All posts in Email

Gmail Usability: Collapsible Labels

by Ades on September 6, 2009 in Gmail, Usability with 25 Comments

I have a small suggestion to Gmail team particularly to the User Interface team (if there is such team). Making the labels collapsible was a great idea. Because now you can keep the important labels visible and the rest hidden in the drop down menu.

The small usability issue that is causing tens of thousands of people to click, scroll, and scan everyday is the state of the “# more” link below the labels (see screenshot). This is the link where you click and see your other hidden labels. This is the link where you click and see if there is any new email in any of the labels. Especially if you have setup your filter to “skip the inbox“.

Making this “more” link bold when there is new email would save everyone a lot of time. It’s a small thing for Google, but it’s kind of big deal for Gmail users. Don’t you agree? If you do please re-tweet this post to @Google. (here is the short url for this post http://ow.ly/odJw).

Ping: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com

Moving Gmail chat to the rigth column

by Ades on February 6, 2009 in Gmail, Usability with 10 Comments

As you know, by default gmail chat box is on the left side, just below the main menu. I always felt like dragging it and putting on the other side. Because when you expand it, it pushes all your labels down making it difficult to access them. And if you keep gmail chat minimized then you won’t know who is online… so, it had this small usability issue.

But thanks to Right-side chat feature in Settings > Labs, now I can put it on the right column (see screenshot).

Recommended Solution

While Right-side chat solves the problem for one box, ideal solution would be draggable boxes. This way, users could arrange the boxes according to their preference.

Otherwise with the current solution we will have to wait for right-side calendar, right-side google docs..etc until they are developed.

Gmail’s new buttons

By the way, how do you like the new buttons in gmails?

For me, at first it was a bit confusing, since drop down menus are barely differentiable from buttons. But after using it a while it was ok.

Gmail introduces to-do list

by Ades on December 10, 2008 in Gmail with 14 Comments

Gmail introduced to-do list feature. In order to use this feature, you need to enable Tasks function in Settings first.

Good thing about this feature is that you can add emails into tasks as well. Just select the emails that you want to put in your to-do list and choose More Actions > Add to Tasks.

Everything is becoming much more than what they are – wordpress is becoming more than a blogging platform, gmail is more than just an email service. I think in the future everything will be inter-connected. We can even see the start of this inter-connectedness now.

I was just checking LinkedIn and was amazed by how much it changed in the short period of time that I didn’t login. Now you can import so many things from other applications to your profile e.g. your blog, slideshare presentations, box.net files, amazon lists etc.

I can’t wait to see what will be internet like after another 10 years.

Gmail has themes now

by Ades on November 21, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Gmail with 14 Comments

Gmail has introduced themes yesterday. Not everyone has it though, if you have it you should see it under Settings in your Gmail.

Google said it will be rolling out this feature to everyone next couple of days.

My suggestion…

In my opinion, allowing users to set their own theme (or at least background) would be a much better feature than this pre-set 30 themes. Because even with simple custom backgrounds, people can be so creative. As we have seen with twitter users like this. Let’s hope that it’s the beginning of Gmail customization/personalization.

Source: gmail blog

Gmail: Auto-Responder Feature Added

by Ades on October 23, 2008 in Gmail, Google with 18 Comments

Auto responder feature (kind of) has been added to Gmail. Actually, the main purpose of this new feature is to allow users to create pre-written emails for repetitive replies. So, for example next time you get an email that needs a standard reply, you can just use back one of the “canned responses” (that’s what they are called) that you have created earlier.

Enabling the Feature

In order to enable it, you need to login to you Gmail and go to Settings > Labs > Canned Responses. Click “enable it” and save your preferences.

Creating Canned Response

Now compose a new message, and type the text of your auto-responder. Once you are done, click on Canned Responses link (see screenshot below) and choose New Canned Response. It will popup a window. Give your auto-responder a name and save it.

Creating the Auto-Responder

Now the most important part – creating a filter. As you know gmail allows you to create different kinds of filters. As for your auto-responder, if you want to send everyone who emails you an auto-response, then you have to enter your own email in the To: field when setting a criteria for your filter (see below).

That would mean, all emails that is sent to your@gmail.com would receive an auto-response from you.

In the next step (see below), tick Send canned response and choose the appropriate “canned response” from the drop down menu.

You are done with your auto-responder! Use it wisely though. Don’t spam!

P.S When replying manually, if you want to use particular canned response, you just have to select it from the drop down menu and it will fill your text area automatically.

Gmail: How to find all “unread” messages in “inbox”

by Ades on September 23, 2008 in Gmail with 22 Comments

I have just done a cleanup of my Gmail inbox. For the first time it’s showing “2 Unread Messages” and not “100+ Unread Messages“.

How do I feel? Feel like I had a haircut after 6 months, no no, feel like I just shaved my head ;) Yeah it’s that good to see so few unread messages in my Gmail.

Two little Gmail search strings and a lot of courage helped me to achieve this result. A lot of courage – because some of the emails I intentionally marked “unread” so that I could reply to them when I have a spare time. But the spare time somehow never came ;) and by now, it was too late to reply to them anyway.

As for the two little search strings, they were:

is:unread for listing unread messages. 2) in:inbox for listing messages in inbox

Used together as is:unread in:inbox in the search field, it will list all the unread emails in your inbox.

Other Useful Search Strings

Here are some of the other useful gmail search strings that you can use:

Emails from particular sender
from:ades or from:ades@adesblog.com – so you can use either the sender’s name or email.
Search for emails in particular label
in:label – just like above I used “in:inbox”, you can search for emails with any other labels.
Emails CC’ed or BCC’ed to someone
cc:arstan – it will search for emails that were CC’ed to Arstan. (Similarly you can use bcc:arstan).
Search for chat messages
is:chat – is:chat advertise – it will look for any chat message that contains the word “advertise” in it.
Emails that are read, unread and starred
is:read – is:unread – is:starred – it will search for emails that are read, unread and starred respectively. Please note that you can combine more than one search string. Eg; is:starred is:unread from:ades
Emails with specific subject title
subject:adsense – finds emails with a word “adsense” in their subject.
subject:(google adsense) – finds emails in which the subject contains both the word “google” AND “adsense”.
subject:”google adsense” – finds emails in which the subject contains a phrase “google adsense” in them. Phrases like “adsense google” or “google has adsense” won’t be found.
Emails that contain attachment
has:attachment – search for messages with an attachment. Eg; from:ades has:attachment
Emails with specific attachment
filename:fonts.zip – search for messages that has attachment fonts.zip.

Memorize the above search strings and you will never lose an email in your Gmail ever again! Hope you find it useful.

Gmail Productivity

by Ades on March 27, 2008 in Gmail with 8 Comments

I have been using Gmail with “shortcuts on” mode for some time, and I should say it’s great. It saved me a lot of time. It’s especially useful when I use my notebook, because I don’t have to use the touchpad for navigation. Touchpad can be a really pain sometimes.

One of the challenges when you start using Gmail with shortcuts is to remember which keys does what. It’s quite a hassle to check the shortcuts page for info. And I think it’s one of the reasons why people feel lazy to enable shortcuts, because they do not want to keep going back and forth learning shortcuts.

But luckily Gmail has a better solution for it, that some of you might not know. After you have enabled shortcuts, pressing Shift + ? will bring up a semi-transparent layered window with all the shortcuts their functions. Below is the screenshot of this window while Gmail is in Compose mode. This works anywhere in Gmail, as long as you are logged in.

So are you ready to be more productive while working with your Gmail? Ready to go shortcuts?

Subscribe to my RSS for more tips.

Yahoo Mail has a new “download all” feature, finally!

by Ades on February 15, 2008 in Email, Usability with 13 Comments

yahoo mail download all

Yahoo Mail has introduced long awaited “download all attachments” feature. I had blogged about this usability issue in late 2006, then Gmail had this feature already. Download all feature is really vital when you get more than 10 attachments in the mail. It allows you to download all attachments as one zip file, rather than downloading them one by one. Because, Yahoo Mail’s popup window that scans your file before the download, makes downloading x2 more difficult. (why won’t they scan it in the background? why popup? that’s another issue altogether).

Anyway it’s still nice to have this feature in Yahoo Mail. It’s better late then never, right?

So, just continue to point out problems and request new features from the sites that you use regularly. They are might be too big to respond to the requests quickly, but still, they are listening.

* Thanks to Daniel for pointing this out.

Gmail Usability: Too many filters but no feature to manage them

by Ades on December 27, 2007 in Gmail, Google, Usability with 12 Comments

gmail filter order If you are like me, have hundreds of filters in your gmail. Then you must be having this usability problem too.

I have lots of filters, some are important and some are just for organizational purposes. Some of the important ones, just because they start with a letter that are at the end of the alphabet (eg. T,S,W etc), they end up being placed at the end of the list.

And every time you want to check your gmail, you need to scroll down, if there is any email inside that filter. I usually apply “skip inbox” feature for all the emails that are placed in special filters.

Current Solution

Currently you can add symbols or numbers before your filter names and they will show up on top of the list. For example if you have Web2.0 as the filter name, normally it will show up at the end of the list, but if you add * Web2.0 or $ Web2.0 then it will climb to the top of the list. Similarly if you can add numbers like 1 Web2.0 to make it appear on top of the list.

Gmail usability improves, but there is still room for improvemenet

by Ades on November 11, 2007 in Gmail, Usability with 9 Comments

I have talked about Gmail’s loading… message, and how it used to block the Logout link here.

With the new version of Gmail, that usability issue has been corrected. Now the loading… message appears in the middle as was suggested (see screenshot below). Unfortunately, delete_&_next feature is yet to be introduced.

The new version of Gmail is not that different from the older version. In fact, you won’t notice much about the changes. What is noticeable though is the improved loading time, now it seems to load a lot faster.

Gmail, how about “unread” marking for individual emails in the long thread?

In Gmail, when you email to each other back and forth, it will turn into a long conversation thread. There are times, when you open the email and then mark it “unread” back for later reading. The reasons can vary, maybe the email is too long, maybe you are rushing…etc

But there is a slight usability problem with this “unread” marking feature. When you mark the thread “unread”, it will mark the whole thread (not the last email). And when you later open that particular thread, it will display you the first email in the thread. Shouldn’t it display the last one logically? Anyway, that’s not what I am getting at…

What I want is, ability to mark any specific email, be it separate email or the one that is inside a long conversation thread. So you can mark any email “unread” for example. And when you click on that particular marked thread, it will display the “unread” message (not the first email in the thread). It would be very convenient. Because this way, you could get to the email that you want from the first click.

Because if you are like me, then you know that scrolling long threads is no fun… ;) I rarely use the “end” button on the keyboard to go to the end of the page.

So Gmail team, anybody there…? Can we expect these changes in the new version of Gmail? Ping ping ping: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com… I hope someone is listening.

Update: “loading” issue has been resolved

“Less than 5 minutes” email rule

by Ades on October 25, 2007 in Email, Getting Things Done, Gmail with 5 Comments

During weekdays, especially tuesdays and wednesdays I will get lots of emails. While I try to answer them all, some of them will be left un-answered for days… I try to get most of the emails replied the same day, I do this by applying my own “less than 5 minutes” rule. And most of the emails (about 80%) fall into this rule.

How does it work?

First I go through all emails, and if I think I can reply particular email in less than 5 minutes, I will go ahead and reply. But if I think the email needs my attention for more than 5 minutes, then I will select “unread” option from Gmail, so that I can reply the person when I have more free time.

What are these “less than 5 minutes” emails?

They are emails like… “I have this site, would you like to exchange links?”, the answer would be simple “okay or not interested (in polite way, of course)”. Or “How much a custom web design for a typical corporate website cost?”, the answer would be “about $800 – $1200, for a static corporate website. please send your requirements so that I can give you a detailed quote”….etc

Objective of this rule

The idea here is to reply as soon as possible to your customers, so that they won’t wait too long to get an answer for their simple questions. People who asked simple questions would expect to get faster response, while people who have sent longer emails that needs to be studied won’t mind to wait for few days or even weeks (depending on the requirement).

So far the rule has been working quite fine. Do you apply this kind of rule to your email checking? Or if you are the sender and if you asked someone simple question through email, and you didn’t get back from him/her for few days… how would you feel? what would be your thoughts about the person? would it make him/her look less reliable?

Usability: Gmail’s “loading…” message blocks the “logout” button

by Ades on August 31, 2007 in Gmail, Usability with 4 Comments

Gmail has a usability problem with its ajax loading… message, it covers the “logout” button and makes it difficult to click on it.

You can still click on the logout button while it’s loading, but you need to make some real effort to do that. You have to click that 1 pixel edge of “logout” button which is barely visible beneath the loading… message.

It’s true that we can just wait for the message to be gone and only then click the logout button. However, sometimes, when there is a problem with internet connection or when the connection is slow, the loading message would not go so easily. In fact, there are times it will just stay like that – frozen, until you refresh it again.

I hope guys over at Gmail can solve this usability issue soon.