Comments on: I’m not the only annoyed one.

By: AK Ganesh

AK Ganesh — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:35:37 +0000

Hi Matt, When people send email messages on Yahoo! or Gmail we tend to save them for future reference but often find that the subject line used by the sender has no relevance to you. Case in point is a recent email that I received with subject: “thank you” but which contained a very useful contact information of another person we had discussed on phone. I would have loved to save that email in my inbox, without having to forward it back to me with a subject line “Peter’s contact updated Feb 2008″. It would have been nicer to just be able to change the subject line. Do you know a way of doing it?

By: Saul

Saul — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:05:14 +0000

To Dave, re Gmail chat:

You can turn it off. Just click on your username in the little chat box, and it will display a drop-down menu where you can select “Sign out of chat”. Gmail will remember that setting from now on.

Plus, if you don’t want to see which of your friends are online, you can click on the “Quick Contacts” text (the title of this box, next to a little black arrow) so you can minimize the box and not have to worry about it again.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:30:24 +0000

Google Gmail Chat option let other know if you are at home or not!!!!

-it’s a privacy violation.

-It’s a threat for the security of my home and family.

-I realy need to remove this chat feature!

Please help me.

By: Andy Atkinson

Andy Atkinson — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:21:22 +0000

Any updates on a keyboard shortcut for Delete? I’m assuming Gmail intentionally left this out because more emails in the inbox = more emails to scan for targeted advertisement content = theoretically improved precision of targeted ads. If that is the case, I think that is poor business to choose the bottom line over a usability feature, but maybe this is debatable. Google certainly isn’t hurting for cash though so monetizing user inability to delete emails from the keyboard seems sharky. How could a designer “forget” delete?

By: veekay

veekay — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:45:24 +0000

We must understand that Gmail is still going through an evolutionary phase (aka BETA). While Yahoo, Hotmail/MSN and the other biggies have had years to fine-tune their webmail UI, the Google fellows are putting in a lot of effort to come up with some great ideas.

Please note that this means that there will be frequent (and sometimes radical) changes in the Gmail interface. Also, they are not obliged to cater to all whims & fancies of their users, since Gmail is still a subscription-only service (not counting the signup feature via mobile). If you don’t like it, delete your Gmail account.

Mind you all, I am not blindly favoring Google, but stating the facts as they stand. Yahoo and its ilk are only recently catching up with the AJAX tricks which have been a forte of Gmail since its inception.

However, I do agree that Gmail’s slick interface can be pretty counter-intuitive at times, and could do with some new usability testing. Gmail seems to be aimed more at the power users rather than the common folk.

The Gmail developers need to have some convenient forum or feedback form wherein users can post their suggestions, bug reports, etc. Maybe an official Gmail blog ?

By: hehupps

hehupps — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:08:48 +0000

Hi Matt- just posted this at Hanford’s next door – but since you’re carrying a list to the GMail UI team, I thought I’d add this here as well. Cheers.
—-
Since we’re at it, flag-up: no ability to sort by unread messages.

For huge inboxes…you’ll be paging with “Older” for days to get to all your unread threads. This kills me. I have to actually HUNT for the unread items in the archives so I can get the unread count down to a normal number and feel my inbox is somehwat in order…

By: Hanford

Hanford — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:11:23 +0000

Ian, I just wanted to use Reply in order to send a new email/subject to the email author, NOT for fowarding. I do use “forward” for that.

If the person I want to send the email to is not in my contact list, then Reply is the really the only way to send them a new message, short of more-options -> highlight the address -> copy -> Compose -> paste email. Which is more steps.

A hallmark of great UI is allowing the user to do things in the way that makes sense to them. I may not know until finishing my message body that the email deserves a new subject line. But when the subject line is hidden, it makes it harder to do this. This confused me, and I guarantee it confuses others who don’t see the “edit subject” link.

By: CMartin

CMartin — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:51:07 +0000

My first problem with Gmail was to create new folders as I didn’t find anything to create a new folder.

Only then I figured that Gmail decided to call “Labels” to “Folders”, and for someone that used Outlook and Yahoo, it’s not intuitive the name Gmail uses for folders.

The Gmail way
Instead of folders, Gmail uses labels to give you the functionality of folders, but with more flexibility. In Gmail, a single conversation can have several labels, so you’re not forced to choose one particular folder for each message you receive.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 10:05:04 +0000

“Lastly, the ‘X’ after you do ‘Add contact’ and want to cancel it is a bit faint and hard to see.”

I meant in the GMail chat interface.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 10:04:23 +0000

Matt,

One other thing about that guy’s post – he wrote about how he wants to edit the subject line when he replies when he wants to change who he sends it to. He should (quite obviously) be using Forward instead of Reply for that, and when you forward, GMail (sensibly) does show the Subject box then.

In general, I love the GMail interface, but there are a few things that bug me the most:

- No reply/forward at the top of messages (or at least the very first message) means I have to scroll down through a whole message to be able to reply to it (and often I might not need to do that if they just have a large sig). [this really confused my wife recently when she couldn't see a reply button]

- I really, really need an ‘add label’ button for draft messages, it is my biggest pet peeve I thnk.

Also, could you ask if they could turn on GMail Chat for English UK also? People who have English UK get the ‘New – GMail chat!’ introduction screen which asks them if they want to enable chat history or not, but then don’t actually get given it. It sounds like you allow EN-UK for the message but not for the actual use of it, which sounds like a pretty big oversight. Having had a quick run around the GMail chat interface, I didn’t see anything which was correct EN-US but incorrect EN-UK.

Lastly, the ‘X’ after you do ‘Add contact’ and want to cancel it is a bit faint and hard to see.