Monday, December 05, 2011

Biting the hand that feeds: Gmail's new look

So Google has foisted a "new look" on gmail users today - "streamlined, new, improved!" May I just say that this is one of the most irritating aspects of online life? I mean, granted, I'm a bit curmudgeonly in these matters - unlike people who delight in innovation for its own sake, I tend to like stability and reliability when it comes to tools, since it's the WORK THAT I DO WITH THEM and not the design of the tools that matters to me. As long as they work, I'd really rather not have things fixed, thanks. This is why I still use Internet Explorer, for example; though I did try Firefox for awhile, I see no advantages, no reason that I should re-adjust my habits and routines simply for the sake of using the newer, hipper web browser - everything I want to do online can be done through IE, thanks. It's also why I only reluctantly accept upgrades, since sometimes (think Windows Media Player - yeh, I'm a PC-user, too, natch), they're more like downgrades, completely misunderstanding how a product works and replacing useful, logical functionality with arbitrary, gimmicky nonsense. It's rather like waking up in the morning to find out that someone decided, with no input from you, that your car needed a new paint job, and while he was at it, thought that it would run better on square tires. Too much crap like that can kill a site (Myspace, anyone?). Can we just go back to the way things were, folks? Was there anything WRONG with it that I missed?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Amen, I am so tired of these so called "improvements", especially with IE and Google.