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A new Gmail inbox

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Re: A new Gmail inbox

#231

Post by vidarh »

intrazoo wrote: post #155
piyush_soni wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just FWIW, I love the new Gmail compose as well. It is indeed useful to be able to go through and consult previous emails without doing the back and forth for writing one mail. And I really love Gmail for all the small convenience things they keep on doing, like including a 'Track Package' button in the 'product shipping' email's subject itself ! As far as I know, they were the first to do many innovative things, lik…

I like it too. I can write multiple emails at once, and a chat box will never be in the way of the composer. Maybe there should be a "snap back into page" button thing, but people seem to forget that there is a pop out button if you want a more mono-tasking email style. Additionally, with this interface, it could be more integrated with hangouts and cross google's services (maybe easier send email pop up on andriod t…

I think that's a fundamental difference in working style. I never write multiple emails at once, nor have I wanted to. To me that is clutter.

The "pop out" choice is a poor one since it turns Compose into 3 operations: Press compose, press the pop-out button, press maximize on the new window.

(as for the chat box, I use Minimalist, and my Gmail UI is trimmed of anything extraneous).

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#232

Post by jaredmcateer »

piyush_soni wrote: post #215
jaredmcateer wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too prefer the new compose, my only gripe is the unnecessary collapsing of attaching things other than files on the hard drive. The thing I attach most often is an image at a web address, to do so I have to hover the +, click "insert photo", select the web address option, paste in the web address and then click ok. Far too many steps.

Agreed here, same with me. I might end up writing a greasemonkey script for the same soon (quickly insert image via url). If someone is more motivated than me, feel free to do it and share :).

You inspired me. Here's a first, hacky, iteration to at least remove one step

    (function showMenuInterval() {
         Array.prototype.forEach.apply(document.querySelectorAll('[aria-label="Insert more menu"]'), [function(menu) { menu.style.display='none'; }]);   
         Array.prototype.forEach.apply(document.querySelectorAll('.aZ > .wL.wM'), [function (menu) { menu.classList.add('wN'); menu.classList.remove('wM'); menu.style.width = '186px'; }]);
         setTimeout(showMenuInterval, 50);
    }());

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#233

Post by khalstvedt »

tuxracer wrote: post #192
dmlorenzetti wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about useful search? Currently, you can't direct searches within nested folders. You either search all messages, or search within one folder/label. So for example, I have e-mails grouped by project, and within big projects there are sub-labels: project1/testing project1/doc project1/proposals ... project2/testing ... If I search in "project1", it doesn't look in any of those sub-folders. Search also could use a g…

You can search nested labels. If you go into a sub label you should see the search box auto-populate with that label (including the nested on). For example I have a nested label "Invites" in the label "Calendar" (Calendar/Invites). Searching "label:calendar-invites blah" searches for "blah" inside the nested label.

I agree, you can construct a pretty flexible search system with the existing Gmail implementation. (disclosure: I work at a small startup trying to address email search and archive organization). How many rules do you have set up to achieve your (arguably very reasonable) workflow?

However, to perform a successful search with specific constraints, you must either:

1) Remember a keyword

2) Have a label for the particular constraint you want to use

Our little startup, SolNovus (http://solnovus.com), has been investigating how to make a couple power-user functions like this more accessible. Our priorities are:

1) Fuzzy topic search: make keywords more forgiving

2) Analysis and visualization of email graph: sift through related threads and see the impact of search constraints, represent scale and organization with more than an inbox counter

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#235

Post by adastra »

wyck wrote: post #122
adastra wrote: post #79

Disaster. 1) I just turned it on, and it is not customizable at all . You cannot create custom tabs, and you can't even pick what goes into the tabs they have created. 2) When you turn it on, it disables Gmail's multiple inbox. Multiple inbox is the only thing saving my email from being a complete and utter disaster right now. 3) Judging by how they are forcing the new compose on everyone it is reasonable to expect t…

I hate the new compose. I think the mail UI team need to make a poster that says. "If it's not broken, don't fix it"

The new compose has at least 4 things that are broken for me:

1) When you hit "forward", it hides the subject box, even though the majority of the time when I hit forward I want to delete the "Fwd:" from the subject line. Especially when sending a form email. This resulted in a couple of embarrassing emails before I changed back to the old compose.

2) I often want to create a big list of emails that I want to review before hitting send. The new compose replaces each email address I type with the persons name! For a lot of people I do business with, I have both their business and personal email address. But now I can't tell which one I'm about to email. What the hell Google?

3) Attachments are now an object within the email. But often I want to forward something with an attachment, but clear out the text in the email. Well now when I do select-all, it deletes the attachment also.

4) The compose email doesn't cover my screen, even when I pop it out as its own window. When I'm drafting an email, I don't want to be able to see distractions. If other emails pop up while I'm editing it, that can make me lose my train of thought. Worse, there are no options that I can set to change this.

And that's just off the top of my head...

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#236

Post by Karunamon »

piyush_soni wrote: post #161
Karunamon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, if it's anything like usual Google features, it follows a common path: New feature announced --> Deployed to @gmail users -- Deployed to Apps users --> Old feature deprecated --> old feature removed Google has a feature of eventually forcing people onto bad UI layouts.. for example Youtube.

But you still stick to it, so it doesn't show up in numbers to them - otherwise they'll change it back to what more people liked - or may be it already is that way?

Most of my (and I imagine a good chunk of this site's readership) access to GMail is handled through IMAP, for one.

For two, I struggle to think of a UI cockup of an email app on the level required to drive people to switch ecosystems.

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#237

Post by notahacker »

ohazi wrote: post #98

I currently use the "unread first" inbox type, which puts unread messages at the top of my inbox. It seems that these inbox types are an either/or proposition. I can't have unread messages at the top within this "new" inbox, which is a deal-breaker for me.

If that's the case (I don't have the option to enable the new inbox yet) it's a shame.

A combination of tabbed, filtered content and "unread first" would be a sweet spot as I'd quite fancy being able to prioritise unread email by subject matter without being inundated with those promo emails I'm not quite motivated to set "mark as read" or "junk" filters for.

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#238

Post by vidarh »

etler wrote: post #207
vidarh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how obnoxious the new compose it, it is getting hard to trust them to do the right thing with Gmail.

I think it's a little unfair to overly judge them over one mistake. Also, I didn't like the original redesign, but they've toned it down since then and brought it back so they do seem to be corrective.

There was also the previous design change as you note, which I hated enough to install Minimalist to change the appearance. By now my Gmail looks nothing like the standard Gmail.

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#239

Post by khalstvedt »

ktf wrote: post #191
aiiane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike labels, which require fixed rules (or manual action) to place emails into them, the tabs sort emails algorithmically.

So I have to manually fix gmail's incorrect assumptions about how I want my mail to be filtered rather than manually put my own correct filters in place? Doesn't seem right for me, but I guess I can see the draw for folks who don't want to deal with setting this stuff up themselves. (Which is probably most folks.)

This (incorrect assumptions leading to frustration) is definitely the most troubling thing to me about automagic solutions. I'm currently working on a project that incorporates this idea of sorting email into contexts (http://solnovus.com, not much info up as of yet), so we've been thinking a lot about this problem specifically.

We are working in user-defined contexts from day one (not all users fit into the 5-context model), but I think incorrect classification is the most important issue to address to minimize user frustration. We are approaching it by treating topic and context membership fuzzily and using graph visualization to aid in traversal of inexact queries.

I couldn't agree with you more: there are serious problems with binary membership and "automatic" filtering.

Re: A new Gmail inbox

#240

Post by [deleted] »

russgray wrote: post #56
typpo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think this simplifies email organization for the average user. Normal people don't use labels extensively and don't customize their inbox. With sane presets for these tabs, Google can give most users an inbox that is organized by default.

I thought the point of gmail was that you didn't need to organize. Just search.

[deleted]
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