Comments on: Labels in Gmail are Terribly Inefficient – A Lesson in User Interface Design

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:11:55 +0000

I totally agree. I’ve requested similar functionality directly to google and on Userscripts.org to see if a coding genius could write a script for greasemonkey.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for sure!!!

Great post.

By: John

John — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:41:50 +0000

Hear hear! Fingers crossed for this capability. Another idea: a check box next to each label in the left sidebar. Select ten messages, press plus, and the messages are labelled. Uncheck the box(es) to drop a label from one or more messages. No need for a drop down menu if you don’t want it.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:06:20 +0000

I like the idea of being able to tag this way.

I think it would be better though if there was a columnar list instead of a cloud.

It would be difficult for me to quickly find the tags in the cloud due to visual flooding/clutter.

As for IMAP. Yes it’s great, but I’d actually prefer to do it all online. I only use IMAP for dragging and dropping into folders since the labeling is such a PIA.

Great article. I hope they listen.

Shawn

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:05:12 +0000

Arasmus,
Thanks for the kind words, except my name is Aaron.

By: Arasmus

Arasmus — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:53:35 +0000

Mark,

I absolutely agree and I like your mock-up of a solution. Thanks for taking the time to do that. In the old days someone would have cut you a check and told you to enjoy the weekend.

Arasmus

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:20:24 +0000

Mark, fantastic idea! I like the idea of it being smart enough to “suggest” tags based on the content of the email. Brilliant.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:20:37 +0000

Looking at the screen full of label names I was immediately reminded of “tag clouds”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_clouds

Borrowing from this idea, Google could weight the labels based on the content of the email you are currently labeling.

If you were talking about your trip to Japan in this email, the labels “Japan” and “Travel” could be much larger than, say, “Cooking”…

By: Andy K

Andy K — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:01:11 +0000

I love this idea! I found your site because I’m annoyed at constantly scrolling to find the proper label under “More Actions”.

By: Victor Ly

Victor Ly — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:37:49 +0000

I found this site because this is exactly the suggestion that I would like to send to the people at Gmail. A “Label” navigator in the toolbar would make a lot of sense. I hope you and others have already sent Gmail a message regarding this, because I am about to. Thanks.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:58:18 +0000

Ian,
I agree that this is a problem, however, I would guess that the majority of Gmail users use the web client exclusively. And for that matter, Gmail was designed as a web mail client, and IMAP support was an after thought. I guess what I am trying to say is that the Gmail developers shouldn’t sacrifice the web client user experience (their primary audience) in order to make things easier for fringe users.

To be honest, people who don’t use the web client are taking advantage of a free service. Google doesn’t make any money when IMAP user’s yank their mail out of the system without viewing contextual ads. So, I say keep the “paying” customers happy first, then worry about everyone else.

Great points though!