Comments on: Gmail labels get higher placement, drag-and-drop

Google is bowing to the notion that some people use Gmail's labels like traditional e-mail folders, and will now let them to drag messages "into" labels while organizing mail.

[gopnick]

Old habits die hard. Google was right in both cases: (1) to try to move its user base forward and (2) to accommodate the user when it became apparent that nothing would change.

[hmdz105]

Gmail= the best!

[zmjman08]

awesome

[fredtheviking]

I don't see why labels can't work both ways. It is a stretch for a label to have a parent label (or even better a label hierarchy). I think having both features are useful.

[JohnLudlow]

Hmmm.... Personally I'd rather get rid of the chat box altogether and see all my labels (I have about 40 labels linked to filters and no-one I know uses chat so it's useless to me).

Maybe I'll suggest it as a Lab feature if they neglect to make it available.

[dr_pardee]

Bring Back Right-Side labels A Sap. This sucks. Totally ruined my Feng shui.

[BIGELLOW]

@JohnLudlow,

There is already a link at the very bottom of Gmail that says "turn off chat". So, you're halfway there. Also, Google claims that you can decide which labels show and which ones are hidden. If this is completely true, perhaps there will be a way to make all labels visible. But, for instance, maybe there will be a way for you to "hide" the Chats link that normally appears in the left under Starred, since you don't use it.

[Tom Krazit]

If you want to preserve chat, you can also move the chat box to the right side with a Gmail Labs widget, which would let you edit your labels preferences in the Settings tab to show everything without interfering with the chat box.

[JohnLudlow]

@Tom:

Um, I was under the impression right-side gadgets had been disabled. Besides, I don't really want to preserve chat - I don't use it at all.

Anyway, they let you show all labels, which pushes Chat to the bottom of the screen where it's not in the way. When I wrote my above post my account hadn't recieved the updates yet, so I couldn't see it. So it's not ideal (I'd still like a little more choice how it's laid out for *my* account, but hey, that's web-based email for you, right?) but it's "good enough".

I'm now trying to work out if the drag-drop is all that useful. An improvement, I think, but it doesn't always work the way you might think. You can drag-drop a label onto a mail that you have open, but as far as I can see only onto the label area at the top, and you can't drag drop a label on to the list at all.

[Brent212]

Now if only they'd allow you to respond to an email without indenting the previous email with ">"s, maybe I wouldn't have to use a third party client to access gmail.

[gshappell]

I understand the logic of the move, but not a big fan of it. Now i have a bunch of stuff on the left hand side and have a long web page due to all the items.

[loose_screw]

Dammit, I hate this! I liked having my Google Calendar appear above my labels, and now I can't see my calendar applet if I expand all my labels! SUCK!

[foxontherock]

With labels back on the left, I do not see my gmail gadget (remember the milk + our own gadget created for aceproject.com). What is that ? Please bring back the labels on the right side ! There's a lab gadget called "Add gadget by url"... we can't really use it if the labels are on the left side.

[mesuth]

There must be an option to show labels with unread messages before the remaining labels.

[hankthedwarf]

I like this move a lot, but they need to make the entire row of each email listing draggable. Having to focus the mouse cursor directly on that little nub on the end is a waste of time and annoying.

[insta-vista]

**My comment is similar to hankthedwarf's --- it relates to the same need for easy, safe human manipulation of screen pixels.
**Drag-and-drop is great (I've been wanting this since I started using Gmail years ago) -- it just needs to have BIGGER SPACES to drag and drop into.
**For starters, it would be nice to choose whether the labels list appears as "list, small icon, or large icon."
(At least, have on option to make all the labels double in size so that each takes up two lines of stardard text.)
**Next, it could be turned into visual paint-pots or "baskets" to toss messages into.
**To make it yet safer, the computer might automatically doublecheck you if you hit a 'rim area' because you might have meant to send/drag it to a neighboring basket.
**I was trying to post these comments in Google's own discussions, and couldn't easily find the appropriate place to discuss this.

[deep42]

Apparently, very many users (including myself) did not like this change.
There are numerous threads on the Gmail support site in which users demand the reimplementation of the right-side labels option and give hundreds of reasons for which it was better before. Hopefully, Google will not ignore their requests.

[loose_screw]

Hopefully!!!!

[Ryan_Phx]

Labels were the main reason I never used Gmail--they require more effort to manage than just dragging a message into a folder where I know where to find it. Since obviously some people (although hardly the majority, judging by Google's reaction) seem to like the other way, I wonder why Google can't just offer a choice of two interfaces? Yahoo does--there's the "Classic" and now the "New" interface. Heck, Google lets you customize the layout of Google News, why can't they do the same with Gmail?

[uribs]

My better Gmail2 addon for firefox is broken now... I don't like it at all

[3thom]

I have over 200 labels - not being able to have them on the right side as well as not being able to use "Folders4Gmail" makes Gmail unusable for me.

The "Folders4Gmail" GreaseMonkey script gives you the set/subset categorization that all human brains thrive on, as well as overcomes the flaws of message storage folders.

The folder paradigm gets a lot correct with regards to categorizing many pieces into sets/subsets where the only failing of folders is that a single message can only be in a single folder.

The drag and drop feature is nice, but I don't have time to drag & drop 500 email messages a day. And if I need to confirm if a branch office backup fired off and finished correctly - I previously had those emails automatically labeled by filters and archived to get them out of the Inbox - they would be labeled by a label that looked like this: AdminNotify/Bkups/BranchLocation. I used to be able to quick click through and eyeball all my AdminNotify email categorically - not any more.

I had retired Outlook - and even retired Thunderbird - to be a completely cloud based email user - until Google surprisebuttsexed my email. Thanks Google for a solution that doesn't scale!!!!!!

[KBKK]

why really why would a company like Google that is trying to make life more customizable make gmail more rigid. having all the stuff on the left side where you cannot see all the boxes, calendar etc...

Labels were great on the right because I could see them while being at the top of the page. whereas now ev everything is congested at the left, inbox.....sent.......labels. I don't get this one at all , its stupid

like never before from these whiz kids. the drag thing, no big deal nothing new and labeling something was always easy anyway i dont think dropping makes it much easier.


Google what the hell are you smoking these days?????????

[renicky]

I agree! I am so frustrated at not being able to see my calendar! I've always thought Gmail decisions were based on usability testing, but I don't think this idea was thought out well... at all.