Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

blog.jgc.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 179 posts

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#21

Post by hartror »

dlss wrote: post #5

I do use this feature -- I often select random blocks of text while reading. This feature means I often (5-10% of the time) have to click discard and then reply again to get my desired behavior. In related news nytimes.com used to have a similar feature where the definition of words would pop up when you selected them. It basically caused me to stop reading their site.

Oh my that NYT feature drove me nuts. Not only does it mess with us habitual selectors but it is basically hidden from the users who need it most, those not savy enough to select-right-click-search-on-google a word they don't understand.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#22

Post by leephillips »

untog wrote: post #10
tete wrote: post #8

Most mail clients seem to do this (maybe not so many web-based ones). Gmail has the problem of creating Tofu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting#Top-posting

Does anyone care about top posting any more? I feel like I haven't heard the term since my newsgroup days.

If by "care about" you mean "annoyed by it and treat it as a sign that I am corresponding with a techno-illiterate who is, in addition, at least somewhat slovenly in regard to his correspondence," then, yes.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#23

Post by jemka »

mibbitier wrote: post #13

This is a horrible misfeature. Often, I select bits of an email, to copy and paste elsewhere to check things. Then I hit reply, and wonder why only the currently selected text is there. There should be a way to turn this "feature" off.

Thunderbird does the same thing and I agree with you. I've learned to just hit reply, then edit.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#24

Post by [deleted] »

w1ntermute wrote: post #12
untog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone care about top posting any more? I feel like I haven't heard the term since my newsgroup days.

I bottom-post all the time when emailing certain (tech-savvy) individuals. Makes it much easier to reply point-by-point. However, bottom-posting's value is lost on the vast majority of people, so I don't bother unless it's someone I know will appreciate it.

[deleted]

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#25

Post by davidw »

That's neat. I used to cut down emails by means of ctrl-K in my browser, which, being mapped to emacs keys, means "delete this line". However, in their brand new email compose thing, Google has seen fit to override this, making that key combination point to "make a hyperlink" or some such BS, causing me much, much frustration. Yes, I know, you can still utilize the old way of doing things... but for how long until they decide that it's simply got to go and it's time for you to upgrade.

I guess RMS has a point.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#26

Post by leephillips »

w1ntermute wrote: post #12
untog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone care about top posting any more? I feel like I haven't heard the term since my newsgroup days.

I bottom-post all the time when emailing certain (tech-savvy) individuals. Makes it much easier to reply point-by-point. However, bottom-posting's value is lost on the vast majority of people, so I don't bother unless it's someone I know will appreciate it.

I can't be sure, but I suspect that what you are calling top-posting is the opposite. Top-posting refers to the sloppy practice of just pasting your reply ("posting") on "top" of the entire quoted email, rather than quoting selectively and replying point-by-point, as you're supposed to do.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#27

Post by MichaelGG »

dlss wrote: post #5

I do use this feature -- I often select random blocks of text while reading. This feature means I often (5-10% of the time) have to click discard and then reply again to get my desired behavior. In related news nytimes.com used to have a similar feature where the definition of words would pop up when you selected them. It basically caused me to stop reading their site.

Yes! In fact, the Office 2007 team ran into the same problem with "selection readers"[1]. They purposefully designed the minibar (small useful toolbar that appears on text selection) to not interfere with us that like to select while reading/navigating.

It's a shame so many designers out there (NYTimes, Google, and many, many others) fail this basic usability test.

1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2005/10/06/477801.as...

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#28

Post by stephengillie »

davidw wrote: post #25

That's neat. I used to cut down emails by means of ctrl-K in my browser, which, being mapped to emacs keys, means "delete this line". However, in their brand new email compose thing, Google has seen fit to override this, making that key combination point to "make a hyperlink" or some such BS, causing me much, much frustration. Yes, I know, you can still utilize the old way of doing things... but for how long until th…

Why aren't we able to rebind these keys at will? Why is it hardcoded?

We've been able to rebind keys in videogames for a long time. Why can't we rebind ctrl+o to be cut, ctrl+t to be undo, and ctrl+k to be "delete this line"?

Why can't we have ctrl+v be one clipboard and ctrl+f be a different one?

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#29

Post by pauljz »

hartror wrote: post #21
dlss wrote: post #5

I do use this feature -- I often select random blocks of text while reading. This feature means I often (5-10% of the time) have to click discard and then reply again to get my desired behavior. In related news nytimes.com used to have a similar feature where the definition of words would pop up when you selected them. It basically caused me to stop reading their site.

Oh my that NYT feature drove me nuts. Not only does it mess with us habitual selectors but it is basically hidden from the users who need it most, those not savy enough to select-right-click-search-on-google a word they don't understand.

I'm kind of happy to have just learned I'm not the only person in the world who habitually selects like this. I've done this for as long as I can remember, and the NYT thing drove me nuts as well.

Oddly enough I guess I always habitually deselect as well, so I've never noticed this gmail feature. Pretty useful.

Now if it browsers supported Sublime Text-style multiple selections for quoting several different bits of a long email, that'd be perfect.

On a sidenote it's kind of fascinating how polarised people are about this feature.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#30

Post by barrkel »

hartror wrote: post #21
dlss wrote: post #5

I do use this feature -- I often select random blocks of text while reading. This feature means I often (5-10% of the time) have to click discard and then reply again to get my desired behavior. In related news nytimes.com used to have a similar feature where the definition of words would pop up when you selected them. It basically caused me to stop reading their site.

Oh my that NYT feature drove me nuts. Not only does it mess with us habitual selectors but it is basically hidden from the users who need it most, those not savy enough to select-right-click-search-on-google a word they don't understand.

I used AdBlock to stop the NYT script that implements it from loading.

A large chunk of the reason I dislike Chrome is because of its weird text selection logic compared to Firefox - boundaries around paragraph starts and ends feel unnatural.

Post reply on HN