https://googledata.org Everything Google: News, Products, Services, Content, Culture Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:05:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/new-in-labs-nested-labels-and-message-sneak-peek/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-in-labs-nested-labels-and-message-sneak-peek https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/new-in-labs-nested-labels-and-message-sneak-peek/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:27:00 +0000 Arielle Posted by Manu Cornet, Software Engineer

Labels are more flexible than folders because a given email can have several labels but can't be in several folders at the same time. A highly requested feature for labels, though, comes from the world of folders: the ability to organize labels hierarchically.

If you think this might be useful to you, go to the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, look for "Nested Labels," enable it and click "Save." You'll then need to name your label with slashes (/) to make it the child of another. For example, let's say you wanted to create a simple hierarchy with a "Home" label, and inside it a "Family" and a "Vacation" label. Just create three labels with the following names:

Home
Home/Family
Home/Vacation

You can then create "Home/Family/Kids," "Home/Pets," etc., to get something like the screenshot on the left. If you had the parent label "Home" before you don't have to create it from scratch.

You can create complex hierarchies of labels if that's the way you like to organize your mail, and you can expand/collapse labels to save space. You'll always be able to tell whether a given label contains unread messages in its collapsed child labels by looking at whether it's bold or not.

Please note that this lab doesn't play nicely with the "Hide Read Labels" lab. You might not get exactly what you expect if you have both labs enabled; for example, the collapse/expand icons won't always appear when they should.

Another highly requested feature is the ability to preview messages to get a glimpse on what they contain and maybe take immediate action without opening them.

This is exactly what "Message Sneak Peek" does. After you turn it on, right-clicking on a line in your inbox shows a preview pane with the message in it.


You can also use keyboard shortcuts for a faster sneak-peeking flow (enable keyboard shortcuts in Settings first if you haven't done so): hit 'h' to open a sneak peek card, then navigate with 'j' and 'k,' and dismiss the current card by pressing "Escape." Messages you peak at will stay unread (or it wouldn't really be a sneak peek, would it?).

Happy nesting and peeking!

]]> https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/new-in-labs-nested-labels-and-message-sneak-peek/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/confirm-your-buzz-settings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=confirm-your-buzz-settings https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/confirm-your-buzz-settings/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 22:36:00 +0000 Arielle Posted by Todd Jackson, Product Manager

Shortly after launching Google Buzz, we quickly realized we didn't get everything right and moved as fast as possible to improve the Buzz experience. We made a number of changes to the getting started experience based on your feedback, the most significant of which was replacing auto-following with suggestions for people to follow.

Rather than automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with most, Google Buzz now suggests people for you to follow instead. This way, Buzz is still simple to set up (no one wants to peck out an entire social network from scratch) but you aren't set up to follow anyone until you choose to do so.

But many of you started using Google Buzz before we made these changes, and we want to help you ensure that Buzz is set up the way you want. Offering everyone who uses our products transparency and control is very important to us, so if you started using Google Buzz before we changed the start-up experience, you'll see the following confirmation page the next time you click into the Buzz tab:



This page highlights your current Buzz settings and makes it easy to change anything you want. You can view and edit the people you're following and the people following you, elect whether you want those lists appearing on your public Google profile, and modify any of the sites you have connected to Google Buzz, like Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter. If everything looks good, you can confirm your Buzz set-up with a single click. And remember, you can always change who you're following by clicking "Following XX people" from the Buzz tab or modify your preferences from the Buzz section of Gmail Settings.

To keep up to date with all of the improvements we're making to Google Buzz and provide your feedback, follow our team's Google Buzz account. For tips and tricks on using Google Buzz, check out the videos on our new YouTube channel: youtube.com/googlebuzz.

]]> https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/confirm-your-buzz-settings/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/gmail-on-the-ipad/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gmail-on-the-ipad https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/gmail-on-the-ipad/#comments Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:18:00 +0000 Arielle Posted by Alex Nicolaou, Engineering Manager

When the iPhone and Android devices came out, we started building for advanced mobile browsers and optimizing the Gmail interface for touchscreens, culminating in the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app. As portable devices continue to evolve, we're excited about the upcoming wave of tablet computers and the possibilities they bring.

With today's release of the iPad, we're launching an experimental two-pane user interface to take advantage of its large touchscreen and tablet form factor. Building upon the Gmail for mobile web app, this new interface displays your conversations on the left and your messages on the right hand side.


All the features of the Gmail web app that you're used to, such as offline access and aggressive caching to reduce latency, are present in the iPad version. Tablet devices are still very new, so expect changes as we continue to optimize for this new format. We'd like to hear any ideas you may have on how we can make Gmail better for the iPad so don't hesitate to let us know via the 'Send feedback' link at the bottom of your inbox on iPad.

To try out Gmail out on the iPad, just go to gmail.com in Safari. For quick access, try creating a homescreen link. Please note that the new interface is only available in US English for now. You can always access Gmail through the native Mail application using IMAP as well.

]]> https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/gmail-on-the-ipad/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/improved-comment-collapsing-for-google-buzz-posts/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improved-comment-collapsing-for-google-buzz-posts https://googledata.org/gmail-google-mail/improved-comment-collapsing-for-google-buzz-posts/#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:50:00 +0000 Arielle Posted by Sean McBride, User Experience Designer

Any Google Buzz post can turn into a lively discussion. Sometimes these conversations can gather lots of new comments very quickly, turning them into "skyscraper" posts that can dominate your entire screen, especially if you don't check Buzz for a few days. We've heard from many of you that these big posts can be a lot to skim over.

Today, we’re making some changes to how comments get collapsed in Google Buzz. In the past, old comments were sometimes collapsed, but new comments (posted since your last visit to the Buzz tab) were always expanded. Now, if there are enough of them, new comments may be collapsed as well. Here’s the nitty gritty on how it'll work by the end of the day once we finish rolling out these changes:

• If there are 3 or more previous or new comments, we collapse them into a group.


• We leave the latest previous comment (from before your last visit) expanded to give you context.
  
  


• We leave the last two new comments (since your last visit) expanded so you can get a taste of the ongoing conversation and decide if you’re interested.
  
  


• If there are enough previous and new comments, we collapse them together into a single line to save space.
  
  


• You'll see the names of some of the people whose comments are collapsed, which can help you decide if you might be interested in diving into the conversation.

These changes will limit how much space any one post can take up in the Buzz tab and prevent the popular posts you’re not interested in from dominating the stream. We hope this helps make Google Buzz a little less noisy so you can focus on conversations you care about.

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