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Google

Gmail's Next Big Redesign Starts Rolling Out Next Week (arstechnica.com) 77

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Google will finally start rolling out the Gmail redesign it first showed off last year. The company is calling the interface in the update the "integrated view" because the goal is to integrate Google's latest messaging service, Google Chat (a Slack competitor and the successor to Hangouts) and Google Meet (a Zoom competitor) into Gmail. From a report: The main section will remain mostly the same, but there are plenty of changes coming to Gmail's navigation sidebar. Currently, the Gmail sidebar houses the sections you would expect, like the Inbox, Drafts, Trash, and your list of labels. The redesign will add a second, new higher-level navigation panel to the left side of the page, letting users jump between Gmail, Google Chat, Spaces (Google Chat group chats), and Google Meet. Besides the four app-navigation options, the new sidebar also has a stack of icons at the bottom, and it's not entirely clear what they are. They look like chat profile pictures, so they could be either active chats or starred contacts. Since no one has tried this interface yet, we don't know many details.
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Gmail's Next Big Redesign Starts Rolling Out Next Week More

Gmail's Next Big Redesign Starts Rolling Out Next Week

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  • Google Chat? Who cares. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:45PM (#62227441)

    It'll be shitcanned within the next two years. Google can never commit to a messaging solution.

    • Re:Google Chat? Who cares. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @02:43PM (#62227685) Journal

      Whatever chat thing they use has worked the same way in gmail since they called it Google Talk. They can change it all they want as long as it stays the same.

    • Yeah, they can never commit to a messaging solution. Because we had Talk from 2005 to 2013, which was pretty seamlessly transitioned into Google Hangouts from 2013 until 2021, which was pretty seamlessly transitioned into Chat. Then we also had google voice, which lasted from 2009 until....well, it's still going. Even worse, we had Gmail, which only lasted from 2004 until...well, it's also still going.

      Your complaint seems to be that you don't like change, whether it's a UI redesign, or a ground up rewrite c

      • That's a simplistic view, though. They've had three main products (plus Messages), but more than a dozen other products. Voice and Messages could be integrated into Hangouts, and then they were broken back out and still haven't been integrated back into Chat. Chat still doesn't match some of the basic features that Hangouts had like multiple images in one message. And this is at least the second iteration of Chat, and it took years to go from announcement to becoming the primary platform. Maybe it sticks ar

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I'd love to know what broken process at Google results in this kind of thing. It feels like they often release stuff and then almost immediately abandon it, in terms of not doing feature updates. Then randomly they either do an update after a few years or kill it. The updates are really hit and miss, like the recent Translate app changes have made it far, far worse than it used to be. In fact Translate was perfect, as was Hangouts, and they couldn't resist ruining it.

          • Internally, Google places a premium on new products. They get the most attention when looking at promotions. There's also a very strong not-invented-here culture, so no one wants to pick up someone else's abandoned product because it's not theirs. On top of that, there is no push from management to build a unified strategy set. That freedom at lower levels was critical as Google was building up, but the lack of it now is just leaving them floundering.

            It's a broken mechanism that has doomed other companies.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              +1 insightful. What you say about Stadia reminds me of Google Plus. Big fanfare when it was launched, but then they immediately lost interest in developing it and it never really got any updates. Or Android Things, their IoT platform that never made it out of beta. Once it sorta worked they abandoned it. Or My Maps, which has some decent features and with work could be a top tier mapping tool, but which was abandoned as soon as it was released. They couldn't even be bothered to maintain the app, you have to

            • Google Workspace isn't very productive - interoperability between Docs and Slides and Sheets is poor. The UI is inconsistent and the overall experience sucks based on personal experience using this shite over the past 3 years in a corporate Engineering office of a very large company.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Hangouts was perfect. Simple app, did everything, encrypted.

      The new thing seems to be the same, only now it's part of the Gmail app so you have to make multiple taps to switch between chat and email.

    • How many more decades until my contact groups work on mobile same as on desktop?

  • New and Improved! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:48PM (#62227451) Journal

    Now, try to find the "Forward Email" button...

  • Now I have to find buttons all over again. I don't' want new anymore.

    • Re:Groan (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:57PM (#62227499)

      You think you've got problems. Try explaining the new interface to a couple of grandparents I support who are still pissed about having to switch away from the mutt client.

      I hope there's a switch to select the 'classic' view (much like the -nobeta Slashdot flag).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Welcome to the future, where the wheel is re-re-re-re-re-invented to give PHB's something to mismanage.

      • why do they have to switch away from the mutt client? I guess you are being sarcastic....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        Mutt? That's impressive. (Al)Pine is easier. Wait, doesn't mutt work with Gmail servers?

      • That was my reaction as well, now I have to spend about six months retraining every old/elderly family member and neighbour I informally support to deal with the latest deckchair rearrangement. Hopefully they'll learn it before the deckchair rearrangement after that turns up.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by istartedi ( 132515 )

      Cheer up. At least you're (probably) not driving a car where UI changes can be pushed on you. [tesla.com]

  • 1) reply at top of email works elegantly
    2) attachments always show at top

    I stopped using gmail becauase of these 2 issues and use Outlook instead. I miss gmail's anti-spam system though - much, MUCH better than M$'s

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      So don't use the web interface. Use an IMAP client instead, such as Thunderbird (or whatever).

    • I miss gmail's anti-spam system though - much, MUCH better than M$'s

      That's not true. MS has a true whitelist that allows only your contacts in your inbox. Works like a charm

      • That's not anti-spam. That's anti-everything-not-whitelisted. It doesn't have the slightest comprehension of spam vs not-spam.

        • Still works better than anything out there. It's the only way you're going to block all spam out of your inbox. Letting Google filter email allows them to read it, not that they don't anyway, but I'm not giving permission

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by devlp0 ( 897273 )
        <quote><p>That's not true. MS has a true whitelist that allows only your contacts in your inbox. Works like a charm</p></quote>

        I've literally had M$ mark replies to emails I've sent as junk.
    • I use a hosted IMAP system that has Spamassassin because Gmail's spam filter sucks. And with Spamassassin I can block spam rather than ending up with ten thousand messages in my spam folder. If it is always spam, why does it accept the email at all? If it is from an untrusted source, why accept the session?

      • If it is always spam, why does it accept the email at all? If it is from an untrusted source, why accept the session?

        Well congratulations on building yourself the first perfect spam detection system, which never has a false positive (while also keeping a reasonably low level of false negatives). Unfortunately, the rest of us peons are stuck with gmail, so we'd like the ability to go double check for false positives from time to time. But even so, I never end up with "ten thousand messages in my spam folder" because spam get purged automatically after 30 days. Though even if I did, it's not a relevant stat because I could

        • For starters, I wish I could take credit for Spamassassin. Next, with Gmail using a spam folder rather than rejecting email, a legitimate sender never gets an NDR. They have to wait until you scan your spam folder, if you ever find it. They think you are ignoring them. Also, time and quantity are independent. Ten thousand messages can be sent in a day.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by devlp0 ( 897273 )
        <quote>I use a hosted IMAP system that has Spamassassin because Gmail's spam filter sucks. And with Spamassassin I can block spam rather than ending up with ten thousand messages in my spam folder. If it is always spam, why does it accept the email at all? If it is from an untrusted source, why accept the session?</quote>

        Yeah, probably a bot more work than I'd want to take on, the convenience of someone else doing it and managing all the updates for me ... for free is a big pul
    • Maybe gmail has better incoming spam than outgoing. I now disallow any unknown incoming gmail as it is spam. And yes these emails are coming from google with full authentication. WTF happened google? I never had a problem until about a year ago and then the spamgates opened.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      I miss gmail's anti-spam system though - much, MUCH better than M$'s

      Yeah, no matter how many times I mark Microsoft Viva messages as spam, Outlook keeps putting them in my Inbox.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1) reply at top of email works elegantly

      Repeat after me, TOP POSTING IS EVIL.
      http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html [idallen.com]

  • Oh look, I'm still using IMAP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @02:05PM (#62227531)

    Still grabbing my email via IMAP to my favorite client to read my email because Google has demonstrated that they can't fucking do user interfaces. And after reviewing the purposed change, it's comforting to see that they still haven't figured shit out.

    It's fucking email Google. Like how the fuck do you fuck up email? Like you still understand search, somewhat, entry text box + button to make search thing go. The end. Most complicated thing that email needs to do is that whole threaded thing and that's actually just being fancy.

    • Like how the fuck do you fuck up email?

      You start by getting rid of folders, then making pseudo-folders that are nothing but search tags...

  • Will that still work?

  • I see we're back to rounded corners again. Great.

  • ... is it out of beta yet??

  • I'd pay extra money for an LTS version of gmail, with a UI that never changes (or at least, for ~7 years)

    The last thing I want is google project managers trying to shoe-horn their useless, dead-on-arrival projects into the only other successful projects Google has (maps, gmail). I use gmail every day for personal and professional business, I can't have this shit turn into a walmart sunday paper ad of all the various soon-to-be-cancelled google projects. Fuck that.

    I'm about to go buy a paid email account, gm

  • More sidebars I'll never use!

    • More sidebars I'll never use!

      Hopefully they'll give us a way to turn these integrated "features" off.

      I try to avoid the Gmail interface - my work mail is Gmail, although I typically access it via IMAP. However there are occasions when I have to use Gmail's sub-standard web interface... and the last thing it needs is to add more clutter, making the things I actually want to access that much harder to find.

  • The definition of insanity (Score:3)

    by geekprime ( 969454 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @03:08PM (#62227799)
    Is repeating the same action over and over, expecting a different result "This time".

  • No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rayfield k. ( 8918519 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @03:14PM (#62227833)

    Fucking stop. I don't need a new UI in Gmail, I don't need a new UI in Firefox, I don't need an android update that changes the button layout on the bottom. I don't need ads or "trending news" in my windows start menu or taskbar.

    It works already. Stop fucking with it.

    • I use Firefox ESR, and recently upgraded from 68.x to 91.x, and was pleasantly surprised that all my extensions worked, the interface didn't change much (a couple of menu items changed names), and really haven't had the usual difficulty of figuring out what the hell they did with several features or where I can get another extension that does the same thing as the one they disabled. It looks like crap (everything is a slightly different version of light grey and blocky), but that's about it.

      Before someone b

    • Coders fail to understand that at some point you reach peak usability.

      • This is false in two ways:

        1. There is no such thing as peak usability (in any meaningful, real-world sense)
        2. Coders seem to think that not only does peak usability exist, but is reached when things are most usable *for them*

        Things can be usable for you, but not someone who's colourblind or only has the use of one limb. Or maybe they don't actually have the use of their hands, but have to navigate using their voice. Maybe they're actually fully blind—gmail is a big enough product that they have to thi

        • An addendum: I don't necessarily think their update solves any of the problems I mentioned or make the UI better or more usable for ANYONE. Google has shown itself to be terrible at UI and UX many times, and I don't have any particular faith that they've gotten better at it. But I do think that trying to make interfaces better is still a thing in general, and that the complaints that are made about "changes for change's sake" are unfair and misguided.

          But given Google's track record, I can see why people wou

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Tell that to everyone. It's annoying. I used to love new stuff. Not anymore as an old fart. :(

  • Has anyone here used it? If so, how is it.

    Candidly, I'm a little tired of companies trying to be the next Slack or Teams. Zoom, WebEx, and now Gmail are trying to do it. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but for a tool I use every single day I'd prefer it do one thing extremely well vs. a stack of Swiss army knives that each do many things "Ok-ish?".

    (Bias warning: I work for Microsoft, the uncontested parade queen of feature bloat, therefore my opinion is invalid.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

      I think it's fine. If they took a little horizontal space to stop covering up my labels, it's a win for me. I never want to be signed in to Chat, though.

      For some reason they didn't move the "Refresh" button which I always expect to be on the right side of the screen by the paging. It's like the 3rd-to-5th-most-used button for me, and they couldn't even put it on an edge of the screen. It's still floating awkwardly in the middle-ish top-ish.

    • These giant companies (MS, Google, etc) spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year on UI designers. If the UI never changes all those people are no longer needed.

  • Don't see the appeal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UnCivil Liberty ( 786163 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @03:54PM (#62227995)

    I don't even use the *current* interface, I try (but don't always succeed) to hit "load basic HTML" every time I log in to my mailbox as I dislike the current interface and don't need all the extraneous stuff.
    Keep it simple (stupid)

  • Here we go again - Google starts mucking about with chat, with a very high chance it won't gain enough usage and will ultimately be scrapped.

    How about keeping it simple - an email app is for email, simple as that.

    If I want to chat, I'll start a chat app - you know, I've got a button in my task bar that starts a chat app in a millisecond.

    The thing is, the "email" side of things is done, it was done (and ruined) a long time ago, yet still, Google persists in screwing about with the interface.

    I need to prise m

  • One problem I'm ALWAYS having with Gmail is when I check my email, let's say I have 3 unread emails. So I read each one and then close the Gmail window. Then later I go back to Gmail and I see those same 3 emails are still unread. So I read them again, and then I do NOT close the Gmail window immediately. Instead I just sit there with it open for another 5-10 seconds. THEN I close the Gmail window. Then the next time I visit Gmail, those 3 emails are marked read.

    Gmail has a slowness problem where it doesn

  • I'm often stuck in places with slow internet, where Gmail barely wants to load as it is. Will it be even slower with all the extra stuff that are not email related and I don't need bolted on? Putting everything extra onto that bar, and then allowing me to disable it so it doesn't load/appear would actually be a UI improvement. Otherwise it's an unnecessary change with no benefits.

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