[Macworld]

Post your comments for Google revamps Gmail labels feature for organizing messages here

[MorrisTheCat]

I finally started putting Gmail's Labels to good use a few months back, so I kind of like them now. In fact, while I once clamored for folders like so many, I don't think most people realize that Labels can in fact work exactly like folders for helping to clean up/organize your Inbox. Just use the Move To function to move mail to a label and out of your Inbox. Yes, its a little counter intuitive to move mail "into" a label, but it works.
What I'd like to see more than folders is a way to build a filter that will automatically move mail into labels as they arrive in my Inbox. I already have all my mail labeled automatically as it hits my Gmail inbox, but I can't get it to move certain mail out of the inbox and to a label destination using a filter iwthout doing the move manually. Not sure why that isn't an option, but it just isn't as far as I can tell.
FWIW, I haven't seen a change in my Gmail UI yet. But I'm curious t see the changes they've made.

[SandmanX82]

Morris,
Just so you know, you're not really moving the messages "into" a label. You're moving them out of your Inbox and into your All Mail section. When you use the action "Move to" and then pick a label, it's actually just a shortcut way of placing a label on a piece of mail and then hitting the "Archive" button (which is what moves something out of your Inbox and into the All Mail secion). There's not actually anything stored in any of the labels. Everything is stored in All Mail, and labels are used as tags to keep them sorted.

[rumplestiltskin]

Labels are okay; folders are, however, much more intuitive.
Never let it be said that some pendejo with ambition can't really screw things up if he puts his mind to it.

[SandmanX82]

I don't see how folders are more intuitive. Labels in gmail are essentially identical to folders, except instead of being limited to putting a message into a single folder, you can put multiple labels on it. So if you can't decide whether you should put an e-mail conversation into the Family folder or Friends folder, you can put both labels on it and it shows up in both.

[dreyfus]

Between labels and folders, I really have no clear preference. I never assign more than one label to a message anyhow. 1. Because I have no need for it, and 2. the moment I add one label, I normally use the "move to" command for speed, I certainly won't then display all messages for that particular label, just to add another one. The obvious downside of the "labels" approach is that you can't have any equivalent to sub-folders... if you use a lot of labels, you end up with one long flat list without any grouping... at a certain point this starts to become inconvenient.
What does bug me is how poor Google's approach works with most IMAP clients. The virtual folder structure is one big mess. If they can't improve that without moving to folders for real, then they should move to folders. Better now than later.
I barely use the Web interface, but I liked my "labels"-box on the right. Removing customization features is not really an "upgrade"...

[MorrisTheCat]

Sandman, I did realize that, but thanks for the clarification. At the end of the day though, it works very similarly to moving mail into folders. I think for anyone but the most scrutinizing of users, this should fit the bill.
Still, it would be nice if Google actually gave us both options. Maybe that would calm down those who crave the old method so much. For me, I don't care if they ever add them, because labels work just as well, once you get over the hurdle of actually using them. I think many who are against them just refuse to accept that they work almost exactly the same, and in some cases, better.

[Jubernalo]

Hi Morris,

If you create a filter, in the second step you can choose to "Skip the inbox" and "Apply a label". With these two options chosen, you are essentially automatically moving mail into labels when it arrives at yor inbox.

Hope this helps.

[SandmanX82]

I can see your point Dreyfus. I guess it depends on the user. Our needs are different. I never use mail clients, and prefer not to, so the way its IMAP works is inconsequential to me. I also use multiple labels on things, in which case I use the "Label" command instead of the "Move to" command so I can continue to put different labels on before moving it out of the inbox. Different strokes for different folks. I can see your gripes with it though.

[MorrisTheCat]

Jubernalo said:

Hi Morris,


If you create a filter, in the second step you can choose to "Skip the inbox" and "Apply a label". With these two options chosen, you are essentially automatically moving mail into labels when it arrives at yor inbox.


Hope this helps.

Ah, thanks for that! It wasn't immediately obvious to me to do it that way, but yeah, that would work.

[mattwolfmatt]

I have NEVER used a label in my gmail. That's why I love it. If I never need to find a message, I search for some text. That's the beauty of gmail. I love clicking "select all, archive" and poof they're gone.

[zarmanto]

I dunno... I didn't actually realize that there was any controversy over the labels, so I guess I'm not paying enough attention to the "news"... but frankly, I've never had any issues at all with Gmail's metaphor for organizing messages. And for that matter, I would only have been a bit perplexed if I had observed the discontent noted in this article. After all, that's all any of these terms really are: just metaphors used to make it easier to understand what the computer is doing with your stuff. There's no literal "desktop" in front of me when my wife's netbook is sitting on my lap... and there are no "folders" inside the chassis of my hackintosh downstairs -- I know that with absolute certainty, as I built it from the ground up myself. (I haven't actually seen the insides of my iMac... but based upon tear-down videos on various websites, I think it's safe to say there are no literal "folders" in it either.) However, all three of my computers were programmed to iterate the contents of the hard drive using a "folder" metaphor... and the "desktop" is really just a layer of one metaphor on top of another, as it happens to be a "folder" as well.*

And so the folks over at Google realized that since all of the e-mail messages in their systems are really just stored in a vast database anyway, and as such, multiple distinct indexed "labels" can be applied to any given message without any significant adverse impact on performance... then there's really no reason why that message store needs to be artificially constrained by a one-folder-per-message metaphor.

So basically, it seems to me that the whole issue stems from a mixture of 1) widely held preconceived notions about how a computer is supposed to work, and 2) ineffective communication of the enhanced usability of a new metaphor to the end-user, when Google violated those preconceptions. Of course, a stickler for details would probably insist on pointing out that this was all explained adequately enough in Gmail's help system... but then, we already know that nobody likes to read the documentation. (Right, Morris? ;) )

* Here's a trivia question for those of you who've been around for awhile... can anyone remember when the "desktop" wasn't a "folder", on Macintosh computers? :D

[dreyfus]

zarmanto said:

So basically, it seems to me that the whole issue stems from a mixture of 1) widely held preconceived notions about how a computer is supposed to work, and 2) ineffective communication of the enhanced usability of a new metaphor to the end-user, when Google violated those preconceptions. Of course, a stickler for details would probably insist on pointing out that this was all explained adequately enough in Gmail's help system... but then, we already know that nobody likes to read the documentation. (Right, Morris? ;) )

While I see the point you are making, and it might certainly play a role in some cases, it is not the whole story, really. The Internet revolves around standards. There are two standards dealing with mailboxes, POP and IMAP. POP is basically pointless when talking about a browser-based system, and IMAP, which may certainly be less than perfect, is where it's at. And IMAP is all about folders. People have email clients that present folders (even when connecting to Gmail), people have learned to organize information in folders, and most people do not like change. Having one logic in the browser, and an entirely different one when using Mail or Entourage is not enhancing usability, at least not for those not using the Webmail interface 100% of the time. Deleting or moving messages between folders on a Gmail account in an email client can cause odd results, this is what standards can avoid. Now, if Google would have joined a workgroup that works on future enhancements to IMAP or a successor and then built a platform that implements any proposals or recommendations made by that group, it would be a different picture. They have just added a proprietary variation, and because free always works, there has never been any serious discussion. While this is most-likely well-meant, it is quite a bit of a MS practise, too.

[rumplestiltskin]

There's a reason it's called a "metaphor"; it's the virtual replacement for what actually takes place in the real world. We file things in folders. The Mac Desktop is called the Desktop because it is supposed to mimic what actually takes place on our desktops. While one might argue for a means to label everything as well, does that mean the paradigm of the physical world should be ignored?

Sure, add the concept of labels if you wish (although searching through my eMail for something I have neglected to label is much more likely to happen).

When was the Desktop not a folder on the Mac? It's always been a folder; it's just been hidden from you and presented as the top level hierarchy in pre-OSX Macs. (Perhaps you are referring to pre HFS -MFS- volumes where folders weren'e really subdirectories? That was changed in September 1985 and writing to such volumes was abandoned in System 7.6.1.)