Comments on: Design Discussion – Labels on Sidebar?

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By: Vivek

Vivek — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:53:17 +0000

I actually like the new (current) version of label handling since it gives me the option of seeing all the emails associated with a label or only those that have a status by clicking either the label name or the little icon.

The only problem is the potential size of the popout box and consequent scrolling. I think a simple way to fix this would be if we could move the GTDInbox box over to the right hand side of the mails – I currently have Chat set up on the right side (via Labs). My inbox is usually down to about 10 or 11 emails so scrolling is a no-no. With GTDInbox on the right there should be enough real estate to have things pop up without scrolling.

Of course, if you could suppress GMail’s own labels box or move that to the right that would be ideal – nice to dream!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:59:17 +0000

I like it the way it is… Not sure I understand your new suggestion completely but I think the current version is the best in a long time and I am quite pleased… But as long as you keep things optional feel free to go nuts and maybe I will see the advantage later…

By: Anil

Anil — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:01:44 +0000

have about 120 labels and the chat box has gone way down. Is there a way I can bring it and send a few labels down?

Anil Atluri

By: learnin

learnin — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:29:56 +0000

I much preferred the old way; the biggest problem now, is that when I click the label, it searches for that label -combined with a status label! So if I just want to show everything archived under a project, it’s not easy to do, (short of scrolling through my now massive alphabetical list of labels on GMail;)
I would prefer it if clicking on a label (ex. a project) showed me all emails related to that project;

An added feature could be a quick way to show groups of labels – ex. a specific project label with a specific status label, for example; But for me, I more often am reviewing something that I had archived – and just want to quickly see the whole collection;

By: MikeHall

MikeHall — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:50:26 +0000

What turns me off about the new labels popup out is that the submenu has to be scrolled. This means a lot of precise mouse movement: mouse over category, mouse horizontally to menu (an angled movement crosses another category and you start over), mouse to scroll area, scroll, mouse to label, etc.

I would suggest adding a click to the category to open the submenu and have it open as large as it needs to be. Perhaps multiple columns if theres a lot of categories so the height doesn’t get too drastic. This adds an extra click, but eliminates a lot of mouse movement. A click anywhere off of the submenu would hide the submenu. (This is the behavior of the “xx More” button under the new customized labels list of default gmail).

I suggest keeping both methods as an option, but prefer the old way over the (unpolished) new way. But please don’t make it difficult to find the Quick Links. I think all the buttons you make to sort by labels are great, but they are all single label searches. Any custom search I make is better than any of those. Old school GTDi used to have more multi-label search buttons. If I’m going to be digging around in submenus, I might as well have some of those.

By: Marc

Marc — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:03:03 +0000

Agree that current popout is too fiddly. V2 was very good – why change? Also take a look at how Folders4Gmail solves it quite similar to V2, but adds the new functionality of Gmail labels to the layout……

By: Philippe Martin

Philippe Martin — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:08:26 +0000

For people working with the 43folders system (which is a great complement to GTD), labelling should be user-friendly. Presently I use s/01 s/02…s/43 for labels and it is great as it is displayed in the header of the email. However, using at least 43 labels plus context labels plus project labels makes a lot a labels and a very long side bar as the 43 labels are put on the s/ subdivision to have them in the header. Should a 43 labels category create to have them in the header of the email with the s/ category but be reduced on the side bar as a scrolling display?

By: Peyton Stafford

Peyton Stafford — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:59:46 +0000

I should have added another comment about the structure of the labels in Gmail and how this affects GTDI. The Gmail labels are flat rather than nested. We emulate nesting by adding slashes to the label names, but this does not really create nesting. Gmail doesn’t have a way to organize labels hierarchically, and this is a problem that Google knows about. If Google could add a hierarchical labeling system with drag and drop so that labels could be moved about without retyping their names, it would be a big improvement. Meanwhile, in GTDI, the interface creates the appearance of hierarchically nested labels, but I wonder if GTDI would not be more useful if it did away with this so that the labels would appear in a long list with an indicator showing which ones had actionable items. This would not look as nice, but it might be quicker to use.

By: Michael Massing

Michael Massing — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:19:38 +0000

Sometimes progress means taking a step back, and i applaud the team for having the wisdom to recognize this as a possibility in this case – as well, of course, for your steady dedication and improvements. I would love to see a return to the old format.

Best,
M.