Gmail Sign In Screen Should Have More Options

I feel really too happy to see that Gmail has thought of slow connection and they have both HTML basic view and standard view options. I feel proud that Gmail did not forget 100s and 1000s slow connection users. Gmail is intelligent that it starts signing in and it can feel whether line is slow or fast. If speed is slow, it offers this:

But I think, Gmail's login screen should have two options to 'disable labs' and 'load in basic HTML view'. Because, I know my connection is already slow and I want to select that from sign in screen.

New in Gmail Labs: Nested Labels has problems

Gmail has released a new lab on 8th April 2010 on 'Nested Labels'. I was in need of something like this as I had around 150 labels and it was increasing almost everyday. But the way Gmail lab provided, it was not a good way to me. You can read there original post here New in Labs: Nested Labels and Message Sneak Peek Gmail has used slashes (/) to make a label the children of another label. Problem is I had several labels/tags with slash already. Gmail could have designed the lab in different way (I mean, without using slash).

Not only that. When I rearranged some of the labels as child, it did not update my filters immediately (where I used those labels) and also did not update filters in my multiple inbox.

It also has problem with not showing parent label. If by mistake your parent label is marked as 'hidden' the children labels are not shown correctly.

Here Parent label 'Goal' is hidden.

You see the output now:

Finally, I wanted a feature like this but somehow this Lab could not satisfy me. :(

Top Priority Mails Always Appear At Top

On 12th May I posted this blog "Top Priority Mails Should Always Appear At Top". Please read that if you are interested. Now I'm writing this blog as title "Top Priority Mails Always Appear At Top" :) I've removed the 'Should' from title. :D

I'm very happy that finally I'm successful to achieve this functionality in . No, no, no Gmail did not listen to me. It did not implement what I exactly need. But somehow now I can satisfy my desire by a lab and it is Multiple Inboxes :)

How did I do this?

1. First I made filter/criteria that I consider as high priority. e.g. mails from sunata.mehdi@gmail.com are high priority to me. So, even if I cannot check my emails for one month, I still want mails from sunata.mehdi@gmail.com should always appear at top of my mails. (I receive more than 100+ emails daily).

2. While created the filter I marked a label with it. The label is twin star '**'

3. Ok, so my filter and label are created. Now I need to make sure that all mails from sunata.mehdi@gmail.com appear at top.

4. Go to labs and enable 'Multiple Inboxes' lab.

5. After you've enabled it come to settings again and there you'll find new tab 'Multiple Inboxes'. Basically now you can create multiple five mail boxes of your desire. So, I'm going to create a mail box that will only show the twin star mails. Isn't that so simple?

6. In 'pane 0' I've written label:**. Many of you already might know that that is the way gmail can filter/search particular label's mail.

7. That is all. Clicking 'Save Changes' made everything. ;)

8. Now I clicked 'Inbox' and can see high priority emails are shown at top of my mail box. 

Special thanks to Vivi.

Attachment progress bar

Gmail has provided another great feature and that is attachment progress bar. It really helps you a lot and lot. Usually gmail provides this type of features through lab. But this special one they have provided default. I mean nothing to pick from lab at all.

Undo Send

Oops, hit "Send" too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.

I'm happy that gmail has given such help. Though it was not a big invention but it'll help a lot. I liked this 'undo send' feature very very much.

If you want to get this feature, login, go to lab, enable it.

At least browsers should have ability to save application's options userwise

At my work place I use several browsers due to my profession. Firefox, Safari, IE6, IE7 are those. I also work at home at off days and sometimes at night. I hugely feel that our software are still too dull to deal some of my dump requirements! Sometimes I feel that our software could have been smarter but I'm sorry I don't find them like that. Ok, let me explain the problem. The way I use browsers at work, I want, when I open browser at home they should appear with same setup/options that I last time did at my office. That is all.

I know for this feature user account is needed. No problem, I'm ready to take the pain to open an account and I also understand that browser should save all setup/options (that I did) on a server. Eureka...! Firefox is already free and they are giving it free to download. So, they do have a server. So, they can save there. :) bingo...

Was it not so simple? But why none has given such feature? I expect lot form google and I thought at least chrome would provide this. I know chrome has given lot advanced things but why not this? :(

Browsers should prompt on closing

Browsers are getting smarter and smarter day by day but I don't know why they are not thinking about lot silly features that might help many users in the world. I'll talk about one right now. You know, browsers can prompt with message whether you want to save session for the next time or not (I don't use this feature).


Browsers also asks on closing weather you want to clear cache, cookie etc. But no browser prompt on closing if i did any change in any web page, especially in any form. Say, I'm filling up a form. I typed some data in it but not yet done. Accidentally I clicked close and browser was closed. It never asks me that I was in a form where I typed some data. Browser should ask in these kind of cases. I often lost my important browser window.

I thought, google chrome browser would provide this. But unfortunately it does not.

More Links Should Be Intelligent

I use some of the products of google with huge trust. I use gmail most. It is nice that at top right gmail shows some hot links of other products. I can easily go to 'documents' 'calendar' from here and for what I don't need to re-login.

Unfortunately, it seems, google does not know which product I use most. So, it does not show the products that I use most at top. So, I click the 'more' link and then find my products to work on.

I frequently use 'alerts' & 'bookmarks' but google does not show those two links as hot link, nor even in drop-down list. :(

Top Priority Mails Should Always Appear At Top

Gmail should provide a way so that I can see my top priority emails at top of my 'inbox', 'starred' box or 'all mail' box. Though right now this can be done, somehow, by using filter & labels and of course 'star' features. But my problem is I forget things. I forget many things. I even don't know, how many times I clicked 'I cannot access my account' or 'forgot password?' link to login.

So, even though I created filter and set a label 'High priority' along with star mark, I know, I forget to click the label 'High priority' and thus I miss my high priority emails and get dependent on other devices. I'm fond of gmail. I've many gmail accounts for many purposes. But in every account I'm in need to see my top priority emails at top of my inbox always. Even if I've 1000 unread emails and I got one high priority email 3 days ago, and that is still unread, I want to see that high priority unread email at top of my inbox.

Gmail can do this easily in this way with their existing create a filter feature:



So the output could be like this in inbox:

I wish very soon, I'll find this feature as a surprise.

But right now I got a solution of this: I've one master account. Usually I don't disclose this master account to anyone or any group. So, this master account remains clean. I've other necessary gmail accounts and I create filter (where I forward high priority emails [say, if mail is from blah..blah...]) there. So, for checking whether I've high priority emails or not, I check my master account and if I get any mail that I expected I attain those emails through my original email account. :)