I’ve been using the Gmail web interface quite a bit, and for the most part I’ve adjusted to how it works. There is one thing that still bothers me though. When you have an email thread open and a new email comes in on that same thread it adds a little update notice to the bottom of your browser window. In the image above that is what the orange arrow is pointing to (the little yellow box at the bottom).
That’s all fine and good, except for one alloying aspect. My mouse rarely hangs out at the bottom of the browser window. All of the menu items are at the top, along with the bookmarks on the toolbar. Even in the Gmail interface, all of the UI elements that I use the most are along the top (and on the left side). So I end up making a special trip to the bottom of the screen just for that update notice.
So here’s my request, move the update notice box from the bottom of the screen, to some place near the top. Looking around the Gmail UI it seems that right above the thick blue bar would be great, where the green arrow is pointing to above. It’s a small change that would make the update notice box more pleasant to click on.
2 replies on “Gmail Feature Adjustment Request”
I actually like it at the bottom-right.
1. The mouse usually lurks around the center or the left side. Top-right and bottom-left are equidistant from there though top-right may be marginally closer.
2. ASync Notifications are usually on bottom right by convention because they are unobtrusive there. This is observable on the desktop (the system tray in general and more specifically tray icon notifications for Messenger type apps). Web apps such as Facebook also follow the same design.
3. The bottom right is a good generic spot for dumping all notifications across all apps (chat, mail, wave, buzz, reader, documents) and for all such notifications because consistency is desirable in UI design. This is because the top-right is usually reserved for other controls (account, settings etc) by convention.
Perhaps my browsing habits are just different then. My mouse almost never lurks near the bottom of the screen. The browser menu is at the top, the tabs are at the top, the bookmark bar is at the top. Having that notice box at the top would certainly be easier for me. Perhaps I’m the exception.
I’m assuming that in regards to async notifications you mean async notifications on Windows. In the Gmail UI the async notifications (except for the update item we are talking about) are all at the top. On Mac OS X a popular async notification tool is Growl, and that can be configured to show notifications just about any where on the screen.
As far as I can tell the only UI item in Gmail that uses the lower right is the update notice, everything is towards the top or sides. If they were looking for consistency then the update notice should be closer to other similar UI elements (top).