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[Owen Densmore]

I noticed some of my Minimalist stunts started to fail and to break Gmail.  I then noticed more buttons in the composition windows .. social media?

Is this is a new UI that will make us start over with Minimalist?

[Ansel Santosa]

Yes, these small updates foreshadow much more aggressive changes to Gmail and the other Google products in the near future. Depending on how fast the changes happen, I may be able to keep up with patch work but long term I'd like to do a total rewrite and combine the existing products into a single, more functional and social ecosystem with Minimalist for Everything. I've already started working on it but the scope of the project is just enormous. More details to come in the following weeks.

[Owen Densmore]

Ansel: I'm sure I don't have a firm enough grasp of how Minimalist for Gmail works.  I know that most of the work is CSS, but likely a fair amount of Javascript to set things up and do the DOM traversals where CSS alone wouldn't work.  I think.

If I'm right, it seems nearly impossible to get a stable solution simply because Google will be changing things like crazy to keep up with the competition, especially when iCloud shows just how far the server side can go.

So just how CAN you build a UI warper given all the changes the owner of the site is likely to do?

Just curious, and I REALLY like what you're doing.  BTW, there's a great mathematician at UW, William Stein, who's revolutionizing math software: http://sagemath.org/ .. you might want to chat with him about minimalism and math UI's.

        -- Owen

[Ansel Santosa]

You're exactly right. CSS whenever possible but it isn't always.

yeah as Google is changing quickly it's difficult to keep up but I've been doing okay so far the with Google Calendar changes.

Basically what Minimalist for Everything is going to do is enable me to make changes faster and easier and for me to create new modules for new sites in days rather than weeks. It's going to make a huge difference. It's going to take the summer to build the tools though.

My dad, Fadil Santosa http://www.math.umn.edu/~santosa/ actually know's William Stein and I met him when he spoke at the U of M math institute. He is doing some really cool stuff.