Google Rolling Out Gmail Redesign

Today Google announced a redesign of the Gmail inbox. Citing a high volume of email which makes it hard for users to focus on what's important (or what they want to focus on at any given moment), the new inbox will automatically group incoming emails into categories, which will appear as tabs at the top of the inbox. 'You can easily customize the new inbox — select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.' Speaking to The Verge, Gmail product manager Alex Gawley said, 'It became obvious to us over time that this notion that the inbox was more of your master than your servant was becoming more widespread. It wasn't just the people receiving hundreds of emails a day — more regular users were starting to feel stressed out by their inbox.' The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.

Comments

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

Re:No!

[cayenne8]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

No shit.

I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

What has changed so much that they need to potentiall fsck up the interface yet again?

I think by now, we've pretty much gotten email front ends and MTA's done about right, not much need for new tinkering that I can fathom.

Re:No!

[gl4ss]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

my other account had just rolled over to the new(ehm old??) design in last month.

was nothing wrong with the older one either. it's not like I think it's a terribly great idea to write new messages in a fucking chat box on bottom right corner, wtf is up with that? is it making it more IM for fooling the cool kids??

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.

Re:No!

[dougisfunny]

I know right? I hate it when I have new options on how to look at things. I mean, when someone sends me mail I want to go get it out of the mail box and open an envelope, not mess around with some newfangled electronical mail.

Re:No!

[twisted_pare]

Optional will be tomorrow's mandatory. That has been the typical beta test to roll out of Gmail updates so far.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an e-mail client, dammit!
There is no PC or mobile OS that comes without one!
Webmail is a "solution" looking for a problem.
The only problem here is that you're actually using it. Out of sheer (by definition self-harmful) laziness.

Also: Did you know that a cheap KVM/Xen root server is available for less than $5 a month? Only webhosting with e-mail and everything? $1!
I’d say that’s damn worth it!
(No, spam is not a problem. Server-side solutions like amavisd with smart patterns, updates from multiple networks, bayesian filtering, virus scanning and greylisting easily outdo Google's filter. Also, on the client side, every good Internet security suite contains a proper spam filter.)

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google won't listen, no matter how many people complain. They don't give a shit about their users and insist that every ugly, poor performing, inconsistent change that they make from YouTube to the Android UI is for the best.

This is the reason I will no longer use anything from them. My last tie was my Android phone, which got replaced (and smashed with a hammer) last month.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Google. 'Optional' means 'we'll force everyone to use the new, inefficient design in a month.'

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they allow people to permanently keep classic view or will they eventually force everyone to change like they do for every other "optional" new interface (including the last forced Gmail downgrade itself)?

Re:No!

[EGenius007]

I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

Yeah, I mean, just like back in '93 when I used to get all those facebook invites to my email. And the craigslist responses. And the messages from my state government about my license plates needing renewed. The updates on the status of my federal income tax return. Messages from PayPal about changes to policies on availability of funds on their system. Notification from my bank about my checking account balance. Statements and bill notifications from all of my utilities providers. Receipts for pizzas I ordered online, as well as information about when the delivery was expected.

You'd almost think that in addition to attracting a larger mass of personal correspondence due to the ubiquity of internet access for the whole world, we're generating more automated messages of varying degrees of import by consuming goods and services that somehow haven't always been around.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

If you haven't had email and the internet for 20 years, it's easy to get lost... my mother doesn't know how to deal with email "properly"... we're just highly accustomed to dealing with email, but we shouldn't be surprised when others have difficulty with something.

Re:No!

[TheRealMindChild]

One thing that is broken is I can't "hide" shit in my inbox that isn't spam and I don't want to see. I'd love to hide the Papa Johns, DealExtreme, etc from view in my inbox, but still have them in their own (filter) pseudo-folder.

Re:No!

[BradleyAndersen]

exactly.

gmail keeps pushing not insignificant changes, and calls them 'optional'. my experience is they later remove the options.

Re:No!

[Ironhandx]

I actually like the new box because I can more easily grab attachments and copy/paste from other emails without the compose tying up the whole screen. All that really did was make it more like outlook et al.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! I'm assuming here that nobody who works on GMail has older relatives who will ring them every time something changes on screen.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

So email should remain exactly as it was since 1993?

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.

Because if it turns out people LIKE it, then the GP and GGP might wind up having to admit they're the outliers and no longer represent the views of the internet. This is an unacceptable solution, as it would be tantamount to admitting that the internet, being a melting pot of humanity never before seen in history, has evolved to something the GP/GGP doesn't recognize, and that, in turn, would be the first step in realizing that they're OLD (with a capital OLD) and behind the times, AND that they can't stop the progress of time any more than the music labels and movie studios can.

Therefore, the objective is to whine loud enough so that the choice to change things is somehow removed. This will preserve their fragile egos, which I'm certain they can agree is worth holding back any possible conveniences, unless they themselves are initiating it, in which case everyone else is old. And the fact that old people can agree on it is all that matters.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Create a filter to Archive it (skip the inbox) and apply a label (say A). Then when you look at Label A those emails will be there as unread, otherwise they will be hidden.

Re:No!

[Patch86]

You assume that people in the earlier days of the internet weren't getting lots of emails too, just with different content. Have you ever been on half a dozen active mailing lists at the same time?

I'm still quite happy with "everything turns up in my inbox with metadata I can filter by". That plus some auto-move rules does me just fine at work (where I'm a 100 emails a day man) and at home (pizza receipts and all).

I've actually found the last new Gmail interface such an unpleasant pain to use that I just don't use the webmail interface at all any more; I only ever interact with it through Thunderbird or my Android email client, except for in emergencies. Some people (my wife for example) seem to really like the (old) new interface, but I just can't make myself like it.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot go back to the old gmail interface. Much easier to use.

Also cannot use it via activesync.

I am fairly close to just forwarding all my gmail to outlook.com

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

No - it should be like I was using @ Xerox in 1981 (and, IIRC, before). Kids today...

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Optional will be tomorrow's mandatory. That has been the typical beta test to roll out of Gmail updates so far.

Just how like they already forced everyone to use Priority Inbox. Oh, wait...

Re:No!

[magic maverick]

You'd almost think that receiving large quantities of email from known senders was a solved problem. Oh wait, it is a solved problem.
They are called filters. You can filter mail: from senders (e.g. you-stupid-user@facebook.com); to addresses (e.g. you can give a different address to every site & company (e.g. slashdot.org.2013.may.29@example.com, assuming you own example.com and considering you can get domains for $2 a year, it's easy to own your own domain); based on subject line (e.g. if it's got [BEST SCAT PORN] in the subject); etc.
You filter them into different folders, and then you deal with each folder as you like. Some folders you'll just regularly delete (e.g. maybe all the Facebook junk). Some you'll mark as read, without actually reading. Some you'll scan the subject lines. And some you can open up individually and read (e.g. the scat porn).

Filters, they work. (They may not work with Google Mail, but would mean you should get your own bloody mail system.)

Re:No!

[UltraZelda64]

Which might just force some of their users over to Outlook.com instead. But ironically, massive corporations don't seem to care--a few million users is just a drop in the bucket to them.

Re: No!

[iamhassi]

THIS!!! Google is always screwing with gmail making it WORSE! We like gmail the way it is stop screwing with it!

Re: No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but I wouldn't go quite that far... maybe

Re:No!

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

LOL, OMG, Email (in general) is broken, and has been, for years. Please start making Email into something new.

Gmail is trying to make sense of the countless amount of pure garbage sent to your inbox, even from your friends, family and co-workers.

Even at work, 90% of the email I get is only valid for the 5 minutes after it was sent, and is usually something I can toss away. In fact I have gotten used to the idea of being able to Ignore entire conversation threads in Outlook based purely on the fact the original message is meaningless to me, but I got CC'd on it.

While Google is trying to organize and make sense of it, I think that email in general needs to change. Its become a kind of sms/message service where people feel the need to try and maintain some kind of real time conversation, and email inbox's are just not designed for that.

I can't comment on the new Gmail until I use it, but email clients have to move beyond just a flat list of mostly useless content and evolve into something a little smarter.

Re:No!

[uncqual]

Why can't you do that with existing gmail function? I've been doing what you seem to be describing w/gmail for years.

A downside in my case is that there were emails, generally forum digests, that I considered "not very important or time critical" that I would actually at least skim most of eventually when they were in my inbox. I routed them to other folders and now I pay no attention to them (a quick glance shows over 2,700 unread messages in one of these folders - yikes). I've toyed with removing the filters/routing but am hesitant to subject myself to the onslaught again.

Re: No!

[i kan reed]

But there's some team of developers somewhere in the depth of googleville who depend on having to constantly write new code for the existing application. Would you see these poor poor devs left to actually work on something interesting and new?

Re:No!

[Grishnakh]

I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

I first got email on the internet in 1992, and reading them in the order they come in isn't realistic any more: there's simply too much spam and non-important emails. That's why GMail's "Priority Inbox" is such a boon to me: I have it set so that different emails automatically have different tags and priorities set for me, and then the inbox is automatically sorted so that important emails are shown at the top, and unimportant emails are shown farther down, in different categories ("starred", "important", "everything else"). All the mailing list junk gets put in "everything else" and if I feel like looking at it sometime, I can, otherwise it just sits there, and I can see important emails right away in the upper categories.

The problems with GMail are 1) they changed the UI aesthetically about a year ago so it's ugly and less efficient, and 2) they keep trying to push this social bullshit on everyone.

Re:No!

[anjin-san 3]

That's not true for Gmail's inbox. They've offered all kinds of changes through labs and priority inbox but you can still use the classic inbox, same as it was when Gmail first launched.

Re: No!

[EGenius007]

My point wasn't that sources have changed, but that the breadth of importance, urgency and information content has changed. Though I think the real mistake I made was in assuming people might be interested in discussing this topic rather than essentially saying "I have found a sufficiently capable methodology to solve this problem for myself, using existing tools which haven't always existed. But anyone who thinks other tools should continue to be developed is an idiot."

Re:No!

[cayenne8]

I first got email on the internet in 1992, and reading them in the order they come in isn't realistic any more: there's simply too much spam and non-important emails. That's why GMail's "Priority Inbox" is such a boon to me: I have it set so that different emails automatically have different tags and priorities set for me, and then the inbox is automatically sorted so that important emails are shown at the top, and unimportant emails are shown farther down, in different categories ("starred", "important", "everything else"). All the mailing list junk gets put in "everything else" and if I feel like looking at it sometime, I can, otherwise it just sits there, and I can see important emails right away in the upper categories.

Hmm...well, I have a few throwaway email accounts that I use for setting up internet stuff, or registering for a contest...etc. I rarely look at those accounts.

My main acct that I do need to read things...Ionly give that out to friends and people that I wish to deal with.

Aside from that...gmail spam catcher is quite good...so, it makes the traffic quite manageable without having separate boxes, or starring or marking this or that...and yes, I still do get a LOT of email (mailing lists, etc).

Re:No!

[Georules]

"To focus on a consistent user experience and consolidating our products, we regret that we are phasing out classic inbox."

Re:No!

[Grishnakh]

See, I don't feel like going to the trouble of managing a bunch of separate accounts; I like having everything in one place, where I can do quick searches to find it, or look by folder (tag). It takes me a lot less time to just set up a few filters than to deal with multiple accounts. And yes, I'm on a bunch of mailing lists too (selecting daily digest mode helps, but only so much). But I don't want to see those in my mail email stream among actual important emails; I want those to stand out so I can respond to them quickly if necessary. With filters, I get exactly that. I will admit, I do have multiple email accounts, but they're all redirected to my Gmail account (and automatically tagged and starred and sorted based on which account they were forwarded from).

Re: No!

[Grishnakh]

It's no so much the team of developers, as it is their management. Managers are always trying to find stuff to make themselves look important and necessary to an organization, even if it's really just make-work. Managers want ever-larger budgets and ever-larger teams to manage, to justify their existence and make themselves look good and justify a higher salary for themselves, so they push unnecessary projects on their bosses to achieve this. You're not going to find any corporate managers who say "OK, we're all done with this big product's development and roll-out, and we consider it done, so let's plan now on how to scale back the operation to a maintenance mode, and move extra people into other development jobs working on other products for the company." Companies do put things into maintenance mode, sure (remember IE6 when MS stopped all development of it?), but only because the top management directs this, not because the managers who are heads of those product divisions request it.

Re:No!

[Grishnakh]

I can't comment on the new Gmail until I use it, but email clients have to move beyond just a flat list of mostly useless content and evolve into something a little smarter.

They already have: it's called "filters". Gmail has them, but I'm sure most other clients (web-based and otherwise) have them too these days: you set up filters to automatically sort your mail. In Gmail, they have the "priority inbox" so you can show "starred" emails separately from others, or emails with a specific tag, etc. (The stars and tags are automatically applied based on your filters.)

Re: No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Make the FBI sort snooped gmail into felony and misdemeanor tabs

Re:No!

[amRadioHed]

Yes, exactly like that. The priority mail box used to be something you could disable in the Gmail app, now you can't get rid of it. Also, in the web interface there is the "Important" mailbox which I can't get rid of.

Re: No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric Holder did not approve this thread.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear. Google's 'designers' are assholes of the highest order. As you say - they will FORCE this shit on us tomorrow, precisely because MOST of us turn it off and don't want their crap - and hence the 'designers' will be out of a job, unless they FORCE this bullshit on everybody. Unbelievable.

Re:No!

[jxander]

My first reaction too; "Stop helping me!!"

Re:No!

[magic maverick]

Wait, I get it. Gmail sucks balls, and they are trying to make it slightly less sucky.
I don't use Google for much at all (OpenStreetMaps for maps was the last major thing; apart from the occasional search when other systems don't hack it, and even then Google's getting worse). I use my own hosted email. It has folders. And, if I use IMAP and bring it down to my computer, I can use virtual folders and get all the benefits of Gmail labels. Without Google ever reading the email in my inbox.

Re: No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, this sums it up. There is no BIG "innovation" needed in email since we took care of spam, virus in attachments, etc. But if Google lets gmail be what it has been, people will say the "old email service" is dying, no investments, etc. The developers will loose their jobs, etc. So I see what the Gmail team might have an incentive to fix what's not broken.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup.

See Yahoo Mail Classic -> New Yahoo splits from ~2010 --support for classic got dropped last year and it STILL surprised 3 of my friends.
See Hotmail -> Outlook. The difference here was the lack of a rollback feature and how fiercely it obsoleted the original option. It was just 60 days or less before they pulled it from my cold... I mean, um...
See Google mail's inbox itself... I saw some GUI warnings about some priority thing for months. I think it got implemented recently, so I am wondering why their apparent thirst for back to back interface changes.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone peel the skin off these cretins? Please!

Re:No!

[stoborrobots]

"A few throwaway email accounts" sounds like multiple inboxes, grouped by sender/expected content, with different importances... How is this proposal significantly different, apart from being able to access all of them with a single login?

Re:No!

[Seumas]

Actually, it's a good improvement, in concept. All it's really doing is allowing the separation of email content based on a few primary categories so you don't have your primary view filled with promotional stuff (that you may want, because you did subscribe to it) or with social bullshit. Unfortunately, I've been using this feature for months, while it has been in Google Labs and it is . . . fairly inaccurate. I'm often having to go through both and babysit the two or three categories, because things that I consider quite important show up as promotional and so on. It pulls that stuff out of my inbox stream and puts it into seaprate folders that I have to remember to go check (and I never do, but I guess I might do it more often if it is a big tab at the top of my screen always in my face).

When you're getting dozens of emails from social networks (hello, LinkedIN - thans for the constant spam even though I've tried to mitigate it through your settings!) and mailing lists and companies you've done business with and so on every day . . . it's useful to have all the stuff you just don't really need to get to in the near future and that isn't between actual individual people sort of shuffled off to the background.

Still . . . it's a pretty minor improvement, really. Underwhelming.

Re:No!

[brentrad]

You're actually wrong on both counts:

To get rid of the "Important" mailbox in the web interface: Go to your Gmail settings, Inbox tab, and set your Inbox to "Classic".

In the Android Gmail app, go into the settings for your Gmail account, and uncheck "Priority Inbox".

Re:No!

[lahvak]

Email, when used right, is a perfect way to have a meaningful conversation. When following proper quoting rules, and when using a decent mail reader that will keep messages in threads, and keep track of quoting, email conversation are very clear, and you can come to them years later, and they still make perfect sense. In fact, you can pick up where you ended, and continue the conversation.

The problem is that for decades, majority of people were using idiotic mail readers that 1) broke headers so that proper threading was impossible, and 2) provided braindead composing interface that could not deal with proper quoting, so majority of people started simply top-posting, instead of carying on a conversation, and email eventually degenerated into the mess that it is today. But with decent mail readers, and with message filtering and multiple, possibly virtual, mailboxes, email can still be one of the best ways to have a conversation on the internet, especially if you want to have the conversation archived for later. And if not, there is nothing easier than to delete the entire thread, or make it so that it gets saved in some mailbox dedicated to unimportant garbage.

What Google is doing now has been around for a very long time: message filtering, sorting, virtual mailboxes, those are all features Unix mailreaders had 15 or 20 years ago. Google is now putting a new user friendly interface, and finally bringing them to the masses.

Re:No!

[Zaelath]

Or you can just give slashdot your gmail address as magic.maverick+slashdot.org@gmail.com and then make a filter based on that; assuming you don't really want to run a mail server.

i.e. assuming magic.maverick@gmail.com is your email address, you can add +whatever after your username and it goes to the same email address, but then you have a different TO: to filter on.

Re:No!

[seanvaandering]

These are people (including myself) who don't want my interface played around with BY DEFAULT. I would rather have the option to OPT IN rather than OPT OUT of any new changes. I would even go so far as to check an actual setting that forbids new changes and makes it a default OPT IN requirement. Amazing that NO ONE has ever figured this out - it would be very popular.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

So the 'internet' is one thing now, with no room for minority views or preferences? The instant you are in the minority, your views can be safely ignored becuase 'the crowd' is always right? Actually, the crowd is just as often a complete ass.

Re:No!

[El_Muerte_TDS]

You say mail thread, but neither Outlook nor GMail's webinterface actually support threads. GMail even has this stupid concept of conversations that groups unrelated emails into the same flat list of emails (this is really helpful for system/monitoring messages).
Instead of tabs Google should have implemented actual threads already (and proper quoting support).

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole 'change for the sake of change' trend is doing my head in! It's like anything older than a few months must be redone and the entire UI must change also. Rinse and repeat! Feels like devs having too much time on their hands and going all batshit OCD.

Re:No!

[magic maverick]

Yes, except that we all know it's really easy to get the main form of the email address from that. And not all systems accept a plus in an email address. And basically it's a cludge, when there is simply a better way to do it. Even the Yahoo way is better (you pick a prefix (e.g. makingwaves-) and then you can make additional email addresses of the form prefix-suffix, e.g. makingwaves-slashdot.org@yahoo.com), because there is no way to infer the main email address. (Though you do have to make the addresses ahead of time, unlike with a catch-all domain, or the Google option.)

Re:No!

[Omestes]

You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot, the land of ironic techno-luddites. If it isn't a monotone command line, it is broken and needlessly complex.

I don't get it either, I'm looking forward to this, since right now Gmail somewhat frustrates me, since it is hard to divide messages into useful groups, beyond "starred", "important", and "everything else". I would like to keep all my work related mail in one area, all my invoices and shipping info in another, my social updates in another, useful "bulk" mail in another, and actual, important, personal correspondences in a primary area. I would love them to be separated, so I can focus on one at a time.

I'm a minimalist, so I can't stand having a huge messy list of messages, it overwhelms me (I also generally only have 5-6 icons on my desktop, and my office is almost completely plane, with no clutter on any surface not related to an immediate project). I also generally keep around 25-30 "working" messages, where either their status is still pending (appointments, shipping, reservations), or I haven't bothered with them yet. This list can get a bit overwhelming. This option works for me. And if it doesn't work for people, turn it off. Right now Gmail still offers the classic inbox, so I doubt that it, or the priority version will be going soon.

People will complain. Any change is the end of the world. We're addicted to the status quo, which is odd in computers, since things change so damn fast. Looking at what I grew up on in the '80's, to what we have now is rather overwhelming, but somehow I've managed to adapt and survive. Things are better now than when I was dialing into ugly ASCII BBSs on my 300 baud modem, waiting 2-3 minutes for just the login screen to load, back in the C64 days.

Re:No!

[Omestes]

Just like they forced us to use the priority inbox... But they didn't.

I'm pissed at Google right now for killing iGoogle and Reader (Feedly kind of sucks), both of which are pretty much completely integrated into my life now... But so far Gmail hasn't done anything to make me mad. All changes are so-far reversible. So I somewhat doubt that this one won't be, especially since they outright said it would be. Sure, somewhere down the road they might force it, but that is what you get for using a proprietary service, you lose control.

Use Gmail (or whatever), use imap (or whatever), and use a standalone client.

Re:No!

[Omestes]

So the 'internet' is one thing now, with no room for minority views or preferences?

Depending on the size of the minority, then yes. There comes a point where it isn't worth spending the money for niche needs. This isn't to say it is a fun experience (please don't kill Reader, or iGoogle), but it comes with free and proprietary services. If only 5% of people use X, but it costs more than 5% of of your operating expenses to maintain, why not kill it?

I'm sick of internet entitlement. Sure, Google is killing a service I love (not offering an alternate, optional, GUI, but KILLING), but I can't get upset. It is a free service. It is "in the cloud". I knew it was temporary, and subject to the arbitrary whims of Google (or MS, or Apple, no difference)... This is just how things work. It annoys me from time to time, but generally it has worked out well (look at where we are now, compared to where we were ten years ago).

Unlike killing... again... this is an OPTIONAL GUI change. Go set things to "Classic" if you don't like it. Go find another provider. Go use an offline client. Go forward Gmail to a better service. Go use an actual mod of Gmail (they are out there).

Personally, I like the new interface. Why should the minority keep it from me, especially when they have the option not to use it?

Re:No!

[Omestes]

I'm still quite happy with "everything turns up in my inbox with metadata I can filter by"

Good for you. Some people might not be happy with this, though. I don't like having a huge, unsorted list of messages. Email now serves many purposes, and messages come from many sources with many levels of significance within different domains of my life. It isn't that there is just quantitatively more, it is that they are more diverse and cover disparate domains of life.

Right now I have a messy list of mail... in it there are social media updates, important but "bulk" updates, work related mail of various importances, bills, invoices, shipping data, less important correspondences, utility bills, bank balances, and finally actual personal correspondences. Everything "pending" stays in the inbox, until it is addressed (shipped items received, billed items paid, etc...), and my correspondence is generally in long, unending threads, but never removed from the box just to keep track. Generally correspondence related to my current projects also sit around, in tens of individual threads, just so they are fresh. Right now I can have only four loose areas, which doesn't quite fit how I'd actually want them sorted (right now: starred for pending bills/invoices/shipping/appointments/and useful offers, which isn't very useful). If there was a way to simplify this, and cut it down to areas, I'd be happy. This new interface seems promising. If it supported more tabs, I'd be even happier.

Re:No!

[Jstlook]

Does that mean that every user needs to fall into the 'new' design that Google came up with? I'd prefer to believe that choice is a perfectly valid option in our society.

In fact, people still *do* have choice, unfortunately. Lets remember that Google isn't necessarily the only game in town.

(Sure, its generally the best in town, but perhaps is time for someone to set up an email server that filters through Google first, and ignores their 'user-friendly' ruleset?)

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you mean IMAP, not LDAP. Otherwise there's something I don't know about LDAP and GMail :)

Re:No!

[Hognoxious]

It is broken. Gmail's UI is atrocious. Still, I wouldn't put it past them to make it worse. They did an epic job with DejaNews.

Re:No!

[Hognoxious]

Thing is, gmail's filters are fucking shit.

Re:No!

[lipanitech]

Yahoo tried the same thing and it failed miserably people hate the design. Why is google trying something that has already been proven as something users do not like.

Re:No!

[cayenne8]

The throw away accounts I rarely if ever check...that is for the spam gained when registering with websites, etc.

Some I check once in a blue moon, others I just let die and create new ones for registering new sites.

Re:No!

[unixisc]

I actually use Outlook, or Windows Mail. However, whenever I do use Gmail on a browser, it's tough to figure out which mail came from whom, particularly if I sent an e-mail to multiple people, and each of them replied and started new conversations w/ me. I don't need Gmail to group everyone's conversation together.

One thing I do hope - that they introduce the ability to recall mails that have not been opened at the recipient's end. Something like Exchange.

Re:No!

[N0Man74]

Complaints about top-posting? Is it 20 years ago again?

I understand the sentiment against top-posting, but I think that fight was lost when the Eternal September began. That, and I guess many people didn't want to scroll down pages of discussion to see an "OK" response at the end.

Re:No!

[Omestes]

Does that mean that every user needs to fall into the 'new' design that Google came up with?

No. As of now there are still options within Gmail. Three of them (Classic, Priority, and whatever the new one is called). This ignores the services existing outside of Google, obviously, of which there are tons of options.

I'd prefer to believe that choice is a perfectly valid option in our society.

I agree. But sadly we're dealing with being somewhat dependant on giant monolithic companies. Sadly, if you want to be in the Googleverse, you must accept whatever they want. You entered into that relationship knowing this, or at least should have. This is true of MS, Yahoo, and pretty much every "in the cloud" option. The only real solution is rolling your own, so the trade off is time and hassle or losing some freedom.

Personally I'd love my email to arranged by group into the quadrants of a square, with each corner being a different class of useful mail, with a separate area "behind the fold" for bulk and less important notifications. These would be sorted by both handrolled filters, and smart filters. Can I have this? Not unless I'm willing to make it myself.

I'm not trying to be a Google apologist here... Its just a sad fact of the current internet, and there really isn't anything we can do about it until someone things of something better.

Re:No!

[nobodie]

I've tried them all and still prefer a classic inbox. BUT, I also keep tight rein on my email, no more than 15 or so on a busy day in my gmail account, so it is not a problem. Now, my wife has been using hotmail for almost 20 years (yeah, like the beginning) and her inbox is a nightmare. Tabs would certainly help her get that baby under control and maybe I could finally convince her to drop hotmail and move everything to gmail. Just thinkin'

Re:No!

[Lanterns]

This is a very weak comparison. E-mail offers vast improvements over snail mail, such that it is crippling the US Postal Service's revenue. Gmail's recent changes have offered little in terms of substantial improvements. It has left many users with the impression that it is change for the sake of change, like Windows 8 over Windows 7.

Re:No!

[Lanterns]

For users technical enough to get the hang of filters and labels, they should have no trouble sorting through their e-mail. Maybe Google is trying to make it easier for the non-technical people. But it threatens to detract from the workflow of those who feel like they do have a handle on managing our inbox already.

Re:No!

[dcw3]

I know you're being funny with this. However, there are plenty of examples where change was not necessarily an improvement. There seems to be a mentality that the old way is always for dinosaurs, and that's simply an immature view.

Sample data point:
Years ago, we delivered systems to our customers with command line interfaces. Later, when GUIs became available, the thought was that all of those command lines should be removed, and replaced with icons and menus. As we learned the hard way, our customers could do their work much more efficiently with the command lines (once they were trained), but for new operators the GUI let them get the job done giving them time to learn the typed command structures.

Re:No!

[cthulhu11]

What I'd really like is for them to fix their friggin' IMAP so that it works properly, eg. so that messages can be undeleted.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

Agree, but the product manager is very arrogant, luckily one anonymous developer managed to slip in a way to access the old interface, just bookmark this one:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

Re:No!

[stoborrobots]

I understand what they are, I have them too. I just don't understand how applying that exact concept in a single interface is immediately such a terrible idea.

(For the ones you're just going to let die, mailinator is a handy option.)

Re:No!

[gnujohn]

What is particularly insidious about this announcement is that Google discriminates against linux. Their free email is one thing they have done well, so far. In their other software efforts, they show a general and understandable concern to get things right for MS and Apple, who have the dominant share of the market; they haven't much regard for the shaggy 1%. Their mail works as it is.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Optional will be tomorrow's mandatory.

Metro?

Re:No!

[Jstlook]

You think I agreed to be in the 'Googleverse', but no. I went to college. They require I use their email account for school-related information, and sometime in the last two years they switched over to the 'Googleverse'.

Originally, there were a number of excellent create-your-own themes, and most everything was pretty bare bones. I like that, considering I grew up in the pre-commerce Internet. There weren't a lot of fancy web 2.0 windows all over the place, it was just simple text. Things loaded quickly, and didn't develop memory leaks all over the place.

Now, all of those (imho) wonderful options? Gone. I'm not asking for the freedom to create the ideal solution for me, but I really get tired of getting sold a product, only to have it disappear in six months or a year.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want to keep using the same antiquated systems because you're used to them? Innovation is a good thing.

Re:No!

[amRadioHed]

No I'm not wrong on either count. I have both of those settings as you say already. In the app, the Priority Inbox option is only for making it default or not, the mailbox is still there either way. In the web page, I've always used Classic and I still have the Important label.

Re:No!

[brentrad]

Don't know what to tell you about the Gmail app - I don't have a Priority Inbox anywhere in mine. I have the Jelly Bean 4.2.2 version of the app if that makes any difference.

On the web page, go into your Settings, Labels, and tell it to Hide any labels you don't want to see, like the Important label.

Re:No!

[amRadioHed]

I have the most recent version of Gmail app on two Nexus devices. The priority and important folders are most certainly there when you select "Show all labels". And I do have them hidden in the web interface, but that doesn't remove them. I use the hidden labels for lower priority stuff.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

So...what you're saying is when you tell the Gmail app to show all labels, it actually shows ALL of the labels? Shocking!

I didn't even realize that option was there. I spend my time in the Inbox, where it shows me...my Inbox. Not the Priority Inbox.

And you're right, hiding a label doesn't completely remove it...otherwise the option would be called "remove label." If you don't see them, if they're hidden, why would you care that they exist?

Re:No!

[gottabeme]

I'm frustrated with Google too, but over Android? When I finally switched from iPhone to Android it was amazing. I am in control of my phone now. I can do what I want how I want. What would you replace Android with?

Re:No!

[gottabeme]

You could already do that by popping out the compose window. Now we have to compose in a small box instead of a whole window. And they obscured many of the basic things, like Cc/Bcc.

Re:No!

[gottabeme]

The USPS is suffering financially because of an idiotic law requiring them to fund pensions ten years ahead of time, unlike any other organization in the country.

Sounds Horrible

[MightyYar]

I'm very happy that Google is willing to conduct these grand experiments to solve age-old problems.

That said, this sounds just as bad as their last attempt, with the stupid "Priority" email box. All it will mean is that you have to occasionally open a new tab to make sure nothing got misfiled. Just like things that got excluded from the priority email box, and for that matter the automatic spam filtering.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs automatic spam filtering!

Who needs to outside every once in a while on a related topic?

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to use that stupid "Priority inbox", it's optional. As long as they keep these experiments optional, I'm fine with it, but Google has a tendency of removing options instead of adding them.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Lunix Nutcase]

You don't have to use it... yet. But you will eventually be forced to use it.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[jaymz666]

Isn't the priority inbox just more spam filtering?
The spam goes to spam, the ham goes to the inbox and what they think you want to read is priority inbox?

Re:Sounds Horrible

[NJRoadfan]

Use an IMAP client of your choice than.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Lunix Nutcase]

If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account? Nothing as far as I can see.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[IANAAC]

If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account? Nothing as far as I can see.

Aside from some web interface differences, a gmail account is no different than any other IMAP account.

Some of us prefer not to have to use a web browser for everything we do online (or offline, for that matter), and an IMAP client is perfect for that.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[adolf]

Yes, basically: It's another spam filter. Has always worked great for me once I got past the newness-deprecating "WTF?" moment.

With minimal training and setup my "important" stuff is the only stuff that that makes my phone notify me of email, which is actually useful to me, while "unimportant" stuff can be read or ignored some time later.

All of this conspires to make email less annoying.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Lunix Nutcase]

I'm not seeing what your post has to do with what I said. I was saying if I have to use an IMAP client to get a usable interface for Gmail, why even keep the Gmail account since the whole point of Gmail is the web interface and the storage on Google's servers.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[idontgno]

The point of gmail is email. Free email, frankly. The web interface is less than useful. It's an active impediment, but thankfully I don't have to use it. I can use their storage and their SMTP hosting with proper IMAP support for free with a proper MUA.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is NOT the *whole* point of gmail. Unless you're horribly short sighted.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[IANAAC]

I'm not seeing what your post has to do with what I said. I was saying if I have to use an IMAP client to get a usable interface for Gmail, why even keep the Gmail account since the whole point of Gmail is the web interface and the storage on Google's servers.

I don't know if you remember when GMail was introduced to the general public, but its web interface wasn't the draw. It was the (for its time) ungodly amount of space for users to take advantage of.

It's only been over time that they've changed up the web interface. For those of us that have used GMail since its beginning, we don't really care about what whiz-bang thing they've done with the web interface.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[dougisfunny]

Well, from your post you list two reasons to use gmail: 1) The web interface 2)the storage on Google's servers.
So, from that it follows if you stop liking the web interface, you use it for the storage.
Mind you, there is no reason with this new option to stop liking the interface.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Rich0]

I use it in the same way. It still goes into my inbox so I don't have most of the pain associated with filtering into a bazillion folders, but I can at least get a notification when somebody RSVPs to the event that I'm hosting in 15 minutes, and not when Aunt Tizzy sends out cat pictures.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait til they take that away, like how they ditched CalDAV and CardDAV and ended XMPP federation. Note that the Android/iOS Gmail clients use a custom, proprietary protocol.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Cro Magnon]

I don't know if you remember when GMail was introduced to the general public, but its web interface wasn't the draw. It was the (for its time) ungodly amount of space for users to take advantage of.

That, and the fact that it actually put spam in the spam folder instead of spewing it all over your inbox like everyone else did at the time.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[recoiledsnake]

The point of Gmail is to get you signed into Google.com so that they can track your search keywords across different machines to show ads related to them. e.g. at home and work.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[idontgno]

Which doesn't work if you only sign into Google through IMAP. Ever.

They can infer all they want from the contents of my GMail. It's not as if there's much they can figure out. And they'll have no opportunity whatsoever to tailor advertising according to their deep insightful analysis of my extensive logged-in online presence. I don't use any of their web-based services under a Google login, so they'll just have to spam me with relatively worthless (and as easily ignored) undirected advertising.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Patch86]

Free hosted email account with IMAP, large storage limits and decent spam/malware filtering software, that's the point. Aside from the lack of my own domain name, it's a damn-sight better than anything I could host myself for zero/near zero cost.

I actually switched to Gmail in the first place, many years ago from Hotmail, specifically because it was IMAP compatible (back when Hotmail wasn't unless you paid a hefty premium). I used the webmail interface occasionally back in it's original form, but I was principally interested in hooking up my email accounts to Thunderbird and my phone (back then a non-smart feature phone with an IMAP client). I lost interest in the webmail portion when they did their first big redesign, but that very nearly coincided with my first Android smartphone, with its very decent email client in my pocket 24/7, so I didn't really miss it.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until they start injecting ads directly into your email. I would not put it past them at this point.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail IMAP is crap it doesn't support one of the most important commands.

(It works wonderfully over exchange activesync so obviously they don't want that to work).

Re:Sounds Horrible

[bill_mcgonigle]

what they think you want to read

That's a heck of a tricky metric. But I've been very happy using Thunderbird to create a "_Most Important" saved search that whitelists certain domains and senders that I need to deal with quickly, while the rest of the Inbox collects other messages that I need to deal with eventually.

If there's a way to force a certain tab set on Thunderbird startup I'd like to know about that.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Grishnakh]

Bullshit. Like how we're all forced to use Priority Inbox? Oh right, we're not. It's an option.

What Gmail has forced us to use (and does indeed suck) is the new UI they rolled out about a year ago, which is ugly and space-inefficient. However, that wasn't a change to the actual functionality of Gmail, just its appearance. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't come up with some way (Greasemonkey perhaps?) of "re-skinning" Gmail to make it look like the old one. But the functionality changes they've made are pretty much all optional. I like Priority Inbox, but there's nothing forcing you to use it. You can turn it off in Settings->Inbox->Inbox type.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Rockoon]

The point of gmail is email. Free email, frankly.

Sure, because free pop/imap services are so hard to come by....

If you use gmail only with a pop/imap client, then you are a complete idiot for volunteering to let Google read your emails. The majority of people, the ones that use the web interface, at least get something back in return that you willingly do not get back.

Thanks for explaining to us how big of a google tool you are.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[brentrad]

The Priority Inbox has been around for several years now - but you can easily turn it off in both the web view and Android app. I don't see the problem.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[adolf]

I filter it even before that: Aunt Tizzy does not have any of my email addresses, and never will.

Mostly my unimportant stuff is webinar training invites (which I could really not give a shit about), and commercial advertising that I actually might want to see some day -- sales at local stores, pizza coupons, and stuff like that.

(I used to filter the actually-wanted ads into their own folder, but priority sorting has made it a non-issue.)

This seems to have trained the filter to automatically tag any personal or business correspondence as important, even if it is a new contact. Which is good for me: I don't get much actual correspondence (remember, Aunt Tizzy is filtered socially), so whatever an actual human actually writes to me sure seems important enough to be alerted to.

It's almost magical.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right.

Thank god for "RequestPolicy". Also, don't forget to add "google-analytics.com" to your hosts file (pointing to 127.0.0.1, obviously).

Re:Sounds Horrible

[YttriumOxide]

Gmail IMAP is crap it doesn't support one of the most important commands.

Out of interest, what command is that? I use Gmail primarily through IMAP on three different devices (two different email clients) and haven't noticed any problems. Not saying you're wrong, but just that I genuinely haven't seen a problem, so from my perspective if it is missing a command, it can't really be THAT important can it?

From my point of view, the web interface is the "fallback" that I use if I want to check my email without having access to any of these three devices for whatever reason (i.e. very seldom). As long as it's basically functional, I don't really care what it looks like.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Rich0]

I don't mind getting Aunt Tizzy's emails. I just don't need to be alerted anytime they come in.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[gottabeme]

I didn't need more space. I wanted the UI that let me use labels instead of folders. I'm still waiting on a FOSS MUA and backend that can do this. mbox and Maildir don't cut it.

This

[Anonymous Coward]

Is what should have been done with that "important" code.

I already make my own categories

[XnavxeMiyyep]

I already make my own categories using the tags feature in Google apps. If this is broken I may migrate my email to another service.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Gavin Scott]

So what's the best alternative to gmail thse days?

Re:I already make my own categories

[Vanderhoth]

Pine?

Re:I already make my own categories

[XnavxeMiyyep]

I have my own domain name for my email which currently uses google apps (mainly out of laziness). I would just stop using them and set up my own SMTP server.

Re:I already make my own categories

[cayenne8]

Pine?

I'd like to say mutt....but I can't figure how to hook it to gmail, and not have to spend time downloading EVERY fscking old email on the server (thousands and thousands) each time it polls gmail.

Re:I already make my own categories

[cayenne8]

I need to dig out my old postfix email server again and fire it up at home.

I like the great spam filter gmail uses, but I'm growing tired of everything else.

I'm also tired and weary of Google having all my email they can look through.

I guess I need to reeducate myself on setting up postfix, and finding out what good spam utilities (spam assassin still good?) are good for setting up with it.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.andrews-corner.org/mutt.html

Re:I already make my own categories

[sl4shd0rk]

So what's the best alternative to gmail thse days?

Dovecot+SSL+postfix

Re:I already make my own categories

[x_t0ken_407]

Indeed. Have a server with Postfix+Dovecot+MySQL+Maia (kinda like a management GUI for spamassassin+clamav) that is doing great so far. Still keep my gmail account up for now until I can get everything updated to point to my new address. Kinda hard to let it go after having it for several years, just feels like I could be missing someone/something important.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Thunderbird.

Gmail was a shit idea at the time, and it's a shit idea now.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Anonymous Coward]

They state they do not. With FastMail, your personal IP is not even shown in the headers, just their mail server. As it should be. Not every company collects data despite what you may think. And no, they are not stupid not to. FastMail charges just enough to provide the service, no more.

I'm thinking of starting an email service myself that offers a few cool things. Guess what? I'm not going to even log connections to the mail server. I'm not going to have trackers, ads, anything. Even if it just means my family and friends and a few others use it, it will be worth it as an experiment. I'm not in this to get rich or even quit my day job. I'm in it to prove a point.

Re:I already make my own categories

[jaymz666]

That's easy, use the IMAP interface for mutt. It even caches headers

Re:I already make my own categories

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Webmail was a shit idea at the time, and it's a shit idea now.

FTFY
If gmail didn't have imap, I wouldn't use it. But it does, and my ISP doesn't.

Re:I already make my own categories

[BradleyAndersen]

I jumped off of pine right before it became alpine in 2006/07. i jumped on to gmail in december 2006. now i have backed up almost all of that, and am planning to reunite with my long-lost, coniferous love.

Re:I already make my own categories

[tftp]

Why do you want to keep email on a server that you do not control? This applies to both GMail and your ISP. If you use them as MTAs, download the messages as soon as they arrive, and delete them from the servers.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Because I don't care. I have better things to do with my free time than run a mail server.
email is not secure communications. EVER!
I know you think your email is endlessly fascinating... Get over yourself!

Re:I already make my own categories

[ThorGod]

That's a cool idea...but you probably want to log numbers of connections and what IPs they're from just for basic intrusion detection and prevention.

Re:I already make my own categories

[cayenne8]

I did try using mutt with IMAP and gmail...and it recaches all the headers EVERY time it polls or connect to gmail..that's what is the PITA I was talking about.

:(

Having mutt download all 20K+ mails on the folder there every time is just not manageable, and I've not found a way for it to download the headers once, and then only do the new ones as needed.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook.com is actually quite good.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Anonymous Coward]

You should give Outlook.com a try.

Re:I already make my own categories

[jrumney]

So what's the best alternative to gmail thse days?

Mutt

Re:I already make my own categories

[jaymz666]

set header_cache=~/.hcache

Re:I already make my own categories

[skirhir]

I use:
offlineimap + mutt + mstmp

Use offlineimap to create a local MAILDIR. Launch it as a daemon, or make a cron job for it.
Then hook any respectable mail application to the MAILDIR.
Then hook any respectable desktop mail ailert to the maildir.
Then configure mstmp.
Then configure mutt to use mstmp.

You'll need some magic if you don't like the passwords resting in your home as plain text. I found that not worth of my time.

Re:I already make my own categories

[YttriumOxide]

Why do you want to keep email on a server that you do not control?

For me, because I don't want to deal with the headache of managing my own email server (including backups, ensuring uptime, etc). Google's servers are far LESS likely to just "up and die" on me than any server I run myself. Sure, if I ran my own, I could do things that I can't do with Gmail... but the simple fact is that I really don't want to - there's nothing I need from email that isn't provided by Gmail already; nor is there anything they're doing that I have a serious problem with (yes, I'm totally fine that their systems are reading my mail... it doesn't bother me at all).

Quite simply: most functionality for the least work.

Riiight

[Lunix Nutcase]

The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.

Uh huh. Until they decide otherwise and force it on people like they did with the current redesign.

Re:Riiight

[steelfood]

"We're Google and we can do whatever the fuck we want because we're so cool and if you don't like it you'll just have to suck it up and deal."

That's how they currently approach every product. And when I say every product, I mean every product. They're not even trying to compete anymore.

Re:Riiight

[Mashiki]

That's how they currently approach every product. And when I say every product, I mean every product. They're not even trying to compete anymore.

That line of thinking didn't work for the automotive industry in the 70's and 80's. It won't work for google either, all it will take is consumers being fedup and an alternative.

Re:Riiight

[Anonymous Coward]

"We give our shit to you free, and you use it willingly." Don't like it? POP3/IMAP that bitch. Kick it somewhere else. Otherwise, build a better mousetrap.

Re:Riiight

[game kid]

They still compete! --granted, it's now called Trickle Down Competition, where companies race to bring their products, service, and general quality downward fastest, instead of upward...but they still compete! And now you can Join The Conversation(tm) on Google+.

Re:Riiight

[CanHasDIY]

"We give our shit to you free, and you use it willingly."

So, you mean they're not creating massive databases filled with the private information of their users in exchange for use of the service?

FYI, just because you're not handing them legal tender does not automagically make it a "free service."

Re:Riiight

[cdrudge]

That line of thinking didn't work for the automotive industry in the 70's and 80's. It won't work for google either, all it will take is consumers being fedup and an alternative.

Aside from their search and ad-related services, none of their services really have a dominance in their particular market. Yes they are very popular, but it's not like there aren't alternatives that are just as good if not better. GMail isn't the only webmail provider. Google Drive isn't the only file storage locker. Google Maps isn't the only mapping company, etc.

Re:Riiight

[Lunix Nutcase]

Free? So they're going to pay me back the ad revenue they generate?

Re:Riiight

[Obfuscant]

FYI, just because you're not handing them legal tender does not automagically make it a "free service."

The fact I'm handing legal tender to my ISP, who decided with almost no notice that they were outsourcing all their email services to gmail and are thus passing some of that legal tender over to gmail, makes gmail much less than a "free service".

Re:Riiight

[Joe Helfrich]

If only I could switch back to the classic inbox view...of two revisions ago, when I liked the service. http://lavabit.com/ is looking more and more interesting.

Re:Riiight

[steelfood]

Nobody's saying it works, either in the short or the long term. But that's how they're approaching it anyway.

Re:Riiight

[steelfood]

Google News is pretty damn popular. Google Maps as well.

The only place they can't seem to do well in is social networking, e.g. their competitor to Facebook (Google+) and Flickr (Picasa).

Re:Riiight

[Mashiki]

Yes they are very popular, but it's not like there aren't alternatives

That was pretty much the reasoning from the big3 and others, and it still didn't help them. It took AMC dying a grueling death to wake them out of their stupor.

Re:Riiight

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Google is notorious for being data-driven to a fault. You can be assured that people complaining about this are a vocal minority, and that the data proves that users overwhelmingly like the new way better.

Re:Riiight

[jatoo]

Maybe you should ask for your money back?

Re:Riiight

[walkerreuben]

It's more along the lines of the current smart inbox option where you can select priority inbox, or unread first, or whatever. That's been around for quite a while now, and I'm still using the standard inbox with no questions asked by Gmail.

Retrograde available ... for now

[wdef]

The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.

Until they feel like not making that available, and want to force feed their shit down everyones' throats.

Re:Retrograde available ... for now

[tompaulco]

Yes, unfortunately the "classic view" that they will let you use is the current version, not the version before this one, which happens to be the one that I want to use.

How about letting us easily see unread messages?

[metrix007]

At the moment I have to manually search "in:inbox is:unread" - -which is really frustrating.

Just searching for unread mails is of no use to me, as I subscribe to several mailing lists and have that stuff filtered to its own label before I read it.

I only want to see unread emails in my inbox easily and conveniently (without having to rearrange my inbox and have all unread emails at the top), yet I can't do this simple thing. Why is such a basic feature of every email client not available in Gmail?

Perhaps this redesign will account for that.

"Let me just take care of that for you."

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.

At least you can turn it off... for now.

But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.

There's something not quite right with that attitude.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[wdef]

It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.

At least you can turn it off... for now.

But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.

There's something not quite right with that attitude.

You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[dmt0]

You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.

Change for change's sake? I don't think Google is as mindless as that.

A list of emails that a person gets only says so much about the person. You don't quite control what other people are sending you - they do. On the other hand the way that you interact with your email and how you categorize and prioritize it (did you find that "mark as important" feature useful?) tells so much more about you.

Of course that feature is there only to alleviate the stress from you and stop the inbox from being your master, nothing more.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[Gort65]

You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.

Add to the list some bored Firefox designers and the upcoming Australis, the design to protect users from themselves. You can have customisation, but not the way you want it...

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[Intrepid imaginaut]

On the other hand the way that you interact with your email and how you categorize and prioritize it (did you find that "mark as important" feature useful?) tells so much more about you.

Your weak link here is I don't want to tell some megacorp more about me.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, it seemed like a good idea to me. And at least previously, you can switch to any of the multiple inbox options you want. The bonus of "cloud" software is it gets updated...

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[gl4ss]

yeah so you categorize to them that you want spam from subjects x, y and z.

problem with googles design rollouts is that once the designers get bored with their new experiment, they start with the new experiment and roll out the old graduated design forcibly on everyone. because that's how they roll.

now design is the driving factor and not utility or technicalities or technical possibilities. somewhere along the line utility got mixed up with design...

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[dmt0]

Why? Utility is very much the driving factor. There is utility for Google's customers (advertisers) in getting more personal information about how you prioritize information (the product).

You just have to remember that you are not the paying customer, and utility for you is not part of the equation here.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[dmt0]

Your weak link here is I don't want to tell some megacorp more about me.

Than you'll have to deal with more clutter on your screen - like those "mark as important" tags set at random.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to manage email on a list with literally hundreds of threads. Gmail already HAS filtering technology and the ability to make email bypass the inbox and go straight to a folder.

This is pointless

Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always use GMail with IMAP. You choose the UI.

Re:Remember

[jaymz666]

Hopefully they won't deprecate that any time soon, as my primary gmail access point is Thunderbird.
I can order stuff how I want, and have a real desktop app

Re:Remember

[Overzeetop]

My most sincere condolences.

(I stopped using TB at about 3GB of mail, when it was incapable of storing and indexing all of it)

Re:Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to introduce you to the "delete" button.

Re:Remember

[Overzeetop]

I use email for business correspondence and the statute of repose in my state is 10 years. Let me introduce you to a judgement in the plaintiff's favor for 7 figures if you haven't the documentation (correspondence) which shows their contributory negligence.

Browser Reminders

[redbeardcanada]

Google, please, please, please get rid of the IE8 is an out of date browser reminder. I know it is, I am forced to use it right now at work. Your constant reminders are going to drive me away from gmail...

Re:Browser Reminders

[X0563511]

You know, it is technically possible to run a proper browser and still have IE8 on your system?

Re:Browser Reminders

[Cro Magnon]

Not on a work computer, at least in some workplaces.

Re:Browser Reminders

[X0563511]

Chances are if he can't do that, he shouldn't be accessing personal email either (by any means)

Re:Browser Reminders

[citylivin]

Id rather someone accessed their personal email, then went around installing their own software. Firefox and i believe chrome, can be made to run without an install to the system, so in theory, limited users could run it. However this may violate the acceptable use policy. Most employers let you check your personal email in my experience. The two issues are quite different and it is likely that he is in a place that 1) does not permit any software installs and 2) allows you to check your own private email.

otherwise gmail would be blocked at the firewall and it wouldn't be an issue. However you can also configure outlook to imap gmail mail, so theres another work around, again, as long as its not blocked at the firewall.

As an aside, chrome with IE tab works fine in my environment and everyone has adapted to it. I hate chrome personally and prefer firefox, but the GPOs for chrome are just as extensive as those for IE which makes management a breeze. So it should be no problem for most companies to roll out chrome with IE tab for legacy apps.

The Old Days...

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss them... am I the only one who doesn't have (and doesn't care...) a smartphone/facebook/twitter/instagran acc?

"Sponsored emails"

[Animats]

It could be worse. Google didn't add "sponsored emails".

Re:"Sponsored emails"

[gl4ss]

they already have ads. now they'll know what sponsored emails you want..

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[robmv]

Enable the "Quick Links" labs, I use it for exactly the same query. You can add any query you want

I had been doing this with labels

[SuilAmhain]

I had painstakingly created labels and filters such as "social junk" that marked mail read upon arrival and were easy to delete.

I like this it's a good idea the inbox can fill with crud shockingly quickly.

This sort of incremental innovation shows that even email can still be improved and that people are looking at ways of doing improving it.

Re:I had been doing this with labels

[cheesybagel]

Same here. I think it is fairly dumb for them to make their own special cased categories. e.g. I could care less about "promotions". Instead they should just make it simpler to make categories (although IMO there is nothing wrong with the current way to do them).

Re:I had been doing this with labels

[macraig]

If you call that incremental evolution, then you'll have to credit AOL, not Google, with this increment (altomail.com).

Re:I had been doing this with labels

[SuilAmhain]

Yes we can do this ourselves and will probably continue to do so after this is launched.
But this product is for the people who can't and don't organise their email inboxes and just keep 1000 unread messages all the time.
Watch the video on the blog post. We are not Google's target demographic with this change.

Re:I had been doing this with labels

[Anonymous Coward]

For someone like my wife who signs up to every online promotion and gets hundreds of emails a week this will make my life so much easier. It took hours to set up filters and labels for all the rubbish she gets but won't unsubscribe from.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... Guess that they're trying to emulate the same level of Customer Disservice that Faceplant's made into a high-artform...

Fix the compose window

[Anonymous Coward]

The stupid compose window pushed me from Gmail's web interface back to outlook. It's horrible. What's the deal with hiding most of the screen?

Re:Fix the compose window

[MightyYar]

Yeah, I can barely tolerate the new compose. It's bad enough that I might want to Greasemonkey that mother.

Re:Fix the compose window

[Lord Chaos EOG]

Outlook is shit. I'll take gmail interface over that any day.

Workaround

[tepples]

To offer a workaround, I first need to know whether you're seeing this on your work Gmail account or your personal Gmail account.

Re:Workaround

[redbeardcanada]

Personal account, and I am pretty conscious of using InPrivate browsing, so this could also be related to lack of cookies/persistence...

I too am an online social networking laggard

[tepples]

I don't have a smartphone because a dumbphone is $28 per month cheaper. I don't have a Facebook account; I graduated and lost my .edu before it existed. I don't have a Twitter.com account, but I've been accused of being a Twitter sockpuppet once. Does that count?

Re:I too am an online social networking laggard

[neminem]

I pay 15 bucks a month for my smartphone, assuming I don't use it that much, which I don't. If you're also in the category of people who don't use their phones a number amount per month (huge being, for the purposes of paying 15 bucks a month, being defined as 100 minutes, 100 texts and 100 megabytes of data), perhaps you should look into Ting. I didn't have a smartphone until a few months ago when I discovered I could have one for that cheap, either. It is kinda nice, though. (If you use more than that, it's still fairly cheap unless you use a *lot* more. Wouldn't be that hard to get above the 50$ price point of most of their competitors; would be significantly harder to get above the ~100$ price point of Verizon and its ilk. Why does *anyone* still give money to Verizon for wireless?!)

Re:I too am an online social networking laggard

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartphone for work (which promptly gets turned off as soon as I leave the building for the day) and facebook account that my girlfriend takes care of. I don't think I've seen it this year. I don't miss the good old days, I just don't give a crap about any of it.

Re:I too am an online social networking laggard

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does *anyone* still give money to Verizon for wireless?!)

I watch a lot of TeeVee and thus assume that with these non-national-brand carriers I will be disappointed by the service coverage.

Re:I too am an online social networking laggard

[neminem]

That would make some sense, except for one (possibly little-known, I dunno?) fact: the vast majority of the smaller carriers with better rates and better service piggyback their coverage off of Sprint's network (actually, I believe Ting uses Sprint's network as a primary, but also uses Verizon's as a backup if Sprint coverage isn't available and Verizon is.)

No no

[Intrepid imaginaut]

The smart people know how to improve upon inbox-sent mail-deleted.

Quiet while the smart people are talking,

Re:No no

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Google fanboy, staring down your nose at anyone who disagrees with your BFFs, Eric Schmidt and Co.

Ah... the good ol' days when Apple users were the most annoying people on the planet.

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[Anonymous Coward]

I added that to the menu with greasemonkey.

What does this tell us about these modern (cloud?) softwares, where simple features like this have to be manually hacked in? It is quite nice that it *can* be hacked in, but why, oh why... How about a well documented infrastructure API, and a well documented GUI API. Then I could create my own special garden, and tell everyone else to get off my lawn!

false positive rate

[Njovich]

I get really tired of the automated GMail filtering. Not sure about others, but for me the false positive rate on all these things (spam, notifications, etc) is through the roof these days, to the point that the majority of my gmail spambox is legitimate mail (although sometimes bulk). At this point I just wish for a way to turn it all off, I'd rather go through a couple of dozen of spam messages than having to check and mark as 'not spam' messages every couple of hours.

Re:false positive rate

[X0563511]

Spam is flawless for me. Important, however, seems completely random and I'd love to turn that functionality off completely.

Re:false positive rate

[Overzeetop]

Really? You must have some really spammy sounding friends and lists. I am subscribed to at least 4 lists, and get a reasonable amount of both business and personal mail though apps accounts I have. I might find a false positive twice a year. I've noticed that Google must have a master and a personal list, as there are some advertisers I couldn't get rid of by unsubscribing so I marked them as spam and they get filtered.

Of course, it could be people who mark unwanted advertisements as spam which are fouling your filtering. I usually have a two strikes policy (2 unsubscribes, on the third I mark it as spam), but for anyone who uses the service which requires I type in my name to unsubscribe it's a single strike - and that's if I'm in a good mood.

Re:false positive rate

[Anonymous Coward]

Settings -> Inbox -> Inbox Type -> Classic

Re:false positive rate

[bmo]

I have no idea what you're talking about since gmail sorts through hundreds of spam messages for me per day and the false-positives are so few and far between. It's so many because I forward the mail from an account that I've had for almost 20 years now, that attracts an unfortunate amount of spam.

That said, you don't like the way it's organized. Fine. What's wrong with imap?

Google supports imap, ya know. Use your own MUA instead of the web interface. I'm currently reading my gmail account with M2, Opera's mailer.

--
BMO

Re:false positive rate

[X0563511]

Yes, but the important tags and markers are all still there.

Re:false positive rate

[ArghBlarg]

I've been seeing the spam filters in my gmail really break down over the last few months, to the point where I'm working on a Hashcash gadget to generate stamps and backend app script to auto-flag emails with stamps.

I have the stamp generator google sidebar gadget working, and am working on refining the back-end script. I'll try to get something published soon via the Google App Store. Of course to be useful lots of people need to adopt Hashcash and use it send each other mail.

Wow. Look At These Posts.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I was the only one bitter about being forced to use the "new improved" interface du jur. But, look at these posts. There's a lot of bile in here.

It warms my heart to think that you're all a bunch of grumpy old farts, like me.

Re:Wow. Look At These Posts.

[macraig]

You should move to the U.K. They had TV specials about us.

Can they maybe start by fixing gmail search first!

[digiti]

Come on... I have the word XYZ and search for XY it won't find it. Won't let me sort search results or apply really elaborate search filters beyond by date.
If I have an attachment and a vague recollection of the email its about as good as gone, I have to remember the exact spelling used within the email.

If it was another company I would let sleeping dogs lie but this is f'ing Google. Their web search is SOOO good and improving all the time, that makes the gmail search so ridiculously outdated in comparison. Their recent changes to search just added more information but didn't actually solve the core problem of "it doesn't work...".

Mass email remove

[Sene]

If only they would fix the fact that it is next to impossible to delete a huge amount of emails, gmail just keeps freaking out and refuses to do so.

Google copying AOL? 8-/

[macraig]

So Google plans to copy what AOL was trying to do with Alto? Sheesh. I have an account at altomail.com; I wasn't very impressed and haven't been using it.

worse than facebook redesigns

[Anonymous Coward]

everytime facebook updates their designs millions of users cry out in panic and terror. a month later they are all happy and complacent with the changes. I feel similarly about everyone who is complaining in this thread

Re:worse than facebook redesigns

[macraig]

Just because people can manage to adapt to corporate-forced change doesn't validate that change as actually useful for anyone except the corporation(s).

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[macraig]

Thank you for staying off mine, I guess?

Nice job, Google!

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to drive people back from web-based email to a standalone client.

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[X0563511]

Why don't you just connect your email client via IMAP?

More cell phone adaptation?

[mexsudo]

I too complain about effing up a perfectly good thing. I think most changes are being made to make them work in cell phones. Too bad, I lake computers.

Re:Can they maybe start by fixing gmail search fir

[X0563511]

It works just fine if you use a proper client and connect via IMAP.

Webmail is for tools, or fools without their equipment.

Re:Can they maybe start by fixing gmail search fir

[Obfuscant]

If it was another company I would let sleeping dogs lie but this is f'ing Google. Their web search is SOOO good and improving all the time, that makes the gmail search so ridiculously outdated in comparison.

Thank you, citizen, for your support. We will be moving your email over to the general Google search software in the near future, which I am certain you will accept as a vast improvement over the current situation. This change will allow you to read your email anywhere you have a browser, using a simple Google search for your own email address.

Unfortunately, this means that deleting your email will require the full "remove a link" process that the current Google indexing system uses, as well.

Thanks again for your support and constructive and beneficial ideas for making the Google Experience® more rewarding.

Signed: The Google Staff

new design

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the new design is awesome. There might be kinks, but i am all for it, i am using it and loving it already.

Error: tepples@example.com does not use Gmail

[tepples]

If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account?

To get past the "does not use Gmail" screen when using some other Google services. Android Market prior to Android 4.0, for example, required a Gmail account; an ordinary Google account wasn't enough.

Getting out of GMAIL

[sycodon]

Anyone know how to get all of your email out of gmail and sent to another server?

Re:Getting out of GMAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know how to get all of your email out of gmail and sent to another server?

http://www.howtogeek.com/68863/how-to-downloadbackup-your-gmail-google-calendar-and-docs-data/

Re:Getting out of GMAIL

[citylivin]

I havent tried it as I dont have gmail, but I assume 1) IMAP connect with thunderbird or outlook or whatever 2) download mail to local machine 3) export to PST file or use a program like IMAPsize to back them up ( http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/index.php ) 4) restore to new imap provider.

Re:Getting out of GMAIL

[thewebdev]

I had 1+ GB of email in my gmail account, and this is how I moved it to another server using IMAP: 1. Go through all your emails and delete all unwanted emails. Don't forget to 'empty' (delete permanently) your Junk and Thrash folder. 2. If you haven't, enable IMAP for your Gmail account. [ https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/1668960?hl=en#ts=1665018 ] 3. Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird. [ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ ] 4. In Thunderbird, set up a new email account and configure it to your Gmail. 5. Thunderbird will now slowly download all your emails from Gmail. 6. Once all the emails are downloaded, create another email account in Thunderbird and configure it with the settings of the new email service that you want to use. 7. From the 'Gmail' account in Thunderbird, select the Gmail emails and drag and drop it to the 'New Email' email account (created in step 6). 8. Thunderbird will transfer the mail to the new email server. (Note: for step 7, it is advisable to NOT select all the email and transfer at one go. Best that you sort it by size, and transfer the bigger emails first. Delete transfered emails from Gmail and continue until there is no more email left. You may also recreate all the folders / labels of gmail in the new email account to - as IMAP folders - and drag and drop it directly to those folders.) I've been de-addicted from Google for more than a year and never been better. ;)

Re:Getting out of GMAIL

[bluec]

One word: imapsync

Yes!

[Piata]

There's actually a lot of room for improvement with email. It's one of the more clunky and archaic parts of the web and I'm really glad Google keeps pushing the boundaries on this as they seem to be the only ones doing so effectively. I personally have a hard time keeping my email organized and sorted so any attempts to improve email clients are welcome in my books. Even if the changes aren't necessarily better, trying new approaches and getting feedback on those changes will create an overall better product.

If you want a static and unchanging email experience you might be better served with Outlook. At my job we just switched from Corporate Gmail to Outlook after 6 years and Outlook has hardly changed since I last used it. It's downright ancient!

Re:Yes!

[lahvak]

Actually, what google is doing now is how email was always ment to be read. It is how we read and organized email 20 years ago with procmail and a decent reader like mutt or gnus. Google is just creating more firendly interface on top of it.

Re:Yes!

[excelsior_gr]

Gaaah!

I thought that the whole idea behind Google's email was "don't sort, search". And I thought it was brilliant. And now they want to sort things? WTF?

Re:Yes!

[hobarrera]

There's little "pushing the boundaries" here. I've had several inboxes where different stuff is filtered to for about a decade. RSS feeds into on mailbox, bulkmail into another, notifications into another, etc.

Google has just added pretty icons to this.

Re:Yes!

[t0rkm3]

The problem is... what if you WANT to sort, like sending bugtraq emails to a folder to catch up on later?

As far as I can tell there isn't a good way to remove those emails from the current view other than Label->Archive.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to be able to move mail to another folder besides "inbox" and "spam" and "trash". Another box called "old mail" (that I want to keep) would be nice. What about me being able to name my own folders and moving mail there? and then being able to password protect certain folders with a different password than the login password. Then I can direct certain mail into that folder, instead of the mailbox. For instance, I can say that mail with a certain word in the subject or from a certain person goes into this other folder automatically. Then if at work and I want to check my E-Mail and say somehow my e-mail gets hacked by a keylogger at least they can't access all my e-mail because certain parts of my E-Mail are never accessed from work and they need a separate password to access. and if I'm reading my e-mail at work and other people are around me able to see the screen there maybe certain e-mails I want to keep but I may not want those around me to see the subject line every time I open my e-mail and browse through it with other people looking (say I'm looking for an e-mail for someone else who is looking at the screen).

Gmail is changing but none of their changes amount to improvements.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

(and I know gmail does let you make your own folders and I do use it but the ability to automatically move mail to it would be nice, along with the other features).

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's actually a lot of room for improvement with email. It's one of the more clunky and archaic parts of the web and I'm really glad Google keeps pushing the boundaries on this as they seem to be the only ones doing so effectively.

I know! I can't even share it on Twitter with my one-finger gesture or link to it on Bloobers. Even Facebook has better communications!

Email just needs video. Yes, video. And some circles and Friendster links. It also needs some video ads to help me decide what I like.

t my job we just switched from Corporate Gmail to Outlook after 6 years and Outlook has hardly changed since I last used it. It's downright ancient!

Which brings me to my desk phone. Why can't I install apps on it to punch me in the face when someone calls? Or at least emit a foul and unpleasant odor. It can't even text! Ringing and talking to a headset is soooo ancient!

And what about cars. They still have only 4 wheels. Sooo borring. Where are my 1 wheel cars? Or flying cars?

Now, where is my ADHD meds. I need some about now.

PS. It ain't ancient. It works perfectly for the role it is suppose to perform!!! If only people learned to use it properly. That includes NOT INCLUDING THE ENTIRE FUCKING EMAIL IN REPLIES!

Now get off my lawn!

Re:Yes!

[http]

First clue of troll post: stating that email is part of the web.

Second clue: every email client above the level of /usr/bin/mailx for the past few decades has user-defineable folders and multiple sort criteria. With the advent of filters, you don't even have to file manually.

Well done! See the coatcheck staff for your prize.

Re:Yes!

[bhiestand]

...trying new approaches and responding to feedback on those changes will create an overall better product.

FTFY.

I find it incredibly frustrating... a company that seeks to manage the world's information can barely acknowledge feedback, let alone give outward signs of responding to it.

Re:Yes!

[gottabeme]

Except that Gmail lets you assign multiple labels to messages. This is huge, and there is no FOSS MUA that does this, AFAIK.

Re:Can they maybe start by fixing gmail search fir

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks is it. Web based mail means you can use it anywhere, and not have to have IMAP clients installed on every device you want to access mail with. That's retarded. It's fucking email, basic text messages with the odd shit attachment. Get over yourself.

Some people *ONLY* like web mail

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of those people. I despise installed MUAs.

Re:Can they maybe start by fixing gmail search fir

[X0563511]

Works just fine for me, my phone, my laptop, and my desktop. I get control over my UI, my searching etc.

Seems to answer the problem quite well, so why don't you get over your own self?

Filters + mobile

[BumpyCarrot]

All I need now to manage my inbox better is to not have to flip open a laptop to create a new filter whenever something comes through unlabeled on my tablet.

One more excuse...

[Anonymous Coward]

for Google to snoop.
Gmail users should feel real good about it.
Congratulations, suckas.

It's called "Folders." Get it right, Google!

[BcNexus]

Google seems to have an aversion to them. First, Google substituted LABELS for folders. Now they're substituting TABS for folders.

This is one area where Outlook Client (desktop client) wins: FOLDERS. In OUTLOOK, I can easily set up rules to put emails into folders to reduce clutter and increase organization. AND IT WORKS.

Re:It's called "Folders." Get it right, Google!

[trawg]

I can easily set up rules to put emails into folders to reduce clutter and increase organization. AND IT WORKS.

You can do the exact same thing in Gmail (select email, More, "Filter messages like these). The label thing is sort of annoying, but I mentally have mapped them to 'folders' and it doesn't bug me any more (at least 50% of my Gmail interaction is via IMAP with Thunderbird so I only see folders there anyway).

On rare occasions the labeling has even been useful - you can have an email labeled with multiple labels, allowing more complex filtering. (I assume they end up copied between folders, but I've never actually checked.)

Re:It's called "Folders." Get it right, Google!

[rsborg]

Google seems to have an aversion to them. First, Google substituted LABELS for folders. Now they're substituting TABS for folders.

This is one area where Outlook Client (desktop client) wins: FOLDERS. In OUTLOOK, I can easily set up rules to put emails into folders to reduce clutter and increase organization. AND IT WORKS.

This again? Folders mean hierarchy. Tags/Labels avoid the problem of when you want to put something in two folders at the same time. Absent a "shortcut/symlink" option in combination with folders (all we got for filesystems), this is the best way to solve the "multiple inheritance" problem inherent to hierarchies.

Also, GMail (and even Yahoo!Mail) have supported filters since like, forever. And Google's IMAP Folder support is pretty good - if you use labels like a hierarchy they'll behave like one in IMAP. I have no idea why you think Outlook is some work of genius. From my (dated) experience, Outlook 2007 doesn't even support "OR" logic in the rules you specify for your filters - Google and Yahoo have, since 2004.

Re:It's called "Folders." Get it right, Google!

[The Raven]

I'm sorry, but labels are superior to folders in every way. I should not have to decide whether an email from my boss about scheduling my vacation time around the needs of a project should go under Scheduling or Project. What about an email that talks about three different projects? Which project do I file it under? Tags/labels are a superior categorization method, and can easily emulate a folder if you so desire.

I do not think Google shits roses, and I'm not sold on their update yet. But arguing that folders (mimicry of a physical location for a digital object) are superior to category labels when it comes to organizing data is ignorant. Content should be tagged not binned, and email is just another type of content.

Re:It's called "Folders." Get it right, Google!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one area where Gmail (web client) wins: LABELS. In GMAIL, I can easily set up rules to put emails into labels to reduce clutter and increase organization. AND IT WORKS.

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Settings, Inbox, Inbox Type : Unread First.

Every time Google changes gMail

[Dracos]

They make it worse. And by that I mean less like an email client. They just need to leave it the hell alone. Except for one thing... the Send/Save Now/Discard buttons should be below the message body input, always, all the time, every time. I'm still not sure what conditions cause them to be above the From: line, or both. It's maddening having to hunt for them every time. Oh, second thing... real, legitimate IMAP support, not this half-assed labels bullshit.

Re:Every time Google changes gMail

[fisted]

> And by that I mean less like an email client.
Maybe because it is not an email client.

The Start of Something Great

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years from now, if email still even exists, we're going to look back and laugh at ourselves for complaining about auto sorting. Some of you may enjoy sorting email, but I hate it. I get a lot of email, and I've been hoping for a feature like this for a long time.

Only Thing

[MrSome]

The only change I want from Google for gmail, is to disable the stupid conversation mode on the Android app.

I hate conversation mode.

not immediate

[aahpandasrun]

So, judging by how Facebook rolls out updates we should get this by sometime around 2014?

Website Notification Spam & Everything Else

[Anonymous Coward]

just need two tabs

labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[cblack]

Many people are wrong-headed on this, labels are superior to folders.
With folders, an email message can be filed to one and only one folder.
With labels, any number of labels can be attached to a message.
This means you can have labels like "vendors" and "Project X" and a single message can be labelled as both.
In addition, you can easily set up filters in gmail to apply labels, set read status, etc.
In gmail the idea of "inbox" right now is just a label that gets applied to (most) incoming email. You can archive it out of your inbox by removing that label.

Regarding filtering, if you are going to slam gmail for missing a feature outlook has, at least don't be completely wrong.

You also seem to misunderstand the new mailbox and thinking about "tabs".

RTFM.

Re:labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[cblack]

Grr, should be "labels >= folders", /. filter killed that. That is, labels are BETTER THAN folders in my opinion and the opinion of pretty much everyone who understands them properly.

Re:labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[iggymanz]

many people are wrong-headed on this, folders are superior to labels. You could make forty copies of a document and put them in all forty folders in your file cabinet too. but that would be retarded, like a label enthusiast.

Re:labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[BcNexus]

Why did you get voted to +4 with a scathing ad hominem attack on me?

Why did the polite replies that enlightened me about the multiple inheritance get voted so low?

What are the clickable buttons along the top of thee new Gmail if not tabs? What would you call them?

Re:labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[Anonymous Coward]

Labels are not superior to folders. They're complementary.

Being able to group messages into a shared primary location other than your inbox is a valuable tool. You can then use what Gmail calls "labels" (or what Outlook calls "Categories") to associate messages across folders. There is no benefit to refusing to support folders for people who use it effectively, and in the case of Outlook, categories carry across multiple content types (mail, calendar, tasks, integrated faxing/voicemail/chats if configured with Exchange).

The problem with Gmail's filtering is that it can apply labels and it can archive and that's it. It can't route messages to a specified location that is both easily accessible and not visible in your main inbox simultaneously.

If you're going to advance an agenda, at least take a moment to CONSIDER what you might be missing before being a prick.

Re:labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[Anonymous Coward]

(you.understand.operators == false) = true

Re:labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[BorisSkratchunkov]

If labels are superior to folders, then why haven't database filesystems caught on yet for desktop OSs? Why are we still using all that old hierarchical crap?

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[metrix007]

Because that defeats the purpose of webmail?

Screw it up yet again

[ChrisMaple]

The COMPOSE window is now tiny and can't be resized. What the hell is wrong with you guys?

Re:Screw it up yet again

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed! "Google's Gmail - New compose experience, complete and utter insanity." http://www.foolsdesign.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77

Re:Screw it up yet again

[Control-Z]

And when I paste a link and press Enter for the next line, the message immediately sends! Thanks Gmail.

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[metrix007]

Next time, read the post you are replying to.

worst web email client ever

[TomR teh Pirate]

I realize this sounds antithetical to a technical discussion, but Yahoo's email client is FAR more user-friendly than Google's. The downer is that people sort of assume you're a technical dullard if you have "yahoo.com" in your email address. I wonder if it's possible to use the yahoo client to read my gmail...

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Absolutely No!

[frovingslosh]

I'm still fighting with the new "Compose" interface. Was just showing someone how to use Gmail the other day and after I had expanded the tiny thing to fill the screen we couldn't even find the BCC control. And I can't find where in the new Compose interface to change the "From" setting, I use one with a simple nickname when sending to friends and family and a different one with my full name for more formal mails, but the only way that I could do that after the change was to switch back to the old interface, and now it has started warning me that the old Compose Editor is going away. So now they want to muck with the inbox AGAIN. The company is getting more evil every day.

Most email is not important anyway...

[blahplusplus]

... I know 99% of the email I get is easily ignored. It's either bills, something I signed up for or ads from some website I last purchased something telling me something something is on sale.

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[account_deleted]

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Don't trust them

[frovingslosh]

The old Compose interface was fine. I find the new Compose interface crippling, there are several things that I do in Gmail that just don't seem to be there in the new Compose interface, at least I can't find them with a lot of searching. Yes, you can switch back to the old Compose interface, I did that months ago. Lately I've started getting messages that the old Compose interface is going away and I better learn to use the new one. Not that I object to learning something new, although I shouldn't have to if the old one is fine, but the new one doesn't seem to support some very basic functions. Of course, this isn't presenting a problem for the people at Google who help us out and support the product, because there is no one at Google who supports the product and apparently no way to even give them feedback on the problems with the new interfaces.

Re:Don't trust them

[ahabswhale]

I'm with you. I hate the new compose interface. In fact, I'm considering dropping gmail over it. The only reason I haven't is that I'm not super impressed with the alternatives. Eventually my dislike for compose will override those reservations. I give it about three months.

Re:Don't trust them

[Hognoxious]

I was using it just five minutes ago. I got a little popup window, about 1/4 of the screen width. Did you get the same? What a load of arse. I'd like to know which imbecile thought that was a good idea, and why.

Re:Don't trust them

[Lanterns]

The way to complain is to go to Gmail's Google Plus page. Please tell me there is some what to organize against them and tell them to cut the crap? This is infuriating, and I used to be such a Google fanboy.

Labels and Filters FTW

[fast turtle]

I've got several mailing lists I'm subscribed to with lots of messages yet I'm not stressing about my inbox as I've already configured my labels and filters correctly. Anyone that can't be bothered to even think about the problem for a couple of minutes is going to have more trouble with the new tabs because they're unorganized to begin with

When I'm asked by friends to help them solve an email overload, the first thing I do is create a number of sub-folders. Then begin sorting the mail/creating filters to move it to one of those folders while clearing it from the inbox. Keeps them available for searching and if it's an important discussion, they can setup another filter/label to flag em as needed. Of course, the other thing I do is install some type of spam filter that's better then the crap rules Outlook/Live mail uses that's bayesian based. Eventually it's far better then the MS crap if they take the time to mark messages as spam.

For those who have even higher email numbers then I do, the only other option I can implement is blocking langauges. Hell that's one of the first things I do as I don't read anything but English and since I'm American, not well at all as we speak Anglish here. Simply put, anything using foriegn langauge codes is deleted from the server although I will accept utf8 along with ascii. That's all.

CalDav today, IMAP tomorrow - gone

[rsborg]

Use an IMAP client of your choice than.

As long as that continues to exist. If Google is happy with apps like Sparrow and their own proprietary protocol, they might do away with IMAP, just like they did away with CalDav support.

If it's supported on Google devices, iOS devices (maybe Blackberry because they're harmless), and most browsers - why should they care about any other ways to access their service (hey, at the worst you can always use the mobile web interface, eh)?

Mark my words - CalDav removal is a sign of things to come from Page's Google.

Welcome to Flickr town

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey G-mailers, hope you like your tiled interface where you have to click ten times to find what you want. Hope you like a web site that acts like you only have a tiny bit of real estate on your screen, even if you are in fact sitting at a 25 inch wide display.

Maybe that won't be the nature of the change; but lately that seems to be the trend.

Just use Imap/Pop access and be done with it

[fast turtle]

That's how I access my gmail - Imap so changes to the damn inteface simply don't bother me so long as they don't kill the imap acces. When they do that, I'll see about moving some where's that does or look into a hosted solution.

Classic view vs. "basic HTML" view

[Push Latency]

The original g-mail view can still be seen if you use this address when you access:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=d

It's called "basic HTML".

bye bye google+

[Anonymous Coward]

I just deleted my google+ account and everything else google. I feel pretty good about it :)

Re:How about letting us easily see unread messages

[jatoo]

You might find that priority inbox can work for you. If you go to settings -> inbox then set the mode to priority inbox you can set the first section to be "unread" emails. Which sounds exactly like what you want.

GMail "redesign"?? What a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't a "redesign". It was a lets copy the crappy and mostly useless features outlook.com is bragging about.

The GMail interface is still as crappy as it was a week ago.

Web-based email interfaces

[fisted]

fucking dispense with them altogether.

Re:Web-based email interfaces

[bluec]

you may not like them but they have many benefits. we moved from imap/client setup to gmail for 60+ staff and saw our email support overheads tumble massively. configuring email clients and storing users email locally has many downsides in enterprise.

Default Tab

[slash.jit]

I am ok with the re-design as long as I have the ability to just keep one tab listing all mails just like the inbox works today!

I've been tryimg to make Important unimportant

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks but as I see, classic is going away, how the hell do they determine whats important to me??
All I can see is that most of the Bullshit that should go to trash ends up in the important folder.

i haven't gotten over the previous redesign

[Anonymous Coward]

is there a word that means "beyond sux"?

How is this new, Slashdot?

[Meski]

They've been badgering me for ages to go for a new look, and the separated priority and normal email was around for quite a while before that. It's only mediocre at separating them, IMO.