Mst® Dev (BETA)

Continuing with our email star: Gmail. I mentioned general information about it. I also described how its page is organized. In this post I’ll talk about how email messages are organized in Gmail. In this concern, there are some terms:

• Inbox
• Archive
• Labels
• Star

Between Inbox and Archive

Any email has folders that are used to organize and group messages. Inbox, Sent Items, Spam (Bulk), Drafts, and Trash can are special folders that user cannot modify. Other than that, user can create his user folders where he can organize messages. Message can be put only in one folder.

This concept is different in Gmail:

• Messages are stored in one of two primary places: Inbox, and Archive, except some special cases I’ll mention later.
• Any received message is stored in Inbox (if not filtered).
• User can archive a message, so it hides from Inbox and move to Archive.
• To show all messages (in Inbox and Archive), you click All Mail in the upper left nav.

For the first moment, you will think that it’s an unorganized email. But wait, I’ll tell you how you can organize email in the next section. So no filders, it’s only those two places.

Some special cases are:

• Sent emails appear only in Sent Mail and All Mail.
• If a sent message has a reply, it appears in inbox as a conversation.
• Spam messages appear only in Spam.
• Deleted messages appear in Trash.
• Gmail site says that you don’t need to delete any message. Just Archive any unwanted message, so you can refer ro it through search.

Labels

That is new. Labels are used in instead of folders. For folders, messages are moved to only one folder, and so hides from the old one. This concept treats Inbox as a folder.For Gmail, labels are different:

• You apply labels to the message while it remains in its place (Inbox or Archive).
• You can apply more than one label to the message as you want to organize.
• Applied labels appears in the message board before the title of the message, in small green font.
• If the message is in Inbox, you can let it there, or just Archive it.
• To access messages that has a specific label, you can access labels in the Labels box (the green bordered box in the left nav). It seems like folders. You can find a message in two different places.
• You can Archive labled messages to clean-up your Inbox.

Starred

You can sign messages with stars in their places by clicking the white star on the left of the sender of the message. A yellow star will apear. You can identify important messges in their places by stars. You can access all starred messages from different places through the Starred section.

Next post, I’ll talk about how I practically use my Gmail according to these new concepts.

Going to the first Google service I wish to describe, it’s Gmail. When I enjoy a useful thing in my life, I have a big want to have everyone know it and ustilize it. That’s why I have the pleasure to post posts like this. Gmail is not a normal email service. It has a different taste in using email, at least as I think. But you will enjoy using it.

I started moving to it because I wanted to check my email using smartphone. Yahoo!, my previous mail box, supports POP service but for charge. Even Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Go for mobile phones (Java), but it’s not so flixible and is slow. Gmail supports POP for free. And for that I moved to it. But I discovered different way to use my email.

In my posts about Google I’ll only decribe its service features and how I utilize it. But for Gmail, it needs deep explanation, which may take more than one post to finish.

In Brief
Gmail is a normal email service. It has an inbox, sent mail section, drafts, spam protection, and trash can. Here these are not treated as folders, they are just sections you may find in popular email services now.

What is different?
Gmail features the following different, in my opinion, ways to use:

1. All email messages are received into Inbox (except spam which is strong, and filtered addresses). This normal until now.
2. Messages are called conversations. Any related messages appear as one piece.
3. No folders. Messages are divided between two main places: Inbox and Archive.
4. Labels are used instead of folders. The difference is not just the name, as I’ll describe later.
5. Stars are used instead of flags.
6. Search.
7. Built-in chat to Gtalk.
8. Free POP service.

These are brief points, but hide more potentials. I’ll take all in details post by post, mentioning my own feeling with it.

Gmail Main Page

Gmail page is organized as follows (according to numbers):

1. The general Google bar.
2. Gmail Search. It’s a simple comprehinsive search like Web search.
3. Side nav. It contains main sections of your email.
4. This is called Web clips: links ot different services on the Web.
5. Email control bar, at top of the message board.
6. Message board.
7. Labels.
8. Chatting box.

Messages or Conversations
Gmail collects messages in a way called conversations. Every related messages are collected into one conversation. When I send a message from me to Tamer, then Tamer replies to me, the two messages are collected into one conversation. Even a sinlge message is called a conversation. A conversation that has more than one message is diplayed in the message board like follows:

(A conversation)

(An open conversation)

You can expand/collapse messages by clicking the head of the message (at number 1). Last message cannot be collapsed. If there are more than one unread message in the conversation, they are expanded. To reply, simply click into the text area at the bottom and full message composing will appear there (at number 3). More options are available in the menu at number 2.