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by vmware513 2819 days ago
I'm a big fun of the latest GMail and of the modern Google Map. I think, their changes are usually based on thorough UX research. It is normal, there are a strong minority, who cannot get used to new user interfaces and cannot accept changes... Luckily there are alternative services, so they can use something else. ;)
3 comments

You're living in a bubble full of fast, pervasive network connectivity, faster computers, and tech savvy, intelligent people.

The world is filled with people with slower connections, slower computers, and people who access their email in a different environment than Chrome on windows. Nearly all of them not a strong minority are adverse to change.

The latest google mail interface which they are on their way to killing so called "inbox" is slower not because it is so feature-full but because its poorly written. On a computer that is reasonably modern click on an email and wait 7 seconds is in a word crap. Inbox is only really designed to run well on chrome and switching browsers to run a single site is like changing religions because you like the other sides hats better.

You know what's comparatively amazing. Viewing email in emacs via mu4e and being able to access information in your mail even when you aren't connected to the internet and reading searching and composing as fast as your fingers and eyeballs work rather than waiting for a slow web only resource.

Via xwidgets it can even render pretty html if you need to.

https://imgur.com/a/crz3IoM

They are better UX-wise yes but they are also much slower, that's my problem with it. I don't really care to have fancy animations if it takes 5 more seconds to load and 3 more seconds when I click on something. The new Google Maps is bad enough that I use only the phone app now.
Do you have specific examples? Everything is instantaneous for me.
Just loading the empty Google maps page (just https://maps.google.com) takes at least 5 seconds for me. During that time, it's doing so much stuff in the background that it makes the input on the left lag, so during that time, you realistically cannot do much, otherwise you risk to mistype your search.

Every Zoom/Unzoom animation is lagging a lot, the problem is they added that everywhere to make it fancier:

- When you click on a result

- when you click on the arrows on the destination screen

- when you enter a destination

- when you click on another type of transport (car, public transport...)

So all those actions are lagging because of that.

It's probably because they only spent time to optimise it in Chrome but I don't care, I prefer to stop to use GMaps than to use Chrome.

Might just be you. It loads in under a second for me.
On which browser? On my case if I open Chrome it loads under a second as well, but I'm using Firefox unfortunately.
Design is for people.