ActiveInbox whoooshes!

A few of you let me know ActiveInbox was being sluggish and affecting Gmail & your Firefox; so I hooked it up to a wind tunnel (ok, the performance monitor) and tried to figure out where the major issues were.

Specifically:

• Send & Archive labels/sends instantly (it sometimes took up to 4 seconds)
• Loading the inbox is back to its normal quick speed

(A huge thank you to MC for his incredible efforts with helping me diagnose the speed issues).

ActiveInbox is more discreet

The other big thing I’ve been hearing is that ActiveInbox has too many popups / alerts.

Historically, this is the culmination of trying very hard to make sure it updates really quickly so it never breaks for long after a Gmail change – but we may have gone too far into irritation territory

So:

• When there is a new version of ActiveInbox available, there is a neat & tidy green ‘up’ arrow on the About box that is a quick link for updating.
• On any given machine or account, you will never see the Welcome screen or Help-Tour popups more than once.

We defeated some nasty gremlins too!

In some rare – but important – circumstances, the Preference syncing for Plus users had a logical fail. This was most noticeable if you removed a Label Type (e.g. “Projects”) on one computer, logged in on another computer, and the Label Type would return. This is now fixed!

For some people, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, the pre-labeling (labeling as you compose) didn’t work. So I totally rewrote it to be a lot more robust; less likely to fail; and if it DOES fail it will let you know – so at least you can always trust that you know what’s happening.

Installing 4.0.2.7

Chrome should auto-update very quickly, Firefox will auto-update in a few days; and if you want it right now just pop over to the Install Page.

Just a quick update in response to a Gmail change: 4.0.2.5 is available to fix things if you’re seeing the Labels dropdown leap out at you when you click a Status/Deadline button.

You can manually update immediately from the Install page (it will also auto-update in the next few days).

Thanks to everyone who alerted me to this in the last few hours!

One aspect of ActiveInbox that still clunks a little is choosing Projects. I’m finding it isn’t as fluid as I’d like, but I can’t quite put my finger on why.

Bits That Have Friction

• I hesitate to apply a label.

  I think this is because of uncertainty: does the email really fit into the category? Will I have to create a new category that’s similar to other categories?

• Creating new sub labels is hard.

  There is a sense of adding to the clutter with another label, there is the question of will it be the right label name for the future?, will I type the parent label correctly?

• There is a steady increase of Project labels that make choice hard.

• The dropdown is a bit fiddly

Ideas for Improvements

Suggest ‘Recent’ Labels

Generally, in any given time period you have a handful of “things you are working on” that remain at the top of your attention for a few days at a time. There is pinning available for this, but it can be even simpler just by suggesting the most recent 4 labels you’ve applied.

Suggest ‘Predicted’ Labels

Suppose Bob emails you, and you’ve recently discussed ‘P/Project X’ with Bob (i.e. it was a label on earlier conversations). Predicted labels would suggest that label above all others.

Show Labels Inline on Own Row

To make it super easy to select a label we can put labels on their own row in the HAB.

Because there are so many labels, it would need to be a short list: recent labels, suggested labels and pinned labels.

It would only take one click to apply them, and because they’re right in front of you, you’re reminded to do it.

Make Creating New Labels and Renaming Them Easier

The goal is to avoid the inhibiting fear of a wrong category, make it very easy to create a (child) label and then correct a bad choice by renaming it if necessary.

And to avoid clogging up the list with too many labels, make it trivial to mark a label as “old” and get it out of the list.

Fade Labels With Age

In the dropdown list, have the labels fade out to represent when they were last used. So, a label used recently would be black, but a label not applied for a year would be nearly transparent.

This makes it very scannable to find things that are still relevant.

(I’m not sure how technically possible this is!)

Show Notes/History On Projects

To make it easier to pick the correct label, have a popout that appears as you mouseover the label to show you any notes you’ve stored on it, detailing what it’s about.

The popout could also (or alternatively) show you the last 5 email subjects assigned to that label; so you can get a sense of what it’s about.

Are Keyboard Shortcuts Enough?

Why is it that the standard ‘Labels’ dropdown is insufficient for applying Project labels? Or do you do it?

I think that the hesitation to use it comes from not seeing the choice. With Project labels, because there are many and I don’t use them often, I need a visual scan (e.g. a label for ‘Sales’ is easy to remember and used daily… a label like P/Issues/X needs looking up).

Questions…

The big question is simply, can it be done? Can we actually make organization easier? What examples of organization do you have? How could it be quicker?

And secondly, it would be great to know the ‘top 3′ rank you would put on the ideas above (and your own) if only 3 could be made.

Hi everyone,

A recent minor Gmail change saw the ability to hide ‘Recent Labels’ in Gmail’s sidebar disappear, pushing ActiveInbox all the way down the screen.

I’ve just released 4.0.2.3 – available from http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install.html (it will also update automatically in the next day or so) – to fix this problem.