

Ask HN: What would you fix in Gmail UX/UI? - source99

What would you fix in Gmail UX&#x2F;UI?<p>I use Gmail(and apps for business) several hours every day.  There are several features&#x2F;fixes I would like to make.  Such as:<p>1.  Ability to move an attachment from one email thread to another without having to download it.<p>2.  Show more complete name&#x2F;email address while viewing an email.  Make it easier to copy an email address so I can add that person to another email.<p>3.  Better preview of attachments including the ability to zoom-in&#x2F;pan.<p>What would you fix?
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dmlorenzetti
Search could learn to handle a hierarchy of mailboxes. For example, if you
have labels "project1" and "project2", each with sub-labels under them, it
doesn't seem possible to make a search in "project1" to go into the sub-
labels.

Grep-based search would be good.

When replying to a message, it would be nice if the controls for breaking the
window loose of the rest of the application didn't require four or five
actions, in different parts of the screen. Here's what I mean. Hit "reply" to
a message. If you want to pop that window loose, so that it's actually useable
while you run through other messages, you first go to the upper left corner of
the editing area, click the drop-down, and hit "Pop out reply". Then go to the
upper right of the subwindow that just opened, hold down shift, and click the
arrow that points up and to the left. None of it is intuitive, and it's just
too much clicking for such a simple action.

It would be nice if the editor wasn't so forgetful about the insertion point.
For example, if you're editing some text in a reply, and click on the "..."
icon to see the message you're responding to, the insertion point hops to the
top of the editing window.

Ability to remove an attachment.

When you delete a message, and you're looking in Trash, have the quick-preview
line (i.e., the first few words, shown in the main screen listing all the
messages) show the contents of the message you're actually looking at, rather
than the first sentence in the most recent e-mail with the same subject. I
don't know how many times I've panicked, thinking that I deleted an important
e-mail, rather than some formulaic "Catch you tomorrow" or "No problem"
message that I had trashed.

I've long ago given up hoping that some organizational capability would come
to Gmail that went beyond the pathetic "conversations" mode. Gmail's idea of
organization pretty much amounts to this: (1) you either want to list all
e-mails by subject all the time, or you want to list them by time all the
time; (2) you only rarely want to switch back and forth between those two
views; and (3) if you want to list them in any other way, then it's a "search"
which delivers limited results, and disappears the instant you navigate away
from it.

~~~
chany2
I think most of the issues relies on the searching for emails as you
explained. After you file them into labels/folders, to retrieve emails became
pretty cumbersome as well.

Currently, I am hacking on an idea using Hashtags for Email, love to get your
feedback:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6948659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6948659)

------
johnmurch
2 things that kill me all the time

\- Fix Threads as if I forward an email to someone and they respond, it's not
part of the original thread \- Have the edit subject line NOT require another
click

~~~
source99
It seems to me that google regularly adds more clicks to accomplish tasks all
the time.

i.e. Editing a subject

Opening calendar or any other app.

------
source99
One UX strategy to improve moving attachments without downloading is to add a
button in the bottom of the compose/reply window that responds with a list of
recently viewed/downloaded attachments. The user could then click on any of
them and they would be attached to the email without downloading and
uploading.

------
frou_dh
I'd stop Gmail from somehow grabbing tab focus in Safari once it completes its
in-page loading bar. I had to disable keyboard shortcuts in Gmail because I
don't want to be typing elsewhere in Safari only to suddenly be firing off a
bunch of unintended Gmail actions.

------
davidw
I would make it not take over my emacs key bindings: I want ctrl-k to kill to
the end of the line.

Actually, what would be really neat is if they found a way to make an API that
still included their ads, so that people could experiment with different
stuff.

------
meerita
I wish i have the older ui, the UI they used to launch. Simpler and faster
than the current.

------
rayj
Bring back full-window compose.

------
entendre
reorganize settings. Either A) organize them into sections based on the
service they're related to such as chat, mail, google+ or better yet, provide
a search feature to find the setting you want.

Without googling it, block a user on chat, then figure out how to unblock
them.

~~~
frou_dh
I wish iOS's Settings app had search. The number of items and sub-hierarchies
in there has gotten silly.

OS X's System Preferences has had a great and novel (spotlight with varying
brightness) search feature forever.

