4 ms·

Nah, the author does have a point. There's something fundamentally wrong with how Gmail collapses messages. I have email notifications from a certain web store

by Grue3 8y ago

Nah, the author does have a point. There's something fundamentally wrong with how Gmail collapses messages. I have email notifications from a certain web store when some of the items I might be interested in come in stock/for preorder. I always read them. Years after I started using it, I discovered that I actually miss reading about 30% of these messages. How does this happen? Well, it turns out that Google randomly groups some of these messages in a single thread. And yet this thread looks identical to a single message. So I click on the thread, read the first message, see the email footer and go back to Inbox to read the next one. This marks the entire thread read even though I didn't actually read the subsequent messages. So I never come around to read them. I completely believe that most users will not read any email in the thread beyond the first one, because there's absolutely no indication there's more stuff to read.

mrlala 8y ago
>Well, it turns out that Google randomly groups some of these messages in a single thread Yeah you are right, I remember when they implemented that "random grouping" to confuse their users and make email unreadable. In other news, they group messages with the same subject into a single thread (or rather, how the subject changes when someone clicks reply like adding re:). So when someone replies, it stays in the same thread. It's clear as day that there are messages below because they are showing. There's a number next to the email thread you clicked on with how many replies there are. >I completely believe that most users will not read any email in the thread beyond the first one, because there's absolutely no indication there's more stuff to read. So.. you do realize just how many years people have been using gmail, right? And you believe that most users are missing basically every email that is a reply? I mean.. how does your mind work dude?
- dang 8y ago
  No personal swipes on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mywittyname 8y ago
Also, long exchanges with someone who uses Outlook as a client are incredibly painful.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Does it not collapse them? I have a few people I used to talk with that had the included reply but GMAIL just replaced it with [...] that I could click to expand.
uberman 8y ago
I came to say the same thing, but you said it first and probably better than I.
Jach 8y ago
When gmail was invite-only, the threaded collapsing feature was amazing and perfect for what I got my invite to do (roleplaying). Since then after innumerable redesigns and behavior changes, I don't even remember what the old behavior or look really was like, except I liked it and had fewer complaints. These days I'm annoyed that gmail doesn't collapse messages enough, i.e. the "random" threading or not threading of emails that seem like they ought to be part of the same thread (some seem only different by time). I get annoyed with their UI on multi-party emails. And you have a point about marking the whole thread as read when you didn't even scroll the wheel once, though you do have a number indication before drilling into it of how many message are there. Make the number bigger? If you try to reply it's also obvious there are more messages. At least it knows you read earlier messages in the thread and collapses them by default. There's still a lot of improvements for mail UX. I don't expect google will be the one to make them, but maybe they'll copy the other people who do.

by Grue3 8y ago

mrlala 8y ago

>Well, it turns out that Google randomly groups some of these messages in a single thread Yeah you are right, I remember when they implemented that "random grouping" to confuse their users and make email unreadable. In other news, they group messages with the same subject into a single thread (or rather, how the subject changes when someone clicks reply like adding re:). So when someone replies, it stays in the same thread. It's clear as day that there are messages below because they are showing. There's a number next to the email thread you clicked on with how many replies there are. >I completely believe that most users will not read any email in the thread beyond the first one, because there's absolutely no indication there's more stuff to read. So.. you do realize just how many years people have been using gmail, right? And you believe that most users are missing basically every email that is a reply? I mean.. how does your mind work dude?

dang 8y ago
No personal swipes on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mywittyname 8y ago

Also, long exchanges with someone who uses Outlook as a client are incredibly painful.

rtkwe 8y ago
Does it not collapse them? I have a few people I used to talk with that had the included reply but GMAIL just replaced it with [...] that I could click to expand.

uberman 8y ago

I came to say the same thing, but you said it first and probably better than I.

Jach 8y ago

When gmail was invite-only, the threaded collapsing feature was amazing and perfect for what I got my invite to do (roleplaying). Since then after innumerable redesigns and behavior changes, I don't even remember what the old behavior or look really was like, except I liked it and had fewer complaints. These days I'm annoyed that gmail doesn't collapse messages enough, i.e. the "random" threading or not threading of emails that seem like they ought to be part of the same thread (some seem only different by time). I get annoyed with their UI on multi-party emails. And you have a point about marking the whole thread as read when you didn't even scroll the wheel once, though you do have a number indication before drilling into it of how many message are there. Make the number bigger? If you try to reply it's also obvious there are more messages. At least it knows you read earlier messages in the thread and collapses them by default. There's still a lot of improvements for mail UX. I don't expect google will be the one to make them, but maybe they'll copy the other people who do.