The New Gmail (the horror!)

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Frickin' sucks.

I have an old PC that I use when I'm home. We don't use it for anything fancy, but it holds our pictures and allows me to surf and maintain some spreadsheets.

the new Gmail takes a solid 2 minutes to load (I can't revert anymore), after it just sits there with a blank screen for the first minute and 59 seconds. AND I CAN FINISH MY OWN THOUGHTS, I immediately turned off the "can I finish that for you" option that reminded me of clippy.

Any way to revert this? Hacks? I'd hate to have to use my iPad for gmailing at home. I like to have a keyboard and all the other features you don't have with a pad or phone
 

DJnVa

Dorito Dawg
SoSH Member
Dec 16, 2010
53,837
Sometimes when it’s loading there’s a link in bottom right about reverting to HTML version. I click that. When that loads then, should you desire, you can click to new version which loads faster.
 

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
Lifetime Member
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Interesting. There is something to be said for that view.

I'll make that a bookmark -- right now when I close and reopen the browser the New Gmail loads ok (not great, but not like on a fresh reboot), but this will be a quality alternative.

Thanks!
 

McBride11

Member
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Jul 15, 2005
22,109
Durham, NC
I strongly dislike this new gmail. I wish they still had the revert option, now all you can do is change 'display density'. The cartoon look is strange, the pre made responses are odd, and it is much slower. And for some reason I was moving 2 highlighted emails to a separate folder and it instead moved my entire first page to another folder.
 

uncannymanny

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 12, 2007
9,078
Interesting. There is something to be said for that view.

I'll make that a bookmark -- right now when I close and reopen the browser the New Gmail loads ok (not great, but not like on a fresh reboot), but this will be a quality alternative.

Thanks!
When you don’t shut down you’re getting cached assets. But still, you’re using an old PC with a slow processor (I’m guessing from your description) and that probably has some trouble chewing through all of the JavaScript.

What browser do you use on that machine?
 

charlieoscar

Member
Sep 28, 2014
1,339
Happy to see the HTML link as I have resisted changing Gmail over to the new mode after Outlook.com forced a switch on me. I was able to get rid of a lot of the junk included with the new Outlook but apparently someone with that email address for me got hacked (I use it for more serious things) because I suddenly am getting about 100 spam/phishing messages a day. And Yahoo wants me to agree to their new terms now that they combined with AOL to create Oath...and I don't want to.
 

Gdiguy

Member
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Jul 15, 2005
6,231
San Diego, CA
Yeah, I don't 'get' the pre-made responses at all - for text messages it kind of makes sense since that's a 'I'm busy and want to quickly reply' kind of thing, but if I already have gmail open in a browser it literally takes 30 seconds to type a more personalized version of that anyway.

And I agree about the cartoony look, I feel like this is google not being sure what kind of company they are - on the one hand they want businesses to pay $5 / month / user for gmail suites, but then on the other they want to turn it into a less professional looking service... I don't get it.
 

DJnVa

Dorito Dawg
SoSH Member
Dec 16, 2010
53,837
That HTML link doesn't seem to auto-refresh, which isn't really a big deal.
 

uncannymanny

Member
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Jan 12, 2007
9,078
The suggested responses for emails is kind of creepy. Big brother is watching.
They’re already storing the content and doing other preoptimizations by reading the text. This is just term matching.
 

uncannymanny

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 12, 2007
9,078
Woof. Do you have the same issue with other browsers? Sorry this is literally what I do for a living so I’m curious.
 

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Woof. Do you have the same issue with other browsers? Sorry this is literally what I do for a living so I’m curious.
So I had shut down the PC this AM after first posts. Most recent ones, above, were from Fenway. Got home, turned machine on, Firefox with the new gmail took as long as ever to load, Firefox tab with the stripped down link loaded just a few seconds faster

Just now opened chrome and the full featured version opened quite quickly. Not a solution for me as wife uses that browser and has her passwords and cookies saved there.
 

Scott Cooper's Grand Slam

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 12, 2008
4,263
New England
Suggestion: A Chromium browser without being mined with everything you do by Google and with some genuine better features and more customization possibilities (still not great but those are limitations of the engine) : Vivaldi.
Seconded. Vivaldi would be my primary browser if I didn’t depend on certain Chrome extensions. But the good news: most Chrome extensions work great in Vivaldi and compatibility continues to improve.
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
There is no browser that has it all anymore. I use 3 now. Primarily PaleMoon because it is close to the only one left that is truly customizable and has features that are now denied by the engines of most: perfect example is it can still support all of Tab Mix Plus. I'm used to a browser that switches to whatever tab my cursor hovers over. The engine for Chromium browsers and the revised Firefox cannot even sense the hover and, afaik, can never allow such a feature...which is in part why the revised Tab Mix for FF is taking so long and will be missing basic features which the author knows will disappoint. Everything is being dumbed down and revised to look the same on a phone or a 34" monitor, which is just friggin pathetic.
 

uncannymanny

Member
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Jan 12, 2007
9,078
Everything is being dumbed down and revised to look the same on a phone or a 34" monitor, which is just friggin pathetic.
Curious why you see this as a bad thing (and “pathetic” really)? The push has been to have content rule and for that content to be presented similarly on all devices. I do not miss the days when I would visit a site on my phone and find that half of the things on the desktop site were missing.
 

bowiac

Caveat: I know nothing about what I speak
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Dec 18, 2003
12,945
New York, NY
Curious why you see this as a bad thing (and “pathetic” really)? The push has been to have content rule and for that content to be presented similarly on all devices. I do not miss the days when I would visit a site on my phone and find that half of the things on the desktop site were missing.
Because the result is less content being available on the desktop site.
 

charlieoscar

Member
Sep 28, 2014
1,339
The push has been to have content rule and for that content to be presented similarly on all devices.
How can that be? My desktop monitor has a 16:9 aspect ratio and my phone is 19.5:9 as do the new iPhones. The iPhone 8 is 16:9. Most flat screen computer monitors are 16:9 while curved ones are around 24:10 (varies depending on manufacturer). And in general use, phones are the opposite because they are generally used with the long axis vertical as opposed to monitors.

I was trying to look up something on Google maps on my phone today--east to west--and I sure wished I was on my desktop.
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
How can that be? My desktop monitor has a 16:9 aspect ratio and my phone is 19.5:9 as do the new iPhones. The iPhone 8 is 16:9. Most flat screen computer monitors are 16:9 while curved ones are around 24:10 (varies depending on manufacturer). And in general use, phones are the opposite because they are generally used with the long axis vertical as opposed to monitors.

I was trying to look up something on Google maps on my phone today--east to west--and I sure wished I was on my desktop.
and all my main computers here have dual monitor 1920x1200 16:10 'computer' aspect ratio setups...
 

uncannymanny

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Jan 12, 2007
9,078
Because the result is less content being available on the desktop site.
Any examples of a site with less content like this? Then those sites do not ascribe to this and still maintain separate mobile and desktop pages. Exactly the problem that designers and developers have been trying to solve.

How can that be? My desktop monitor has a 16:9 aspect ratio and my phone is 19.5:9 as do the new iPhones. The iPhone 8 is 16:9. Most flat screen computer monitors are 16:9 while curved ones are around 24:10 (varies depending on manufacturer). And in general use, phones are the opposite because they are generally used with the long axis vertical as opposed to monitors.

I was trying to look up something on Google maps on my phone today--east to west--and I sure wished I was on my desktop.
Similar content, not exact design. Big difference.
 

Reverend

for king and country
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Jan 20, 2007
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Any examples of a site with less content like this? Then those sites do not ascribe to this and still maintain separate mobile and desktop pages. Exactly the problem that designers and developers have been trying to solve.

Similar content, not exact design. Big difference.
I think they mean that the need to put content out on multiple platforms influences the creation of the content, specifically in a LCD sense, i.e. the delivery vehicle is exerting demands on the product.
 

uncannymanny

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Jan 12, 2007
9,078
I think they mean that the need to put content out on multiple platforms influences the creation of the content, specifically in a LCD sense, i.e. the delivery vehicle is exerting demands on the product.
Yes, this is absolutely a great point. In some ways it's a good thing, forcing people to decide what content actually matters, but what you say is another side effect. The good news is that the industry has spent enough time with "responsive design" as a goal that we've seen its flaws. There's starting to be a flow to that ebb in being less binary about this. Just as with anything else, absolutes don't work for all cases.

A note that maybe some aren't aware of that affects this: mobile usage on the internet surpassed desktop in the last couple of years, so if you expect desktop experiences to rule going forward you're probably going to be disappointed. The money is moving further and further towards mobile users.
 

mt8thsw9th

anti-SoSHal
SoSH Member
Jul 17, 2005
17,120
Brooklyn
New Gmail was fine for me until yesterday when all of a sudden the email view/window started taking up my entire screen. That's fucking stupid. How do I get rid of that?
 

johnmd20

mad dog
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Dec 30, 2003
61,996
New York City
New Gmail was fine for me until yesterday when all of a sudden the email view/window started taking up my entire screen. That's fucking stupid. How do I get rid of that?
I'm guessing you toggled the split panel view. It's the thing (a box of lines) to the left of the gear, in the upper right hand corner.