Few days ago i complained in my last post that Gmail is not giving a full solution to my email management needs. Well today some of these needs are filled, thanks to Gmail's multiple inboxes solution.

What is this Multiple Inboxes? Its a cool new tool that allows you to create and define additional content lists on the side, top or bottom of your current list, for example:

• your starred items
• your sent items
• all emails from a certain user

and etc... You define the content of the additional lists according to your needs.

The first thing i'm taking from this new feature is that it finally gives me a good solution for emails I want to follow up on (Until today they were buried in my very lengthy inbox), In addition it gives me the option to better spread my focus when working with my Gmail and to change it when ever my needs are changed, and they change on a weekly basis.

Another good advantage for the Multiple Inboxes is that today many users use a wide screen which support a very wide view, but still most sites are designed for 1024*768 resolution (Because it is still the best resolution for the majority of the surfers). The direct effect of it, is a lot of space not used when we are viewing web sites. Gmail decided to give these wide screen users a better use for this empty space.

And now if you could only help me set my other Gmail account inbox out there and my tasks lists (Another recent Gmail addition) i'll be even happier.

Sorry people, in the last few weeks I didn't have any spare time to dedicate to my blog. Today I found a few seconds for it :) and I wanted to present something that annoys me for a long time... Gmail.

I use Gmail email services most of the time, and I use it plenty. BUT there are a few things that really bother me, annoying as hell...

Navigating or NOvigating between emails

Reading an email in Gmail is always in a news screen and not in the inbox view. In order to view another message in my inbox I need to go back to Inbox and click on another message to view, or go to the next email from within a message,(Next or Previous one).

The problem is that for people who work with their email, they just don't read one email after the other. They scan the inbox and select which messages are relevant now. So Gmail left me with two horrible options:

1. From the inbox to a message and back to the inbox to select another one
2. From the inbox to a message and from the message to another one while marking each message I dont want to handle at the moment again as unread.

This is too much fuss...

Sorting or Searting

Gmail has a lot of shortcuts, much more than you can remember, I even took on myself a few weeks ago to gather most of the, you can read about them here. But these shortcuts the fertilize the user of the search box is time consuming and annoying. Of course Google have a very sofisticated search engine, so why not use it... but we users prefer to do the simple tasks in one click. One click to sort according to sender name, one click to sort according to attachments and etc...

By the way - when I wrote searting on this paragraph title it represents Sorting+Searching in one word.

Filtering?

Beside using all the wonderful search option inside Gmail, you can also select to flag specific messages according to their status All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, and Unstarred messages. This action checks the relevant message checkbox. But... I starred a message for a reason... How do i track all my starred messages? in order to view all my starred messages I need to visually scan all my inbox screens (currently I have more then 1000 pages) and to locate in each on the highlighted one. Sadly I can't use this quick "star" function as my "follow up" tool.

There are a lot of other small things that bother me, and a lot more things that I really enjoy in Gmail (Like the super smart "Undo" function), and I understand that to every problem I presented there are ways to overcome. But in terms of usability it lacks.

What about the competition

Last, I wanted to mention two competitive Email services Microsoft's windows live - Hotmail, and Yahoo mail. To say that both are pretty similar and due to that both offer a smart and simple outlook-like solutions for sorting, filtering, message previews and easy navigation between emails. They have their own usability problems, but as work tools they have the advantage.

So what do you use, and how will you make it better?

Browsing to see what are the new Google search experiments I saw something very disturbing... Looks like that the financial crises hits Google harder than we though, so hard that Sergey Brin himself had to take some more work responsibilities to help out the guys in these hard times :)

What I'm talking about? You can clearly see in the explanation of new Google experiment "SearchWiki with sound":

I love how Google keep a high spirit in every little thing :) Regarding the experiment itself, Sergey's special sound effects are not bad at all...

Read more about Google's Keyboards short cuts experiment and about the Accessible view experiment

There are a lot of people out there that don't know they can use Google to refine their searches and to apply the search box for many many more functions. (In Part 1, I'm going to list here all the functions I found that can be used in Google's search box (Feel free to add more), and in Part 2 I'll present some Gmail shortcuts).

All the functions that I'm going to present below are operated from the search box. But easily they could have been operated not by the search, but (for example) by a tool box, or a select box or in many other ways... Am I suppose to remember only my 5 favorite functions from the massive options? Wouldn't it be easier if I had an option list? I guess the simple answer is that Google expect the pro users to remember what they need to use, and they don't think these options are relevant to all.

So here it is a pretty full guide, you will find a lot of useful options here.

A guide to Google shortcuts (First some links to nice sources I gathered, of unique shortcuts):

• Calculator shortcuts and a nice calculator tool based on Google search - Soople (removed the need to use the Google search to calculate, but I guess using a web calculator instead is easier)
• Travel Planing
• Travel Conditions
• Phone numbers & addresses
• Street maps
• Stock quotes
• Definitions (Google Glossary)
• Search by Number

And some additional functions that do not exists in the above links:(some of them taken from Google web search help )

• Plus (+) Operator

Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can make sure we pay attention to it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
Example: peanut butter +and jelly

• Related Search  

To search for web pages that have similar content to a given site, type "related:" followed by the website address into the Google search box.
Example: related:www.cnn.com 

• Fill in the Blank  

Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to ‘fill in the blank’ by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished into the Google search box.
Example: Isaac Newton discovered *

• Sports Scores

To see scores and schedules for sports teams type the team name or league name into the search box. This is enabled for the English Premier League, National Football League, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball.
All sports data provided by STATS, Inc.
Example: san francisco 49ers

• Book Search

If you’re looking for results from Google Book Search, you can enter the name of the author or book title into the search box and we’ll return any book content we have as part of your normal web results. You can click through on the record to view more detailed info about that author or title.
Example: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Synonym Search

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.
Example: ~fast food

• Spell Checker

Google’s spell checking software automatically checks whether your query uses the most common spelling of a given word. If it thinks you’re likely to generate better results with an alternative spelling, it will ask “Did you mean: (more common spelling)?”. Click the suggested spelling to launch a Google search for that term.
Example: Expolasion

• Movie Showtimes

To find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you, type "movies" or the name of a current film into the Google search box. If you've already saved your location on a previous search, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters for the movie you've chosen.
Example: movies 94705

• Local Search

If you’re looking for a store, restaurant, or other local business you can search for the category of business and the location and we’ll return results right on the page, along with a map, reviews, and contact information.
Example: Italian food 02138

• Real Estate and Housing

To see home listings in a given area type "housing", "home", or "real estate" and the name of a city or a U.S. zip code into the Google search box and hit the Enter key or click the Google Search button. Clicking the "Go" button on the results page will display details of individual homes that Google has indexed.
Example: homes Los Angeles

• Plus (+) Operator

Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can make sure we pay attention to it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
Example: peanut butter +and jelly

• "OR" search

To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms. For example, here's how to search for a vacation in either London or Paris: vacation london OR paris

• Domain search

You can use Google to search only within one specific website by entering the search terms you're looking for, followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name. For example, here's how you'd find admission information on the Stanford University site: admission site:www.stanford.edu

• Num Range search:

Feel like a number? Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything from dates (Willie Mays 1950..1960) to weights (5000..10000 kg truck). But be sure to specify a unit of measurement or some other indicator of what the number range represents. For example, here's how you'd search for a DVD player that costs between $50 and $100: DVD player $50..$100  

• Cache:

If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached content with the word "web" highlighted.The query [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache. For instance, [cache:www.google.com] will show Google's cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "cache:" and the web page url.

• Link:

The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page url.

• Info:

The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "info:" and the web page url.

• Stocks:

If you begin a query with the [stocks:] operator, Google will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information for those symbols. For instance, [stocks: intc yhoo] will show information about Intel and Yahoo. (Note you must type the ticker symbols, not the company name.)

• Site:

If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the "site:" and the domain.

• Filetype:

You can search a specific file type, for example: filetype:doc

• Allinanchor: 

Allows you to search for a link or an anchor text - allinanchor:get more referrals

• Allintitle:

If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the title.

• Intitle:

If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.

Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search].

• Allinurl:

If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the url.

Note that [allinurl:] works on words, not url components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the url, but won't require that they be separated by a slash within that url, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

• Inurl:

If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their url, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.

Putting "inurl:" in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting "allinurl:" at the front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: google search].

• Acronym:

Putting "Acronym:" in front of an acronym, you will receive results with the acronym explanation. for example: Acronum:P.S

• Safesearch:

If you start a query with SafeSearch: you will exclude adult oriented search results. for example: Safesearch:breast

I hope I gathered most of the possibilities out there of the giant Google search engine.

Few posts ago I wrote on another Google experiment - Keyboard Shortcuts. This new experiment is a bit different.

Google accessible view, I presume, was created for disabled people who can't see well (This is why its called accessible view...). I am very glad to see that "Accessibility" is embraced for Google .

What the Accessible View gives the user, is a very simple and intuitive navigation alternative, that allows him to browse the search results. You can navigate between results by using the keywords "J", "K" (very similar to the keyboard shortcuts experiment)In addition "N", "P", & the up/down arrows (Very good improvement for the keyboard short cut experiment) allow you to do almost the same.

The added value here is that the results are highlighted. But it is not just a highlight of the results, but a sort of  magnifying-glass view of the result. The magnified area floats in different layer above the actual results page. This solution is great for people who have difficulties seeing, as they can magnify the text even further by using the "=" key or the "-" key, and in addition if the user has a screen reader (commonly used by blind people) - the result that is currently highlighted, will be read to him, and only that (nothing else in the screen will be read to him, as this might distract them).

Few insights:

• I will not recommend using it for people who have no difficulty in reading, as the floating layer of the highlighted result, is floating above other results as well, and because you can't see the next results or the previous one, it is very hard to have good orientation when navigating between the results.
• J,K,Up and Down keys have the same functionality, they allow you to navigate between the results (but not to jump to the next index page). Using "N" & "P" do the same, but also when you are standing on the last result of the page, pressing the key "N" will send you to the next index results page (and the other way around with "P"). what I find confusing is why do we need different functionality for these buttons. Either create buttons that will allow you to jump between index pages, or just use the same functionality as the "N"&"P" keys, for all buttons. This way it will have a better logic to me in terms of user experience.
• Too many buttons that act the same, well I realize its an experiment, but why can't you decide?

Keep them coming Google, you're doing good to the user experience and accessibility.