Oh goodie, more Gmail UI changes



  • Since yesterday, the upper-right corner of my gmail page now looks like this (I'm using the Dusk theme, for the record):

    [It looked like this minus the smudged username, duh]

     

    Clicking the grid icon — "Apps" according to the hover tooltip — opens up a panel with shortcuts I won't ever use (including a super-useful one to gmail itself).
    I guess they're okay for some people and probably more discoverable than the horizontal black bar that was shown previously, so I don't have a problem with it.

    [Thanks for the big icons, but I find it faster to open a new tab and use my browsers autocomplete]

    Remember when there was a time you clicked the "Sign out" link when you wanted to sign out? Then that link became a button in a pulldown menu.
    Yesterday my girlfriend — who isn't exactly, or approximately, stupid — was asking me how the hell she signed out of gmail. Apparently she always pressed the downward arrow (now gone) next to the username to pull down that menu. She never realized the username was the actual active area.

    In her defense, she would have figured it out in two seconds if I didn't immediately lash out my frustration with the change by telling her where to click.

    My impression is that Google would prefer if you never signed out, so they are subtly hiding it one step at the time.

     

    Meanwhile, in a secondary account I have specifically just for Facebook use, I have different UI changes:

    [I use a dark theme on Gmail and Firefox to remind me that Facebook is evil]

    From left to right:

    • a link to the Google+ page I distinctly remember not having created ever;
    • the Apps icon as above;
    • 0 unread notifications from the Google+ page (the one I remember never have created);
    • a Share button (I'll let you take a guess which service is used for sharing; but why would I like to share my email is a mystery);
    • and an unspecified avatar image which carries a link to... guess where.


  • Also, this:

    Every single time.



  • @Zecc said:

    • a link to the Google+ page I distinctly remember not having created ever;

    Have you accidentally clicked any other button than the X button in the YouTube dialog asking you which name you want to use on YouTube? This is how 99% of all Google+ accounts are ever created.



  • @derula said:

    Have you accidentally clicked any other button than the X button in the YouTube dialog asking you which name you want to use on YouTube? This is how 99% of all Google+ accounts are ever created.
    But that's the thing. I chose to use my YouTube name when accessing YouTube while signed into my main Gmail account, all the time. And I do have an empty G+ account associated with that account.

    But I don't have a YouTube or G+ account associated with my "Facebook" gmail account at all. So even if you're right, it's completely backwards.



  • @Zecc said:

    [Thanks for the big icons, but I find it faster to open a new tab and use my browsers autocomplete]

    Everything is a phone.... everything is a phone...

    The Everything is a Phone Brain Worms



  • @Zecc said:

    But that's the thing. I chose to use my YouTube name when accessing YouTube while signed into my main Gmail account, all the time. And I do have an empty G+ account associated with that account.

    Yeah, that stopped working. Nowadays, no matter whether or not you choose to use your YouTube name or your Google name, you'll still get a Google+ profile. I fell for it once. I managed to delete the Google+ profile. Now, everything that helps is to press the X in the upper right corner of the dialog. No, I don't think that's a nice thing of Google to do. In fact, WHAT THE FUCK GOOGLE, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! I FUCKING DON'T FUCKING WANT A FUCKING GOOGLE+ PROFILE! FUCK OFF!

    About the Facebook one, I'm not sure how it works there because I'm not using Facebook, personally.



  • I agree, this app launcher bull-crap is terrible. Google failed UI design. You're not supposed to add clicks to get to common actions. You're supposed to make them easier to get to. I don't know why they seem so hell-bent on saving screen real-estate when 1920x1080 or greater screen resolution is quite common. Their recent Google Chrome update that F'd up the new tab page, yeah I disabled that immediately.



  • Hmm... visiting YT's homepage gave me a mess of  which I didn't think of taking a screenshot unfortunately.

    It showed the regular YT page (a bunch of videos thumbnails), over which lied a modal-looking wizard titled "Let's get you started" (with another bunch of video thumbnails under several categories and a "Next" button on the lower left), which was itself obstructed by again the same popoup asking me to choose between usernames.

    So once again I chose "use YT name". And then... the page refreshed and whatever customisation wizard was there completely disappeared. Instead I got the regular YT homepage with "recommended for you" videos — which incidently are based on the last videos I've seen rather than the ones I usually watch.

     

    And now I notice similar-minded, although differently-looking, changes on YT:

    Those links on the left column under "Google account"? All point to <font face="courier new,courier">plus.google.com</font> URLs.

     

    I think I might start dedicating a browser profile solely for Gmail use, like I do for Facebook. And block all google domains on my main profile. I hate this kind of trust abuse.

    Hahaha, who am I kidding? All the pages on the internet would break when they wouldn't load their Analytics scripts.



  • @derula said:

    @Zecc said:
    But that's the thing. I chose to use my YouTube name when accessing YouTube while signed into my main Gmail account, all the time. And I do have an empty G+ account associated with that account.

    Yeah, that stopped working. Nowadays, no matter whether or not you choose to use your YouTube name or your Google name, you'll still get a Google+ profile. I fell for it once. I managed to delete the Google+ profile. Now, everything that helps is to press the X in the upper right corner of the dialog. No, I don't think that's a nice thing of Google to do. In fact, WHAT THE FUCK GOOGLE, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! I FUCKING DON'T FUCKING WANT A FUCKING GOOGLE+ PROFILE! FUCK OFF!

    About the Facebook one, I'm not sure how it works there because I'm not using Facebook, personally.

     

    Really? About once a week when viewing Youtube videos I'll get a popup that initially seems unrelated to adding a Google+ account to my Youtube account, but once I reach the second page, I have to explicitly agree to the [url=http://www.google.com/+/policy/pagesterm.html]Google+ Pages terms of service[/url] (and I just X out of that to signify my non-agreement).

    What's annoying is that Google's [i]other[/i] prompt about choosing which name to use on Youtube, if you choose to keep your Youtube name, even says "we'll ask you again later" and sure enough, 7 days later you get the same prompt.  So, in other words, it's a [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust]But Thou Must[/url] on a delay.



  • @derula said:

    Now, everything that helps is to press the X in the upper right corner of the dialog. No, I don't think that's a nice thing of Google to do. In fact, WHAT THE FUCK GOOGLE, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! I FUCKING DON'T FUCKING WANT A FUCKING GOOGLE+ PROFILE! FUCK OFF!

    I see what google is doing wrong. If they just made Google+ another part of google, and made it a standard part of google accounts, people wouldn't be trying so hard to avoid it. I mean you can't "opt out" of Gmail or YouTube, why should you be able to do the same with Google+? They already have your name.

    Wanting to show your full name next to your YouTube comments and other public places, now that's a dick move. I don't see why anyone would want that.



  • @twilsonxpert said:

    I don't know why they seem so hell-bent on saving screen real-estate when 1920x1080 or greater screen resolution is quite common.
    As someone using dual 27 inch monitors, I agree completely. Unfortunately, I understand excactly what they are doing -- they are catering to the large, and growing, population of idiots who insist on browsing the Internet on a phone with a 3 inch screen.


  • Considered Harmful

    @flabdablet said:

    The Everything is a Phone Brain Worms

    Oh man, brain worms are a real thing that is real?


  • Considered Harmful

    @Zecc said:

    All the pages on the internet would break when they wouldn't load their Analytics scripts.

    I bet you could rewrite the requests (say with Fiddler) to a local script file that returns objects with only stub methods that don't do anything.


  • Considered Harmful

    @anonymous235 said:

    Wanting to show your full name next to your YouTube comments and other public places, now that's a dick move. I don't see why anyone would want that.

    I think this is why Battle.net started using real names:



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @Zecc said:
    All the pages on the internet would break when they wouldn't load their Analytics scripts.
    I bet you could rewrite the requests (say with Fiddler) to a local script file that returns objects with only stub methods that don't do anything.
    Actually, IIRC the tracker call is usually surrounded by try{} catch(err) so it probably doesn't break anything if the JS isn't loaded.

    I've taken out google-analytics.com out of NoScript's whitelist. Let's see how it goes. I don't know how it works internally, but I expect it to block on an HTTP request basis rather than by <script> tag removal (TRWTF is GA depending on document.write?).

    Mind you, I'm doing this out of pure spite. I really don't care if they track my browserilations. I don't think they're evil, just misguided.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Zecc said:

    I've taken out google-analytics.com out of NoScript's whitelist. Let's see how it goes.
    It works.

    Trust me.



  • Well, I always trust people who say "trust me".



  • @Zecc said:

    I've taken out google-analytics.com out of NoScript's whitelist. Let's see how it goes.
    I never added Google-Analytics  to the white list in the first place and everything has always worked fine.


  • Considered Harmful

    @El_Heffe said:

    Filed under: You can't spell analytics without anal

    You can't spell amusement without semen.



  • @Zecc said:

    Hahaha, who am I kidding? All the pages on the internet would break when they wouldn't load their Analytics scripts.

    I swapped AdBlock for noScript, and have been irritated at how many sites I've had to whitelist to make websites work. The most annoying thing is that some sites load literally nothing without javascript. As in, a white screen.

    At home, the New Tab page has "Google" plastered across it, with a search bar underneath, although the combo-box is only 2" above it (grr), and then tiny site photos underneath. At work, I think because I don't use google as my primary search provider, I just have tiny site photos.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Zecc said:

    I've taken out google-analytics.com out of NoScript's whitelist. Let's see how it goes.
    It works.

    Trust me.

     

    Now just try removing google-api from your whitelist.

     


  • Considered Harmful

    @Mcoder said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Zecc said:

    I've taken out google-analytics.com out of NoScript's whitelist. Let's see how it goes.
    It works.

    Trust me.

     

    Now just try removing google-api from your whitelist.

     


    I'm fine with users breaking their system as long as they don't come to me and complain that it's broken.



  • @Zecc said:

    Hahaha, who am I kidding? All the pages on the internet would break when they wouldn't load their Analytics scripts.

    I run Adblock Plus with EasyPrivacy+EasyList, so my browsers don't generally load analytics stuff. Breakage happens infrequently enough that shrugging and going to some other page instead has always been a perfectly satsfactory response.



  • I just quickly read this thread. What exactly caused people to block Google Analytics? I mean, go ahead if you want to, but why is it a big enough deal to need to discuss it?



  • @joe.edwards said:

    Oh man, brain worms are a real thing that is real?
    Yes indeed.



  • @Ben L. said:

    I just quickly read this thread. What exactly caused people to block Google Analytics? I mean, go ahead if you want to, but why is it a big enough deal to need to discuss it?

    If telling my browser not to load stuff that's of no use to me can reduce my bandwidth consumption and speed page loading by even a tiny amount, and doing that is as easy as choosing EasyPrivacy+EasyList from a list of ABP subscriptions instead of just EasyList, why would I not block Google Analytics?



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    Filed under: You can't spell analytics without anal
    You can't spell amusement without semen.
    Wasn't Anal Semen Amusement the original name of The Village People back in the 70s?



  • @flabdablet said:

    @Ben L. said:
    I just quickly read this thread. What exactly caused people to block Google Analytics? I mean, go ahead if you want to, but why is it a big enough deal to need to discuss it?

    If telling my browser not to load stuff that's of no use to me can reduce my bandwidth consumption and speed page loading by even a tiny amount, and doing that is as easy as choosing EasyPrivacy+EasyList from a list of ABP subscriptions instead of just EasyList, why would I not block Google Analytics?

    Ah, but blocking it does not help you to read my question.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @flabdablet said:
    @Ben L. said:
    I just quickly read this thread. What exactly caused people to block Google Analytics? I mean, go ahead if you want to, but why is it a big enough deal to need to discuss it?

    If telling my browser not to load stuff that's of no use to me can reduce my bandwidth consumption and speed page loading by even a tiny amount, and doing that is as easy as choosing EasyPrivacy+EasyList from a list of ABP subscriptions instead of just EasyList, why would I not block Google Analytics?

    Ah, but blocking it does not help you to read my question.
    I answered your first question. You've continued the discussion, so I guess you already have an answer for your second.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tweek said:

    I swapped AdBlock for noScript,
    Why? They're not mutually exclusive. (I have both plus Ghostery. - and have only come across a couple of sites that have serious problems.)



  • @PJH said:

    @tweek said:
    I swapped AdBlock for noScript,
    Why? They're not mutually exclusive. (I have both plus Ghostery. - and have only come across a couple of sites that have serious problems.)
    Same here, except I visit lots of sites of people trying to do cool stuff with JS, so I use NoScript's "Temporarily allow X" very often.

    I also see lots of people using JS to dynamically load images, which I guess it's fine since that saves on both our bandwidths. But I'm not a fan of people depending on JS without any thought on providing graceful fallbacks whatsoever. Not even <font face="courier new,courier"><noscript>Enable JS or GTFO</noscript></font>.

    I like to think that failure to load comments on articles (including but not limited to Disqus) is a boon.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Ben L. said:

    I just quickly read this thread. What exactly caused people to block Google Analytics? I mean, go ahead if you want to, but why is it a big enough deal to need to discuss it?
     

    1) Why? Privacy, page loading times. The usual.  Better question is why not?

    2) Discuss it? Because we're on a discussion forum? Because other people aren't aware that you CAN safely block it, and still have the website you visit work. Did you just do another archive binge, and accidentally get some Blakey on you?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Zecc said:

    I use NoScript's "Temporarily allow X" very often.
     

    Very much so. 99% of the time someone wants to load googleapi to power some fuckass stupid slideshow widget that they copypasta'd the code for.  The site works fine without it.

    Occasionally I need to allow a CDN or something so the fucking menus or submit button will work. Because navigation and form submission were things the Web didn't do before javascript. Temporarily allow on a case-by-case basis.

    The rest of the time it's stopping 3rd party js the page is serving because of some XSS attack or a site that's been hit by a sql injection attack. At least once a month. It's nice to see that red S below (especially on a site I know I've whitelisted) and see "Temporarily Allow xytusph3.ru".. and know that I've just saved myself a frustrating evening of cleaning malware from my computer.

    @Zecc said:

    I also see lots of people using JS to dynamically load images, which I guess it's fine since that saves on both our bandwidths.

    Double fuck them. I haven't come across a site yet that can "dynamically" load images faster than I can scroll the page.  I fucking love this.  "Scroll-- page freezes-- image distractingly pops into place somewhere-- flow of article shifts because either the devs were fucking incompetent, or didn't realize I might have by browser zoomed and thus are fucking incompetent-- have to find my place on the page again-- scroll-- repeat--"

    @Zecc said:

    Disqus

    Fuck Disqus with a leaking car battery.

     

     

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Zecc said:

    Disqus

    Fuck Disqus with a leaking car battery.

    I would temporarily enable javascript to see that!

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    Did you just do another archive binge, and accidentally get some Blakey on you?

    I'm in the early 2008 archives right now. It's mostly MPS telling morbiuswilters he'll never amount to anything. No blakeyrat in sight.



  • @Zecc said:

    I visit lots of sites of people trying to do cool stuff with JS
    That sentence makes no sense.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @Zecc said:

    I visit lots of sites of people trying to do cool stuff with JS
    That sentence makes no sense.

    Yes it does.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    That sentence makes no sense.
    What's your problem with it?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Zecc said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    That sentence makes no sense.
    What's your problem with it?

    Not enough gifs, probably.



  • @PJH said:

    @tweek said:
    I swapped AdBlock for noScript,
    Why? They're not mutually exclusive. (I have both plus Ghostery. - and have only come across a couple of sites that have serious problems.)

    Chrome + AdBlock would, very often (at least twice a day, but usually more often), lock up my entire machine while a page was loading. Yes, I blame my shitty hardware for this, as well, but without it, I've had a much better time actually getting things done while tabs load.



  • I visit lots of sites of people trying to do cool stuff with JS

     

     

     

     


    Better?

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @DaveK said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Zecc said:

    Disqus

    Fuck Disqus with a leaking car battery.

    I would temporarily enable javascript to see that!

     

    [url="http://sevenseventeen.ca/disqus.html"]Your wish is my command[/url]

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @DaveK said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Zecc said:

    Disqus

    Fuck Disqus with a leaking car battery.

    I would temporarily enable javascript to see that!

     

    Your wish is my command

    You win Friday!

     



  • @Zecc said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    That sentence makes no sense.
    What's your problem with it?
    'Javascript' and 'cool stuff' don't belong in the same sentence. JS has it's uses and some of it is even important. But any more I'm finding it almost as annoying as Flash. I started using NoScript a while back and I've found that I can block a very large percentage of JS and suffer no ill effects.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @El_Heffe said:

    But any more I'm finding [Javascript] almost as annoying as Flash.
    Perhaps it wasn't Flash that's you really objected to, but rather the highly annoying things that many people did with it? If so, I'm with you there. (Advertisers are almost always why we can't have nice things. Or at least not without them being plastered with shit.)



  • @El_Heffe said:

    JS has it's uses and some of it is even important. But any more I'm finding it almost as annoying as Flash. I started using NoScript a while back and I've found that I can block a very large percentage of JS and suffer no ill effects.

    +1to that. I've been using NoScript since forever and never had cause to regret it. Most sites work without it; I don't really care if the comments don't work; on the rare occasion when I hit a site that shows up blank without it, it's just some random link that I followed while idly surfing and don't actually care about; I can temporarily enable script easily enough when I actually do want to use webmail, play a game or watch a video, and by only enabling it for the actual domain and not all the embedded adverts the site is far more responsive than when js is just globally enabled; and of course I get the general benefit of being immune to drive-by browser exploits. In my experience so far, js adds very little value to almost all sites in practice. I don't even have anything whitelisted and still suffer no appreciable day-to-day inconvenience.



  • Agreed. It always amuses me when people respond like I'm crazy for using NoScript. I guess they like all the annoying shit JS does? I feel like it's used for annoying, pointless shit 80% of the time, shit that should have been done with basic HTML 19% of the time, and things it actually is needed for 1% of the time.



    As for Google+ and shitty UIs, the other day my mother was looking a place up on Google Maps. The "more info" link had inexplicably moved, and when she found it, it opened a new tab instead of the normal popup box. Said tab had visible info but once it finished loading it was literally covered in popup layers begging her to join G+. Fucking fantastic user experience there.

    @Zecc said:

    My impression is that Google would prefer if you never signed out, so they are subtly hiding it one step at the time.

    And yet my Gmail will randomly just log me out while it's open in a background tab. I think my favourite part of that is how they teach you to be wary of unexpected login prompts, then throw login prompts at you at random. Kinda like how they told you to never use your real name online, and now beg you to do it.



  • @DaveK said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    JS has it's uses and some of it is even important. But any more I'm finding it almost as annoying as Flash. I started using NoScript a while back and I've found that I can block a very large percentage of JS and suffer no ill effects.
    +1to that. I've been using NoScript since forever and never had cause to regret it. Most sites work without it; I don't really care if the comments don't work; on the rare occasion when I hit a site that shows up blank without it, it's just some random link that I followed while idly surfing and don't actually care about; I can temporarily enable script easily enough when I actually do want to use webmail, play a game or watch a video, and by only enabling it for the actual domain and not all the embedded adverts the site is far more responsive than when js is just globally enabled; and of course I get the general benefit of being immune to drive-by browser exploits. In my experience so far, js adds very little value to almost all sites in practice. I don't even have anything whitelisted and still suffer no appreciable day-to-day inconvenience.

    Fair enough. I myself block JS most of the time.

    But that doesn't prevent me from enjoying seeing experiments like this animated quine, this WebGL globe or this explanation of Bézier splines; or even useful stuff like graphs/charts done with D3 or this page scroll widget.



  •  We must use different sites.... earlier today I took a look at the logs, and gleamed the top 100 sites. Well over half of them are "active sites" (online banking, real-time financials) where JS (typically AJAX) is key to the operation, less than 20% were "pure" static content, leaving about 25% where JS was "used for something" but was not critical to the normal use-cases (for me) of the site....


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