Gmail graduates 3 Labs features(thenextweb.com)
thenextweb.com
Gmail graduates 3 Labs features
http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/12/06/gmail-graduates-3-labs-features-send-and-archive-default-reply-to-all-and-quote-selected-text/
8 comments
Yay, "Send and Archive" is my favorite labs feature. It saves me seconds every day. Okay, that might not sound like much but it also makes responding to my email that much less of a chore, which makes me happy.
Unfortunately, it was broken with the gmail redesign and is still broken. I open a thread with 30 new messages, select part of a message half way down, hit 'r', and find myself editing a reply to the very last message. Instead, I have to click an extra time to change the focus to the message (with no visual indication) before selecting it. Selecting text from a message should be sufficient indication to reply to that message, without needing to reposition the invisible focus. This bug costs me minutes per day.
Well Google Labs seems to be an innovative approach to product development. Quite surprised that I can't name other company which follow that approach. Could work if you have some truly passionate users.
Although they missed a few potential features (see Rapportive and friends).
Although they missed a few potential features (see Rapportive and friends).
Nokia Beta Labs since 2007.
Direct link to the official announcement:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Gmail/posts/H1mkyyY2nW4
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Gmail/posts/H1mkyyY2nW4
Some discussion about the quote one from last week:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838810
Spoiler: some people strongly dislike it.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838810
Spoiler: some people strongly dislike it.
"Default reply to all"
This isn't a feature. It's a bug.
This isn't a feature. It's a bug.
Unless you need to always reply to all, then it's a handy feature. It's a setting to change the default, if you don't want it the good news is you don't have to do anything.
> This isn't a feature. It's a bug.
Some stupid people would cause chaos if they enabled it, of course, but generally those are exactly the same people that would never even realize it was possible do so.
For the rest of us who have half a clue, it's a nice feature. Reply-to-all is the right thing something like 70-80% of the time, so it's useful to make it easier.
Some stupid people would cause chaos if they enabled it, of course, but generally those are exactly the same people that would never even realize it was possible do so.
For the rest of us who have half a clue, it's a nice feature. Reply-to-all is the right thing something like 70-80% of the time, so it's useful to make it easier.
I see many mistaken "Reply"'s every month, and I think I've only seen one mistaken "Reply to all" in my life.
You've never seen an email storm then? They're most often started by a mistaken "Reply all". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm
In my experience, they've been caused by misconfigured listservs.
I've read hilarious stories about them, but I've never been part of one. (Someone replied to all once at my old job when they shouldn't have. Then they said oops. End of boring story.)
On the other hand, the potential damage of one mistaken "Reply to all" can be enormous, compared to a mistaken "Reply" which just adds some extra work.
Usually true, but I've seen an errant "Reply" cause misunderstandings too (due to lack of communication rather than inappropriate communication).
You're courting disaster anyways by replying off a mass email chain to one person on it.
You're courting disaster anyways by replying off a mass email chain to one person on it.
You kidding? This will provide fun stories for years.
So is it a setting that affects only your own replies? Or is it something you set in an original email or reply that you're composing, that compels all recipients who click the reply button to reply to the entire addressee list by default? Because I can't see much use for the former, but the latter could be really useful.
The former, which is quite useful, when you keep mistakenly only replying to the previous respondent in a group email chain. When this becomes an issue is when you don't realize what you've done; then the person you replied to might not notice it. And then they might only reply to you since it's not longer a group email... and so on.
I'm curious, how would you imagine the second one would even work? Add a new header that asks the mail reader to choose "reply to all" by default? It seems like something no reasonable mail reader should or would respect.
That's probably it: a simple boolean header. And I agree that changing default behavior is a very dodgy practice.
I used to have an Outlook extension that disabled Reply-All on outgoing mail. I used the heck outta that thing! Nothing bugged me more than someone sending an e-mail broadcast to the division, which would be followed in my inbox by a dozen or more Out-of-office autoresponders.
I used to have an Outlook extension that disabled Reply-All on outgoing mail. I used the heck outta that thing! Nothing bugged me more than someone sending an e-mail broadcast to the division, which would be followed in my inbox by a dozen or more Out-of-office autoresponders.
One thing I like about a default reply to all is that it is easier to take away names than add them, at least for me. I always look at the 'To:' field after hitting reply, but, I do realize many will not and make mistakes. Hard choice, IMO, convenience or user-proof.
Every time I see a new batch of features graduated from labs I still look to see if they've deigned to bring back the right-click-and-hold navigation to labs. It broke my usage habits for months when they "retired" it (and still does, every now and then).
Is there somebody at Google who made $200,000 by inserting the widget for `Reply to All`?
Deploying any change to 400m+ users is extremely non-trivial.
I hate Gmail, at first I was neutral on it, then I went to work for Google and got to see it used "in production" as it were and found how it could be really useful, then stuff I liked (layout, features) got changed and/or deleted and I now I don't like it.
Now there is nothing wrong per se with Gmail, its doing its thing and I'm doing mine, but I cannot step off the train. I can't just not buy the upgrade and stay with the feature set I like, the train keeps moving, I get sucked along with it. We pay for Gmail for our company, as a paying customer the majority of our users wanted to stay with the old format, we could not. Not an option. I supposed that it true of IT shops that are built on top of Notes or Exchange as well, you get what you get.
I stopped using Gmail labs features when I realized that if they don't "graduate" they vanish. And if you've grown to depend on them, you're screwed.
Sigh.