Drag and Drop

[Laup-Dawg]

Google has done such an amazing job with "drag and drop" on their
personal homepage. Why don't they carry that over and allow drag and
drop with Gmail? The user could drag messages to different labels, to
the archive folder, or even to the trash bin.

[Nick Chirchirillo]

Just so we are all clear, there is no archive folder. When a message
is archived, the default label "inbox" is removed.

[Nick Chirchirillo]

Just so we are all clear, there is no archive folder. When a message
is archived, the default label "inbox" is removed.

On 12/7/06, Laup-Dawg <adaml...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

[Juha Siltala]

Also useless when a message is from "family" but also happens to be
"fun" and contain "pictures". I want to apply all those labels to such
a message.

Could have some use cases of course, but I'm not sure if D'n'D in Gmail
has merit. You can suggest it of course and see what happens. The
technology seems to be there, unless there are deeper issues with
labeling (and unlableling) messages via D'n'D.

On Dec 7, 11:02 pm, "Nick Chirchirillo" <nickma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just so we are all clear, there is no archive folder. When a message
> is archived, the default label "inbox" is removed.
>

[Juha Siltala]

Thinking further about D'n'D, what actually _would_ make sense in Gmail
would be dragging labels onto the message (which is what happens under
the hood anyway, not the other way around). Then I could archive the
message and all would be fine.

On Dec 7, 11:03 pm, "Nick Chirchirillo" <nickma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just so we are all clear, there is no archive folder. When a message
> is archived, the default label "inbox" is removed.
>

[Zack (Doc)]

Then apply them... That's the point of labels, you can have multiple
ones assigned to a conversation.

The issue I see with DnD is that the message has no handle to grab for
the drag (it's either a whole line representing a message header in
list mode, or a whole window when opened). Dragging the label to the
message MIGHT work, but then they have to watch carefully if you're
clicking to view that label, or dragging. Personally I'm pretty happy
with the current method of dropping down to select the one I want.

I even tried out a greasemonkey script that let you apply and remove
labels via keyboard shortcuts, but found I didn't like it that much.
Perhaps you could use that until (instead of) DnD.

[Juha Siltala]

I'm not anxious to get drag'n'drop in Gmail, I think the current
labeling inteface works well.

I am trying to envision how D'n'D might work without breaking the
labels metaphor for users, since it was brought up now. Dragging a
message onto a label resembles moving a message to a folder in an IMAP
mailbox, which is not what we want since it's not what is happening.
Dragging labels onto a message would at least have some corresponence
between the user's action and what is actually accomplished.

It's true that labels are currently small, and it would be difficult to
provide clear enough feedback for users to prevent D'n'D accidents.
Blowing up the object much bigger with mouseover or drag start comes to
mind, don't know if you can do that with AJAX.

On Dec 8, 12:13 am, "Zack (Doc)" <z...@tnan.net> wrote:
> Then apply them... That's the point of labels, you can have multiple
> ones assigned to a conversation.
>
> The issue I see with DnD is that the message has no handle to grab for
> the drag (it's either a whole line representing a message header in
> list mode, or a whole window when opened). Dragging the label to the
> message MIGHT work, but then they have to watch carefully if you're
> clicking to view that label, or dragging. Personally I'm pretty happy
> with the current method of dropping down to select the one I want.
>
> I even tried out a greasemonkey script that let you apply and remove
> labels via keyboard shortcuts, but found I didn't like it that much.
> Perhaps you could use that until (instead of) DnD.
>

[Laup-Dawg]

The original issue I brought up deals with HCI. Sure the current
system works great for you...but you have to think bigger than that.
Highly visible people like to complete the action visibly...Actually
throwing a message in a trash rather than clicking a button. There are
a lot of users that settle for the currently used system, but would
actually prefer a different way. If you are wondering if it is
possible, other mail applications already have implemented it...so yes
it is possible.

[Rishabh Prakash]

i think gmail is unique in its own way and you should not think of using gmail as you use other emails. If gmail copies all of the other clients features then it will not be the same nay more.

--
If you want to have something you never had.. do something you have never done.

[Juha Siltala]

I do know there are very mouse-oriented people who prefer dragging and
dropping "objects" around oven giving commands to machines. Nothing
wrong with catering for them also. The problem I'm having is that the
original suggestion conserns dragging messages to labels, which would
give the wrong idea to the user about how the system really works.
After all, the labels are not "places" to put messaging into. They are
something you stick on messages. That's why the D'n'D action should be
the opposite to what was suggested.

When all the desired labels are applied to the message, we can archive
it. How that should be done in a more visual way, I don't know. After
all, what we're doing is simply removing the "inbox" label, not
physically (or even metaphorically) "moving" the message anywhere.