Can we just agree to throw wads of cash at Thunderbird so that we can have an e-mail client that isn't dependent on Google's whims (both for good and for ill)? I like some of the features of Gmail (i.e., labels), but I'd prefer that we as a society try to move back to a more provider-agnostic internet.
Very excited for this. When "Inbox" came out I was excited for a lot of the modern amenities but it was so dumbed down from gmail and missing a lot of core features, that ultimately switched back to using the classic Gmail interface, even though it hasn't received much love in a while.<p>Since they have a separate Inbox product, hopefully they will be able to refresh it with all the new modern bits, without removing any of the advanced power user functionality we have all come to love and relay on.
We use G Suite at work and I'm not a fan of the new calendar design. Material design works nicely on a tiny phone screen but on a 32" 4k display it just seems like there's a lot of unused space. That's probably the ridiculous size of the panel, to some degree, but frankly, I just don't think Google's done a great job of designing desktop user interfaces that aren't search.<p>For folks interested in avoiding your email provider also being an advertising company, I switched to Fastmail* last year. They've got gmail import and full IMAP push support (something gmail canned years ago).<p>I'd also love to see other hosted alternatives to gmail. I looked into rolling my own on EC2 but decided I didn't have the expertise to do it "right"<p>* <a href="https://www.fastmail.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastmail.com/</a>
Sorting columns would be nice! That's about the only missed feature.<p>I hope they don't add more dead white space like they did when rebranding from the old blue design to the current red.<p>Edit: oh god, I read on that article they want to merge Gmail and Inbox and the white space in Inbox is freeking horrible. Why? Why do this? I had looked at Inbox briefly and thought to myself no way. I can see 8 email in Inbox and 21 in Gmail today. One email in inbox has embedded spammy ad pictures that absorbs 3x the normal amount of space.<p><a href="https://inbox.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://inbox.google.com/</a>
I'm excited to discover which current Gmail features Google will deem surplus in this re"design". That seems to be the trend when a new look is rolled out.
I'm looking forward to the redesign, but if you're a power user and want vim/emacs-like productivity in email, it's going to be very hard for Gmail to beat Superhuman (<a href="https://superhuman.com" rel="nofollow">https://superhuman.com</a>). Ping me if you'd like to get bumped to the top of the access queue. Email in profile. Not affiliated with them; just a happy user.
If this is true I wonder whether this kills Inbox. I prefer Inbox over the Gmail interface and use it exclusively. I have an iPhone X and 5 months later, the Inbox app has not been updated for the iPhone X screen, I think it's the only Google app I have that hasn't been.
Update: A Google spokesperson has provided the following statement (emphasis included): “We’re working on some major updates to Gmail (they’re still in <b>draft</b> phase). We need a bit more time to <b>compose</b> ourselves, so can’t share anything yet—<b>archive</b> this for now, and we’ll let you know when it’s time to hit <b>send</b>.”<p>As quoted on: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/google-is-about-to-launch-a-gmail-web-redesign/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/google-is-about-to-launch-...</a>
Just when I needed just a slight push to finally migrate away from Gmail to own mail server. Thanks Google! :)<p>On a brighter side, basic HTML version still works very well in Gmail, hopefully that won't be broken with the redesign.
I really hope they don't get rid of the option to turn conversation view off. For me, conversation view adds in a lot of clutter that makes it difficult to see the message, plus lots of inline and collapsed-by-default content.<p>I'd really like the ability to see what emails I've replied to (with conversation mode off), but pessimistically I'd expect we're getting mostly unneeded aesthetic changes and functionality regressions.
I wonder what Inbox would do? I have been using Inbox though it is not doing great! Sometimes i need to switch to the Gmail in order to get things done.
For me the only thing that needs to be fixed is that when my mouse ever so briefly glances over a contact in the Hangouts pane as the cursor traverses to the other monitor, that contact's card pops up and stays up indefinitely, looking at me. If it could never do that I'd be happy.<p>Otherwise the gmail interface doesn't really need any improvement. It's email. there's not much special about it.
Prepare yourselves for <i>even more</i> whitespace and <i>even larger</i> typefaces. It's the Material Design Way.<p>(Let's not forget the current Gmail had a big design update that added lots of whitespace a few years ago.)<p>That update from a reader who witnessed a Googler dogfooding the new UI was interesting:<p>'“It was a hybrid of Gmail and Inbox,” he told me. “The left-side column was more like inbox.google.com and the right side was an <i>enlarged version</i> of Gmail.'<p>Let's just hope they don't repeat the Google News redesign; forcing the content column to be fixed width. I'm looking at the new Material Design Google News right on a 40" 4k screen, the column with actual news items is like 30% of the width of the screen:<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/EQY8Q" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/EQY8Q</a><p>Edit: Eeek. I just tried inbox.google.com. It behaves pretty much like the new Google News in terms of layout. I think this is what we can expect.