AdesBlog.com

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.

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.

Suggested New Feature

Why not introduce small arrows for pushing up and pushing down the filters? You click once on up arrow and the filter goes up by one position, you click once on down arrow and it goes down by one position. Simple yet effective. And most importantly it would make gmail much more usable - user friendly.

Your opinion

Do you have similar problem? If yes, how do you manage it? And in your opinion how best to solve this usability problem?

Ping: gmailblog.blogspot.com (I am gonna ping gmail blog, so that they will take note of this post, hopefully).

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: gmailblog.blogspot.com… I hope someone is listening.

Update: “loading” issue has been resolved

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?

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.

Sometimes when I come across a good website, I contact the owner of the website for advertisement opportunities. Be it regarding paid reviews or banner advertisements on their site. In some cases, they reply late. If you are lucky, you get a reply the next day. But in some cases you get a reply only after few days, and yet in some cases you get a reply after few weeks.

Usually the email would contain info about the advertisement options and its rates. But the difficulty arises when the site owner does not include a link to his website. Not in the body of the email, nor in the signature. (It’s worse when they use free email like yahoo or gmail, because you can’t trace their site from the email address.)

Unless you know the person, normally you forget who is the email from. And the “clean” email without any links wouldn’t help to identify the website. The simple solution for this would have been, for the owner to list his sites in the signature of all outgoing emails.

Most of the time, if the rates and stats sound attractive I would respond back, and ask for the website URL. But if the rates are just normal or expensive, I don’t bother to reply. Who knows, maybe if he had included a link I would have bought an ad… looking at the site might have influenced my decision.

The point
Don’t make the mistake of sending emails without your site or blog’s URLs. Especially when you are replying to an email, that is asking for advertisement opportunities. Better yet, include all your URLs in the signature of all outgoing emails. That’s what I do.