Comments on: Why Is Gmail So Irritating?

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 02:32:40 +0000

This thread is breaking a record for being “old” and “bumped” hope you don’t mind. I personally can’t stand it when admins complain about “bumping” “old” threads (in contrast the benefit is, that even over a period of years, the dialog/info stays in one place). Regarding gmail, here are a few BASICS that are missing/wrong, a deleted draft doesn’t go to trash (violation of a practically-expected-standard), You can’t set the autosave frequency (could do this in other non-google products 10+ years ago), you can’t adjust basic UI screen-wasters i.e. can reduce the space between the email-from-noun and email subject, can’t specify to display the ACTUAL email from addr instead of noun (that I know of), there’s all kinds of wasted screen space near the top where they COULD place items on the same line, UI selection-element grouping has become an epidemic where it used to take one click now it’s 2 or 3 for any given action, “look what’s new” etc. type messages from gmail/google IN RED that won’t go away and there’s no “X”, Contacts and Tasks which I never use are at the *TOP* left and can’t be moved that I know of, to name a few. I’m talking about basic capability that gmail should provide, not the deep-end of add-ons etc. for firefox to accomplish some gmail UI tweaking, but what google should do. Arrogance, being impolite, non-listening are pretty accurate ways to describe the gmail team – sorry to say.

By: Ismael Nirvado

Ismael Nirvado — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:08:52 +0000

GMail is the most confusing email EVER. The best & most easy to use is Apple’s MobileMe considering it’s slow compared to Yahoo and Hotmail. Yahoo & Hotmail are the best out there so far but every message you receive or send in GMail always appears in inbox and outbox. Google- Learn to be simplistic like APPLE.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:40:28 +0000

Hello,

Gmail does break the back button but that’s not such a terrible nuisance. It’s a very very good way of ensuring that after you have logged out of a computer in an internet cafe, some nice gentleman isn’t able to “back” into your inbox. The Web is full of much worse solutions to this problem – check how Hotmail does it!

Yes, folders must have been an option. I personally dont like all mails showing in one place, even if they are tagged different.

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:22:45 +0000

I enable keyboard shortcuts, which makes it quick & easy to do many actions, such as “c” for compose message, “r” to reply to a message, “u” to return to the Inbox, etc. Some of the shortcuts aren’t so intuitive, like “j” to move message pointer up, “k” to move down (unless you’re used to the vi editor!)…
But I do find having to scroll down to the bottom of the screen to find the download button annoying!
& it *would* be nice if reading messages in Outlook could mark them as read in gmail!

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:56:10 +0000

I totally agree with you that “Compose Mail” link is hard to find! I thought maybe I was the only one.
I remember when I first started using gmail, I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t find how to simply create a new email, and now have to consciously look for it above the “Inbox” link.
Apart from that I find gmail great.

By: christopher

christopher — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:36:23 +0000

it’s always fascinating to see another person’s take on a tech. i love gmail. yes, there are some annoying interface problems, but overall i’ve totally bought hook line and sinker into the new paradigm of conversations, searching/labeling instead of foldering (you can label conversations and search by the labels, which is a similar idea to folders).

but above all it’s what you mentioned, the sheer newness and innovativeness of it. that’s what i love. it’s a completely different way of looking at a common app and if you go with it, it really works.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:01:41 +0000

JJA: I know lots of people seem to like it. There was an article in Techcrunch recently calling Gmail the perfect email app. I guess you have to give Google credit for innovating, when nobody else building email apps is. I just wish they gave you the option to use a more traditional UI. Of course, that's probably unrealistic.

By: John Joseph Adams

John Joseph Adams — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:50:55 +0000

Dude, you are *crazy*. Gmail is totally the best email application EVAR. No, seriously. Yeah, it has its downsides as you outline above, but to me its pluses far outweight its minuses. I’ve never loved an email system like I love Gmail.

I do agree with you on some of its problems though. I don’t like the label interface either; though instead of folders, it would make more sense to me if they used tags. It’s not a whole lot different than the label format, but most sites that use tags, like del.ici.ous, make it much easier to actually tag things.

As for the threaded conversations — they take getting used to, but I find I much prefer them than the standard way. I agree that it sometimes gets confusing when you have multiple people involved in a conversation.

As for Yahoo mail — last time I tried using it, it sucked big time, and I’ll never return to it. Let me tell you why. When I was in college, I was using Yahoo mail as my primary email account, and one day, out of the blue, they cancelled my account without ever telling me why or giving me any warning. I’ve still never found out why. I just went to log in one day and couldn’t access my account.

I went to the support forums, and the only theory anyone was able to come up with was that I had somehow violated the TOS. How, I don’t know. The theory was that because I also had a geocities account, which was linked to my Yahoo account, I could have violated the TOS of Geocities. On that site, I had a page about MP3s (no actual MP3 downloads, mind you, just about MP3s), and so people supposed that that somehow violated the TOS.

I still hate them for that. Though I do like the customizable My Yahoo page.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 01:38:57 +0000

Re the spam: I find that I get pretty good results by having two spam filters in place. Gmail does the first round of filtering, and then Outlook does another round of filtering when the messages get downloaded. It catches hundreds of spam e-mails a day, and not very many false positives either.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:13:16 +0000

No spam??? Just you wait!
Thanks, David – fascinating discussion, and you’ve pointed out a whole lot of annoying things about Gmail that I didn’t really know (I have a Gmail account as backup if my own server goes down but otherwise I use IMAP4 with Thunderbird at home and Squirrelmail (fairly ugly but it works) when out. Oh, and Chatter Email on my Treo