January 16, 2007
GMail usability flaw - “Mark as read” menu
I feel this is a usability flaw in Gmail’s "Mark as read" contextual menu item.
For all the contextual actions, once the action is done, the checkbox status is turned back to default - i.e. not-checked.
However when you "Mark as read", the mails remain marked i.e. checked, even after the action has taken place. This means the user has to manually un-check all the mails before he takes another action. Thus he is always at a risk of taking wrong action on the un-intentionally checked mails.
I think, once the "Mark as read" or "Mark as unread" is done, the checkbox status of the mails should be turned back to the default. This will provide users a predictable and expected system which is consistent with other options of simmilar nature.
Abhishek
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3 Comments »
April 18, 2007
Bijay Rungta :
Yeah..
The checked items remain checked even if you archive the item, label it with something.. etc..
I click on the anchor labeled none as soon as I take the desired action.
if you archive a few mails and go to all mail or to any label with which the mail is labeled you will again see it checked.
April 24, 2007
Vince :
I disagree with you. My most common action is to mark an e-mail as read and then immediately archive it (for e-mails from an automated notification system or e-mail replies so short that the whole response appears in the one line summary). In this case, the action I want is that the e-mail remains “checked” after I mark it as read, so that I don’t have to “recheck” it in order to archive it.
August 19, 2008
nila :
Is it possible that we can mark one message from a thread of messages as unread? For example, if I want to mark only the last message which I receive from a person from a thread of messages which includes my mails too. I’m asking this for gmail.