clear done / delete buttons; No ads - not that I expected that to last.
It's been long enough that I've begun to forget the other features since I switched back soon after the announcement, but moving back to gmail has been jarring. The old design is confusing, yes, but I can manage as I'd used it for a decade prior. The design was essential, but mostly icing.
Interesting. Always had the feeling that Inbox could be the ONE interface to all (main) Google products but somebody had stopped the train on the way to this idea. Seems I was right about my feelings...
I do inbox zero so I am not usually looking at the email list, but to the actual emails. I also started using larger fonts as I am now 40. So, the amount of space the left and the top frames take up is quite a lot. I haven’t tried this but hopefully this can fix that.
Thank you! The "moving backwards up the list of emails" might be just the thing I need to clear out my email backlog and stay on top of things. I didn't know gmail could do that.
You're being downvoted for being off topic perhaps, but in years of looking at threads like this I'd never seen that
tip. And not using the UI at all is a viable approach.
Incidentally I must be on an old UI, my gmail looks nothing like that. Either version looks harder to navigate than the classic one.
To me fixing gmail would mean fixing in-message quoting, so that it actually works, and adding some option to discourage top-posting in e-mail conversations that obviously don't use this style of responding.
Bonus points if the gmail webmail would re-flow quotations correctly and not break the lines inappropriately.
Hiding some icons fixes nothing. It's just a style chnage.
So very relaxing. A bit like the night time writer modes for editors.
Also it's interesting to see this guy's history. Many of his ideas were great but failed to sustain themselves as-is. But he keeps coming back with other great ideas.. I hope he gets something out that gets a nice and long spot.
I would prefer an alternative web client that talked to the Gmail API, because the normal UI is not only unusable, it's too heavy and slow and that extension doesn't fix these problems.
> he did a short stint at Facebook working on Messenger, before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works.
Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC): a digital asset, or electronic certificate, that
is stored on the Ethereum blockchain in the Nori application. One CRC represents
one tonne of CO2-equivalent heat trapping gas that has been removed from the
atmosphere and stored in an industrial, terrestrial, subsurface, and/or aquatic reservoir.
Would you please not break the HN guidelines when posting here? This comment broke at least three:
Don't be snarky.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Blockchain startups may be tedious, but not as tedious as blockchain threads on HN. Let alone blockchain climate change threads.
Your comment probably felt like a harmless dig when you posted it, but snark and indignation get the most upvotes, so this subthread ended up sitting at the top of the page, collecting mass, emitting fumes, and generally being off topic. Had we seen it we'd have marked it off topic, but we didn't see it until 2 days later, at which point moderation makes no difference.
It's for buying and selling carbon offsets. Which in the grand scheme of "crypto for X" is not bad, since it's at least a thing that's actually exchanged in an existing market.
Farmers can sell their carbon credits to fund things that need to happen on their farm, to businesses that need to purchase carbon offsets because they're producing more than they should be.
Could it be done without crypto? Almost certainly. But I think the article's flyby description gives the thing room to sound much sillier than it really is.
> Could it be done without crypto? Almost certainly. But I think the article's flyby description gives the thing room to sound much sillier than it really is.
The particular irony here is that blockchains are a giant waste of energy compared to non-blockchain approaches, so of all the things to say “Do X with blockchain” about, “Reduce carbon emissions” is an odd choice.
If it were me I’d think you’d want to put I extra effort to not have a blockchain based solution, but I have a feeling the idea cane about from “what can we do with a blockchain” rather than “what is the best solution to this problem?”
So I am on record around here as kinda thinking that cryptocurrency people are worse than coal-rollers with the cavalier garbage they do to our planet, but it's worth pointing out that a "blockchain" need not do that--cryptocurrency needs to do that because it has to be "hard" to create some kind of phantom scarcity and therefore rarity and therefore perceived value for the Ponzi schemers at the top of them to sell to the next sucker in line.
Blockchain multi-party verification can be fairly fast when you take out the grift. Well, that grift. The buzzword-solution-searching-for-a-problem grift, as you note, is still very much in play.
> The particular irony here is that blockchains are a giant waste of energy compared to non-blockchain approaches
Not all blockchains are proof-of-work. Almost all modern implementations (particularly for federated blockchains like OPs) use more power-efficient consensus algorithms.
(I don't have an opinion on whether blockchains are the best solution to their problem, but a decentralized marketplace for carbon offsets does sound compelling.)
Why does the marketplace need to be decentralized? The NYSE is centralized, but that doesn't seem to inhibit trading. The EU has a carbon cap and trade system (ETS) and while there is a fair bit to criticize about it, I don't think its centralized nature is one.
i think having it be decentralized is a good way to build trust and transparency. It also protects one against the marketplace-operator acting against the interests of or favoring any one party.
Consider how Amazon now exploits its marketplace for its own benefit by analyzing which products are doing well and making their own versions of these products. So, there is potential for the marketplace-operator to become non-neutral.
I'm not sure how the NYSE started, but i suspect there are financial regulations governing its operations. These regulations take time to get established, and so in new fields having a decentralized marketplace that can guarantee neutrality (collectively) of the operators feels worthwhile.
Does that make sense?
i'm kinda on the fence myself, and trying to present the argument in-favor.
ooh that's a good question. I'd think of that on two levels:
1. a meta-level: all designs of systems have tradeoffs. There is no perfect system. So, by decentralizing we may have to tradeoff the ability to halt trading, in exchange for getting more openness, transparency and neutrality of the marketplace or its operators.
2. specific design: i think there may be ways of achieving this even in a decentralized fashion.
Many use-cases of smart-contracts (i.e. a program run in a blockchain transaction) have envisioned the need for having an "oracle" or external data source. For example, flight-delay insurance contracts (e.g. on etherisc.com) that payout in case of a flight delay would need to get information from some flight-info APIs. To serve this need, there are projects for building decentralized-oracles (e.g. https://chain.link).
Similarly, one can imagine the SEC creates an oracle through a system like ChainLink. This oracle has an api that indicates whether some asset's trading status is ON or OFF. Smart-contracts running the marketplace/exchange on the blockchain have code that reaches out to the SEC oracle before proceeding with a transaction to exchange or sell some asset (i'm describing this synchronously, but it could be done asynchronously).
Okay, but you'd still have to compare it with the scheme used by certificate transparency, which also builds a public, verifiable log. I'd be pretty confident in an organization that does it that way.
That's true. I did quickly skim their website, figuring if they were doing a particular efficient blockchain that it would be the kind of thing they'd want to brag about. Didn't see anything, but also didn't go digging into the whitepaper.
I know a guy who runs something similar, a marketplace where people can buy syndication rights (say, you run a rural TV station and want to buy rights to broadcast _Saved By the Bell_ or something). The whole thing is based on blockchain. It's doing extremely well, contracts and negotiations that used to take weeks can now be done in seconds.
There's no cryptocurrency angle, which I believe means that there's no gross energy expenditure, although I'm not an expert and never asked.
I'm honestly curious if blockchain alone improved their process that much. Could it be they had crappy processes that got overhauled with the blockchain adoption?
This is probably the case. I'm betting the company built a marketplace that allows stations to purchase distribution rights directly for a fixed price, as opposed to needing to call some salesperson and deal with weeks of verbal negotiation.
I mean, I am starting a company that's using AR and machine learning to enable remote medical diagnostics for climate change, all on the blockchain, for rural America and the third world. But on the other hand, I'm not. Unless you're investing. In which case I am.
Well first of all, blockchain technology has become so overhyped that its bound to draw scoffs even if the business case were legitimate. "Blockchain" anything almost sounds like a joke at first pass these days.
But in this specific instance, it is even more ridiculous as one of the biggest concerns surrounding blockchain technology is that it is insanely inefficient in terms of energy usage, and concerns have been raised about how widespread usage of blockchain technology could exacerbate climate change.
It's sad to see YT community members being so ill informed. Proof-of-Stake is coming in leading blockchains such as Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, etc. This is changing. It's a new technology it takes time to improve. Anyway, do your homework before commenting on things you don't understand.
There have been so many proposed algorithms on this idea over the past years, yet here we are, still waiting. For now, it's either vaporware or it has a security flaw.
Or, like traditional proof-of-work mining has become, it will coalesce into the very thing it was meant to remove: control by a few powerful and centralized authorities.
Regardless, blockchain is not going to help solve climate change. A distributed carbon credit market is not going to solve climate change.
I want proof-of-stake to work. I really do. But I just don't believe it can anymore...
> There have been so many proposed algorithms on this idea over the past years, yet here we are, still waiting. For now, it's either vaporware or it has a security flaw.
There are several proof of stake networks running right now. Care to elaborate on the security flaws?
The use of proof-of-waste for cryptocurrency, which allows people to get rich by consuming extremely large amounts of electricity, is one of the worst inventions for the environment since CFCs and tetraethyl lead.
It's sad to see YT community members being so ill informed. Proof-of-Stake is coming in leading blockchains such as Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, etc. This is changing. It's a new technology it takes time to improve. Anyway, do your homework before commenting on things you don't understand.
The word “Addressing” has a connotation in this usage context that the subject is focusing their attention on what they see as broken or deficient. The trick is that it’s relative to the subject or speaker’s point of view.
To address a problem is about intent rather than action. Usually it's an acknowledgement that a problem exists and a potential solution to that problem. You don't have to actually act on the problem or solve it just present a possible solution.
For example I could address climate change with blockchain by suggesting that people don't use bitcoin. Even if I continue to use bitcoin this could be considered addressing the problem.
Sure, not many desktop apps have a huge top left logo, but almost all websites do. Acting like this is a unique failing of Gmail is strange to me.