folderising gmail?
July 5, 2006 3:12 AM Subscribe
How to organize my gmail mail in folders (NOT tags)?
I'll admit: I'm one of those (rare?) people who love working with hierarchical folders (no matter how hard I try, I really hate tags). I'm itching to transfer my mail to gmail and to happily do so I need gmail to work with folders. Is there a way to do it?
I'll admit: I'm one of those (rare?) people who love working with hierarchical folders (no matter how hard I try, I really hate tags). I'm itching to transfer my mail to gmail and to happily do so I need gmail to work with folders. Is there a way to do it?
I haven't been able to find a way to do so. But I've never meen much of a hierarchical folder man, myself, so tags is basically the same thing as folders as far as I'm concerned.
posted by antifuse at 4:15 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by antifuse at 4:15 AM on July 5, 2006
I think this is the "revolutionary" aspect of gmail - no folders...
To do what you want you'll have to do what psyward suggests.
posted by sablazo at 4:37 AM on July 5, 2006
To do what you want you'll have to do what psyward suggests.
posted by sablazo at 4:37 AM on July 5, 2006
Where is your email (and your precious hierarchical folder system) now?
posted by MrZero at 4:55 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by MrZero at 4:55 AM on July 5, 2006
Response by poster: psyward and MrZero, at the moment that's exactly what i'm doing - using pop access from my computer. problem is that i will be working soon from different computers.
posted by mirileh at 5:15 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by mirileh at 5:15 AM on July 5, 2006
There are no folders in Gmail. Tags however, are functionally identical, with the exception that you still see all messages in "All Mail" -- there's no hiding ability.
That said, if you have a "Cheese" folder you can create a "Cheese" tag, and when you click it you'll see everything tagged Cheese in a view, just as if you were looking in a folder. Sub folders are dealt with by additional tags -- so if you use "French" exclusively on items already labelled "Cheese", it's like a sub-folder.
The only real differences I can think of are no drag-and-drop and the way you can still see everything in All Mail. Otherwise, it's just not liking that they're called Tags.
Seriously, though, doing it Gmail's way and just searching is far more rewarding. How often do you go through Yahoo's categories to find a site, and how often do you search?
posted by bonaldi at 5:46 AM on July 5, 2006
That said, if you have a "Cheese" folder you can create a "Cheese" tag, and when you click it you'll see everything tagged Cheese in a view, just as if you were looking in a folder. Sub folders are dealt with by additional tags -- so if you use "French" exclusively on items already labelled "Cheese", it's like a sub-folder.
The only real differences I can think of are no drag-and-drop and the way you can still see everything in All Mail. Otherwise, it's just not liking that they're called Tags.
Seriously, though, doing it Gmail's way and just searching is far more rewarding. How often do you go through Yahoo's categories to find a site, and how often do you search?
posted by bonaldi at 5:46 AM on July 5, 2006
What's the key difference between tagging things in a hierarchical way and putting things in a hierarchical folder that you need to work around? I use, for example, a series of high level identifiers that group my tags together in the list CH for stuff related to the website, and Z for archivey stuff that I'm not likely to look at. But they're CH-tag1, CH-tag2, and some CH-tag3-subtag1, etc. The folder list itself is always expanded so it can be a bit of scrolling to find what I want. But it works relatively well for my folder minded self.
GMails search is really very good, except that much of my mail is on very similar subjects with slightly nuanced differences. Searching out those differences is almost impossible without folders.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:50 AM on July 5, 2006
GMails search is really very good, except that much of my mail is on very similar subjects with slightly nuanced differences. Searching out those differences is almost impossible without folders.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:50 AM on July 5, 2006
You can always simulate hierarchical folders with tag names
Work
Work/Project1
Work/Project2
Work/HR
Personal
Persona/finance
etc...
You will not be able to do a hierarchical search though -- ie you will not be able to search for Work/*
posted by nielm at 6:49 AM on July 5, 2006
Work
Work/Project1
Work/Project2
Work/HR
Personal
Persona/finance
etc...
You will not be able to do a hierarchical search though -- ie you will not be able to search for Work/*
posted by nielm at 6:49 AM on July 5, 2006
There are no folders in Gmail. Tags however, are functionally identical, with the exception that you still see all messages in "All Mail" -- there's no hiding ability.
You can 'archive' messages in Gmail, which takes them away from the general inbox.
posted by scarabic at 7:09 AM on July 5, 2006
You can 'archive' messages in Gmail, which takes them away from the general inbox.
posted by scarabic at 7:09 AM on July 5, 2006
nielm:
If you madce the hierarchy with tag names as follows:
Work
Work Project1
Work Project2
Work HR
Personal
Personal Finance
where each word is a tag (and multiple tags can be assigned to a piece of mail)
you could just search for "Work" and the results would be indistinguishable from a search of work/*
posted by potch at 7:10 AM on July 5, 2006
If you madce the hierarchy with tag names as follows:
Work
Work Project1
Work Project2
Work HR
Personal
Personal Finance
where each word is a tag (and multiple tags can be assigned to a piece of mail)
you could just search for "Work" and the results would be indistinguishable from a search of work/*
posted by potch at 7:10 AM on July 5, 2006
Bonaldi, I think a lot of Internet old-timers would consider Gmail’s flat, nonhierarchical system anything but “rewarding.” Gmail, like all Web-mail applications, is fine for occasional use, but its imposition of an ideology (“Folders are superfluous”) will always limit its usefuless. (“Limit it to amateurs” is what I’d like to say, but that wouldn’t go over well.)
posted by joeclark at 7:23 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by joeclark at 7:23 AM on July 5, 2006
Tags and folders are not the same. They work in fundamentally different ways—one's a hierarchy, and one's a Venn diagram.
The pedantic reason not to use tags in place of folders is that
For one thing, the word "novel" doesn't mean the same thing in both examples. In the first example, the sub-folder "novel" inherits the properties of everything above it: it's a novel that is a personal project. In the second example, the same tag for "novel" would probably also be given to Crime and Punishment, which is not a personal project (well, not mine, anyway). So, it's really two different uses of the same word, therefore not equivalent.
But putting that aside, a practical reason you might not want to use tags in place of folders is that you have to remember what tags you used to describe a given document if you want to find it, and only it, again. It's relatively easy to browse to
There are various visualization and navigation tools for getting around this problem, but in my experience there are many situations in which it's simply easier to have an exact "location" to put things. Certainly, the solution must be fitted to the needs of the person, and to the instance.
That said, I know that my e-mail organization scheme is of the sort that I'd feel comfortable using tags (and sure enough, I switched to Gmail from Outlook a while ago), but perhaps mirileh is in a different situation.
posted by Hildago at 7:27 AM on July 5, 2006
The pedantic reason not to use tags in place of folders is that
personal
projects
novel
Isn't the same as personal AND projects AND novel. For one thing, the word "novel" doesn't mean the same thing in both examples. In the first example, the sub-folder "novel" inherits the properties of everything above it: it's a novel that is a personal project. In the second example, the same tag for "novel" would probably also be given to Crime and Punishment, which is not a personal project (well, not mine, anyway). So, it's really two different uses of the same word, therefore not equivalent.
But putting that aside, a practical reason you might not want to use tags in place of folders is that you have to remember what tags you used to describe a given document if you want to find it, and only it, again. It's relatively easy to browse to
personal\projects\novel, but (for some) less easy and intuitive to remember that the same document can be found at the intersection of those three tags. Likewise, to mimic a folder system, you'd have to remember that subsequent documents have to be described by those same tags. There are various visualization and navigation tools for getting around this problem, but in my experience there are many situations in which it's simply easier to have an exact "location" to put things. Certainly, the solution must be fitted to the needs of the person, and to the instance.
That said, I know that my e-mail organization scheme is of the sort that I'd feel comfortable using tags (and sure enough, I switched to Gmail from Outlook a while ago), but perhaps mirileh is in a different situation.
posted by Hildago at 7:27 AM on July 5, 2006
joeclark: it's safe to say I'm an internet old-timer (whatever the hell that means), and GMail is considerably better than any webmail application I've ever used.
Oh, and you actually did say "limit it to amateurs" unless you were thinking with your keyboard. I don't know what an email "professional" is, you patronising online grandee, but I know plenty of information professionals such as librarians who make extensive use of Gmail, and its searching. They rail against some of the search limitations, granted, but they wouldn't switch back.
Hildago: Yes, tags and folders are different, but functionally for email there is very little difference. Your example talks about documents, and yes, tags have limited application in a filesystem. But for email, where the majority of things are either temporary or reference, it's less cut and dried.
Making GMail work entirely hierachically isn't entirely feasible, no, but hierachical systems were designed to file and find things before there was comprehensive search. Now we can mark items with a general top-level tag, and search within that.
posted by bonaldi at 7:53 AM on July 5, 2006
Oh, and you actually did say "limit it to amateurs" unless you were thinking with your keyboard. I don't know what an email "professional" is, you patronising online grandee, but I know plenty of information professionals such as librarians who make extensive use of Gmail, and its searching. They rail against some of the search limitations, granted, but they wouldn't switch back.
Hildago: Yes, tags and folders are different, but functionally for email there is very little difference. Your example talks about documents, and yes, tags have limited application in a filesystem. But for email, where the majority of things are either temporary or reference, it's less cut and dried.
Making GMail work entirely hierachically isn't entirely feasible, no, but hierachical systems were designed to file and find things before there was comprehensive search. Now we can mark items with a general top-level tag, and search within that.
posted by bonaldi at 7:53 AM on July 5, 2006
potch: searching for 'work' will return all emails with 'work' in them, which will not necessarily be very useful when you only want the work label/folder...
Searching for "label:work" will return only those emails tagged with work (which is more like what the poster wants), but what I meant was that you cannot search for "label:work*" in gmails system (you can however do a search for "label:work OR label:work-Project1 OR label:work-Project2", but it is cumbersome.)
posted by nielm at 8:34 AM on July 5, 2006
Searching for "label:work" will return only those emails tagged with work (which is more like what the poster wants), but what I meant was that you cannot search for "label:work*" in gmails system (you can however do a search for "label:work OR label:work-Project1 OR label:work-Project2", but it is cumbersome.)
posted by nielm at 8:34 AM on July 5, 2006
Bonaldi—I still disagree, because I don't think tags and folders are functionally similar in e-mail. I think tags are different, and enable different behaviors, which is why Google chose to use them instead of folders.
But the larger point is that mirileh said that he/she doesn't want to use tags, so answering the question at hand isn't a matter of convincing mirileh to use tags.
posted by Hildago at 8:54 AM on July 5, 2006
But the larger point is that mirileh said that he/she doesn't want to use tags, so answering the question at hand isn't a matter of convincing mirileh to use tags.
posted by Hildago at 8:54 AM on July 5, 2006
Response by poster: thank you Hildago for understanding the difference between tags and folders!
bonaldi, I'm much of an email saver (a lot of my mail is as important to me as my files), which is why it's important to me to save them systematically in folders.
posted by mirileh at 9:33 AM on July 5, 2006
bonaldi, I'm much of an email saver (a lot of my mail is as important to me as my files), which is why it's important to me to save them systematically in folders.
posted by mirileh at 9:33 AM on July 5, 2006
I switched from a regular email program over to Gmail about 18 months ago, and I haven't looked back. The labeling is good, but I actually find I'm relying on search more and more. There's your inbox, and then you click archive to get stuff out of your inbox. If I want to look up some old archived conversation, I just search it.
The only time I use labels is when I'm working on some project and I want to collect all the specific conversations there to keep them organized. Once the project's over, though, I delete the label and let them re-enter the archive pool.
posted by fcain at 9:33 AM on July 5, 2006
The only time I use labels is when I'm working on some project and I want to collect all the specific conversations there to keep them organized. Once the project's over, though, I delete the label and let them re-enter the archive pool.
posted by fcain at 9:33 AM on July 5, 2006
I've been using gMail for about a year now, and also miss having "traditional" folders within it, so for the most part I end up using a POP client to access it. I have it set up to delete mails from gMail once they accessed by a POP client, on the presumption that I'll have access to my laptop most of the time, and can suffer through the web site when necessary. Perhaps "suffer" is a tad extreme. I really do like gMail, but I find tags simply not as intuitive as being able to drag and drop or filter into particular folders, for the reasons given by others.
I am not suggesting that tags are a bad idea -- clearly for some people they work well. What I'd like to see gMail do is simply give us the option. If they could put in place a folder system, that would in no way force people to use it nor impact upon those who currently prefer to just use tags. Consumer choice is always a good thing, no?
posted by modernnomad at 9:54 AM on July 5, 2006
I am not suggesting that tags are a bad idea -- clearly for some people they work well. What I'd like to see gMail do is simply give us the option. If they could put in place a folder system, that would in no way force people to use it nor impact upon those who currently prefer to just use tags. Consumer choice is always a good thing, no?
posted by modernnomad at 9:54 AM on July 5, 2006
Hildago, what mirileh wants is impossible, so something has to give:gmail or folders. I'm an email hoarder too, but tags and search are so very much better that i'm trying to make sure it's folders that he gives up on.
As far as choice goes, yes, there's something in that. But car makers don't generally offer bikes as an option, however better they are in limited specific situations.
posted by bonaldi at 10:10 AM on July 5, 2006
As far as choice goes, yes, there's something in that. But car makers don't generally offer bikes as an option, however better they are in limited specific situations.
posted by bonaldi at 10:10 AM on July 5, 2006
@bonaldi
As far as choice goes, yes, there's something in that. But car makers don't generally offer bikes as an option, however better they are in limited specific situations.
The analogy doesn't fit. It wouldn't detract from gMail's offering to offer a folders option along with tags + searching, nor is it completely alien to the rest of gMail, nor does gMail require a certain number of customers to "purchase" an option to make it commercially viable to add.
Indeed, by adding something like folders (and even better, "smart" folders a la Apple's mail.app -- I love having live folders that have all of "today's" email, "yesterday's" email, etc, yet still have those same messages in various subject-related folders for later reference, something I also can't do on gMail) to the web-interface, I would imagine that more people would use gMail's web-interface, thus increasing the number of eyeballs exposed to their ads, which is, after all, how they make money. For people who almost exclusively use POP to access gMail, google makes no money off them.
posted by modernnomad at 10:29 AM on July 5, 2006
As far as choice goes, yes, there's something in that. But car makers don't generally offer bikes as an option, however better they are in limited specific situations.
The analogy doesn't fit. It wouldn't detract from gMail's offering to offer a folders option along with tags + searching, nor is it completely alien to the rest of gMail, nor does gMail require a certain number of customers to "purchase" an option to make it commercially viable to add.
Indeed, by adding something like folders (and even better, "smart" folders a la Apple's mail.app -- I love having live folders that have all of "today's" email, "yesterday's" email, etc, yet still have those same messages in various subject-related folders for later reference, something I also can't do on gMail) to the web-interface, I would imagine that more people would use gMail's web-interface, thus increasing the number of eyeballs exposed to their ads, which is, after all, how they make money. For people who almost exclusively use POP to access gMail, google makes no money off them.
posted by modernnomad at 10:29 AM on July 5, 2006
Response by poster: bonaldi, i was hoping there was a hack out there for this like there is for importing mail (and btw i'm a she).
posted by mirileh at 10:32 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by mirileh at 10:32 AM on July 5, 2006
Goowy.com provides a slick graphical mail client that runs off the web, and you can use it as a front-end for Gmail if you put in your Gmail POP settings. And, it has folders :)
posted by mattholomew at 10:39 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by mattholomew at 10:39 AM on July 5, 2006
Mirileh i'm really sorry about that. I'm typing this on my phone, so couldn't check your profile. I know what you were hoping for, but short of using the site above, there isn't one.
seriously though, tags can replicate 90% of folder functionality, and supercede it i a number of ways. That's why gmail doesn't offer it, modernnomad, for the same reason as flickr: they're trying to get people to adopt Something better. There's nothig you mentioned doing that labels can't do. But god i wish they had saved search too.
posted by bonaldi at 11:06 AM on July 5, 2006
seriously though, tags can replicate 90% of folder functionality, and supercede it i a number of ways. That's why gmail doesn't offer it, modernnomad, for the same reason as flickr: they're trying to get people to adopt Something better. There's nothig you mentioned doing that labels can't do. But god i wish they had saved search too.
posted by bonaldi at 11:06 AM on July 5, 2006
Response by poster: bonaldi, tags and folders are different. Hildago did a good job in giving the logical differences between the two.
funny thing is, the reason i want to migrate to gmail is to eventually work from a desktop that is completely online (freeing myself from depending on a certain computer) and now i see someone else has already thought of it.
posted by mirileh at 11:25 AM on July 5, 2006
funny thing is, the reason i want to migrate to gmail is to eventually work from a desktop that is completely online (freeing myself from depending on a certain computer) and now i see someone else has already thought of it.
posted by mirileh at 11:25 AM on July 5, 2006
Mirileh, have you considered Portable Thunderbird? You can put it on a flash drive or iPod (or other portable device) and move your POP client easily from machine to machine.
posted by lhauser at 11:39 AM on July 5, 2006
posted by lhauser at 11:39 AM on July 5, 2006
bonaldi: Hildago, what mirileh wants is impossible, so something has to give:gmail or folders. I'm an email hoarder too, but tags and search are so very much better that i'm trying to make sure it's folders that he gives up on.
...
That's why gmail doesn't offer it, modernnomad, for the same reason as flickr: they're trying to get people to adopt Something better. There's nothig you mentioned doing that labels can't do. But god i wish they had saved search too.
Well, to start with, in most implementations, "folders," "tags" and even to a large degree, "filepaths" are all different types of metadata in most implementations. It's easier to change the metadata associated with objects than to try to create some physical grouping of objects located on some real or virtual disk space.
Generally a "folder" has come to mean a hierarchal information structure: a spaniel is a dog is a canid is a mammal is a vertebrate etc., etc.. A "tag" has come to mean a flat descriptive information structure: dogs, cats and sharks are carnivores. As we've already seen, gmail does not support hierarchal classifications. So if you need them, you are out of luck.
Another difference between the two is that in many cases, a folder is treated as a type of object that can be manipulated in certain ways without needing to look at the member items: copy, move, delete and archive are three common ways. Most mail applications allow you to mark entire folders as read or unread. And here is where IMNSHO the gmail implementation really falls short. You can't mark a folder or a label as "read" in gmail. Instead, you have to scroll through the folder 50-100 at a time (20 at a time if you search on "is:unread.")
Arguing that one or the other is "better" is usually silly and badly informed. (Some make such an argument because they have an axe to grind.) The two methods are certainly not incompatible with each other. Libraries shelve based on a hierarchal scheme, but index on a wide variety of metadata.
"Better" is dependent on the demands of a task, and personal preference. Perhaps it's just me, but I suspect that tags vs. folders is starting to sound a lot like "vi vs. emacs" for the 21st century. (Emacs, but only because scripting vim is a pain in the rear.)
At any rate, insisting on giving a person an orange when they have clearly said in no uncertain terms that they want apple recipes just adds to the noise here.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:19 PM on July 5, 2006
...
That's why gmail doesn't offer it, modernnomad, for the same reason as flickr: they're trying to get people to adopt Something better. There's nothig you mentioned doing that labels can't do. But god i wish they had saved search too.
Well, to start with, in most implementations, "folders," "tags" and even to a large degree, "filepaths" are all different types of metadata in most implementations. It's easier to change the metadata associated with objects than to try to create some physical grouping of objects located on some real or virtual disk space.
Generally a "folder" has come to mean a hierarchal information structure: a spaniel is a dog is a canid is a mammal is a vertebrate etc., etc.. A "tag" has come to mean a flat descriptive information structure: dogs, cats and sharks are carnivores. As we've already seen, gmail does not support hierarchal classifications. So if you need them, you are out of luck.
Another difference between the two is that in many cases, a folder is treated as a type of object that can be manipulated in certain ways without needing to look at the member items: copy, move, delete and archive are three common ways. Most mail applications allow you to mark entire folders as read or unread. And here is where IMNSHO the gmail implementation really falls short. You can't mark a folder or a label as "read" in gmail. Instead, you have to scroll through the folder 50-100 at a time (20 at a time if you search on "is:unread.")
Arguing that one or the other is "better" is usually silly and badly informed. (Some make such an argument because they have an axe to grind.) The two methods are certainly not incompatible with each other. Libraries shelve based on a hierarchal scheme, but index on a wide variety of metadata.
"Better" is dependent on the demands of a task, and personal preference. Perhaps it's just me, but I suspect that tags vs. folders is starting to sound a lot like "vi vs. emacs" for the 21st century. (Emacs, but only because scripting vim is a pain in the rear.)
At any rate, insisting on giving a person an orange when they have clearly said in no uncertain terms that they want apple recipes just adds to the noise here.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:19 PM on July 5, 2006
KirkJobSluder: When someone's asked for a unicorn recipe, it's not noise to offer them horse dishes.
"Better" is dependent on task, of course it is. I'm not saying that tags are better in all instances: I don't want my filesystem done by label, at least until searching is far, far faster.
The fundamental difference between tags and folders is that folders are exclusive: a file can only have one folder. Tags allow a file to have multiple categories. This is more flexibility, which is better when it comes to finding stuff.
Mirileh, I'm absolutely not trying to steamroller you here, and you're clearly attached to folders. It's a matter of which you prefer: Gmail or folders. Gmail is good in a whole manner of other ways: the conversation threading is extremely useful; the auto-hiding of useless quoting; working out the correct reply-to, even if you're apparently replying to yourself; very, very fast full-text search; plus it works on anything with a browser (unlike Goowy).
It has flaws too: no saved searches, no "mark all as read" (not that this is any way dependant on folders, KJS), no working with more than 50 items at time.
Is your folder hierachy worth more to you than the advantages of GMail? Then you can't have GMail, you need some other online mail client. If it's not, I'm almost certain you can replicate or adjust your workflow to fit around labelling.
It does take a slight adjustment in your mental process: intead of thinking about "novel" inside "projects" inside "personal", you make a MyNovel tag and a Projects tag. But again, there is amazing search, so in something like Hildago's example, you don't need to remember what tag or folder you put your novel in, just search for the main character's name or something relevant to the content.
If you want to live online, GMail is a very, very good way to go and it's what I use to do the same thing. I can get to it from my phone, my work and any web cafe. It's got enough space to keep any documents you want to access anywhere, which is a big plus. Losing folders was a drawback for me too, but when I "clicked" with labelling, I realised that I'd spent more time dragging things into folders than I gained from the filing. Yes, that means I'm prosletysing a bit. Sorry.
posted by bonaldi at 1:26 PM on July 5, 2006
"Better" is dependent on task, of course it is. I'm not saying that tags are better in all instances: I don't want my filesystem done by label, at least until searching is far, far faster.
The fundamental difference between tags and folders is that folders are exclusive: a file can only have one folder. Tags allow a file to have multiple categories. This is more flexibility, which is better when it comes to finding stuff.
Mirileh, I'm absolutely not trying to steamroller you here, and you're clearly attached to folders. It's a matter of which you prefer: Gmail or folders. Gmail is good in a whole manner of other ways: the conversation threading is extremely useful; the auto-hiding of useless quoting; working out the correct reply-to, even if you're apparently replying to yourself; very, very fast full-text search; plus it works on anything with a browser (unlike Goowy).
It has flaws too: no saved searches, no "mark all as read" (not that this is any way dependant on folders, KJS), no working with more than 50 items at time.
Is your folder hierachy worth more to you than the advantages of GMail? Then you can't have GMail, you need some other online mail client. If it's not, I'm almost certain you can replicate or adjust your workflow to fit around labelling.
It does take a slight adjustment in your mental process: intead of thinking about "novel" inside "projects" inside "personal", you make a MyNovel tag and a Projects tag. But again, there is amazing search, so in something like Hildago's example, you don't need to remember what tag or folder you put your novel in, just search for the main character's name or something relevant to the content.
If you want to live online, GMail is a very, very good way to go and it's what I use to do the same thing. I can get to it from my phone, my work and any web cafe. It's got enough space to keep any documents you want to access anywhere, which is a big plus. Losing folders was a drawback for me too, but when I "clicked" with labelling, I realised that I'd spent more time dragging things into folders than I gained from the filing. Yes, that means I'm prosletysing a bit. Sorry.
posted by bonaldi at 1:26 PM on July 5, 2006
bondali: He's not asking for a unicorn recipe. He's asking for help finding a webmail system with a "folder-like" classification scheme rather than a "tag-like" classification scheme.
The fundamental difference between tags and folders is that folders are exclusive: a file can only have one folder.
A "folder" is simply a virtual interface that allows you to manipulate sets of items as a collection rather than as individual items.
The idea that "a file can only have one folder" is just plain silly, and not at all fundamental to the concept of a folder. UNIX has had hard links since the '70s. I don't think MSWin has true hard links but it does have some kinds of links.
In addition, the concept of a "folder" is broad enough to include ad hoc collections such as active devices (UNIX), search results (OS X Tiger), archive contents (WinXP), and even revision history (Subversion + WebDAV). "Folders" are not even always called "folders." For example, iTunes playlists, and iPhoto albums (both of which permit objects to "live" in multiple locations.)
I suspect that in a decade that this will all be moot as tagging systems start adding behaviors that make "tags" work more like "folders," and we start seeing more "virtual folder" systems that allow people to work with ad hoc collections. But until then I supect that we are likely to see more misplaced advocacy.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:17 PM on July 5, 2006
The fundamental difference between tags and folders is that folders are exclusive: a file can only have one folder.
A "folder" is simply a virtual interface that allows you to manipulate sets of items as a collection rather than as individual items.
The idea that "a file can only have one folder" is just plain silly, and not at all fundamental to the concept of a folder. UNIX has had hard links since the '70s. I don't think MSWin has true hard links but it does have some kinds of links.
In addition, the concept of a "folder" is broad enough to include ad hoc collections such as active devices (UNIX), search results (OS X Tiger), archive contents (WinXP), and even revision history (Subversion + WebDAV). "Folders" are not even always called "folders." For example, iTunes playlists, and iPhoto albums (both of which permit objects to "live" in multiple locations.)
I suspect that in a decade that this will all be moot as tagging systems start adding behaviors that make "tags" work more like "folders," and we start seeing more "virtual folder" systems that allow people to work with ad hoc collections. But until then I supect that we are likely to see more misplaced advocacy.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:17 PM on July 5, 2006
KirkJobSluder, she is asking for folders in gmail. Your assumption is that gmail is less important than the folders. I think gmail's benefits outweigh the lack of folders.
A discussion of files and folders (unix doesn't have folders, it has directories, the term comes from the Mac OS, which didn't have aliases until System 7) isn't going to help mirileh at all, so I'm going to let that rest there, beyond saying that if you include iTunes playlists in your definition of "folders" you might as well include Gmail's label view ... in which case you've redefined your terms so broadly there's no basis for your argument.
But - yes! - we will see "tags" work more like "folders" ... and gmail is already three-quarters of the way there. Which is why this is well-placed advocacy.
posted by bonaldi at 3:37 PM on July 5, 2006
A discussion of files and folders (unix doesn't have folders, it has directories, the term comes from the Mac OS, which didn't have aliases until System 7) isn't going to help mirileh at all, so I'm going to let that rest there, beyond saying that if you include iTunes playlists in your definition of "folders" you might as well include Gmail's label view ... in which case you've redefined your terms so broadly there's no basis for your argument.
But - yes! - we will see "tags" work more like "folders" ... and gmail is already three-quarters of the way there. Which is why this is well-placed advocacy.
posted by bonaldi at 3:37 PM on July 5, 2006
I just had a thought - Yahoo!'s new webmail system definitely has folders rather than tags. Maybe you could move over to that? I find it slow in comparison to Gmail, but people brought up on Outlook seem to love it.
posted by blag at 4:24 PM on July 5, 2006
posted by blag at 4:24 PM on July 5, 2006
FastMail will give you web-enabled e-mail, folders with hierarchies, and a number of other features.
posted by megatherium at 4:25 PM on July 5, 2006
posted by megatherium at 4:25 PM on July 5, 2006
Response by poster: blag, thanks for the suggestion. problem with yahoo is their incapability of handling mail with foreign characters (especially right-to-left languages).
posted by mirileh at 11:30 PM on July 5, 2006
posted by mirileh at 11:30 PM on July 5, 2006
The only place where folders and tags (or labels, in gmail) are different, is if you use subfolders. Me, I used to sort all my mail into seperate folders, and I liked that. I even had subfolders, when my list of folders got to be too long. When I switched over to gmail, I dumped the subfolders and applied labels, just like I had done with the folders. True, I'm not maximizing the usefullness of the labeling system that gmail has, but it is a good enough substitute for folders for me.
posted by achmorrison at 9:26 AM on July 6, 2006
posted by achmorrison at 9:26 AM on July 6, 2006
You can't search on substrings in Gmail; you have to know the full word. I have, on countless occasions, located someone or a certain message by searching for a fragment of text in a folder in Eudora.
Even if I thought it were remotely attractive to move 60,000 priceless messages to somebody else's box, perhaps to be scanned and archived by persons or entities unknown, I would be pretty much SOL finding the things I have a proven need to find.
I also file messages in multiple folders all the time. A message can have more than one containing folder.
Gmail is great for beginners and people with not a lot of mail. (And people with a need for disposable accounts, and inveterate top-posters.) Really, it is. But if this is the best the industry can do for an all-online Webmail application, then the market has failed.
posted by joeclark at 2:56 PM on July 8, 2006
Even if I thought it were remotely attractive to move 60,000 priceless messages to somebody else's box, perhaps to be scanned and archived by persons or entities unknown, I would be pretty much SOL finding the things I have a proven need to find.
I also file messages in multiple folders all the time. A message can have more than one containing folder.
Gmail is great for beginners and people with not a lot of mail. (And people with a need for disposable accounts, and inveterate top-posters.) Really, it is. But if this is the best the industry can do for an all-online Webmail application, then the market has failed.
posted by joeclark at 2:56 PM on July 8, 2006
Gmail is not great for people with "not a lot of mail": they don't see any of the benefits over Hotmail. Its entire USP was to service a lot of mail, relatively speaking
For people with lots of correspondence it's certainly peerless -- one document threading that includes sent items and searching are invaluable, and for those sorts of messages most people can recall more than a fraction of a relevant word.
How do you file messages in multiple folders? Does Eudora have aliasing?
Regardless, the fact that the industry hasn't produced exactly what you're looking for does not mean the market has failed, it simply means you're too small a target.
posted by bonaldi at 7:40 PM on July 8, 2006
For people with lots of correspondence it's certainly peerless -- one document threading that includes sent items and searching are invaluable, and for those sorts of messages most people can recall more than a fraction of a relevant word.
How do you file messages in multiple folders? Does Eudora have aliasing?
Regardless, the fact that the industry hasn't produced exactly what you're looking for does not mean the market has failed, it simply means you're too small a target.
posted by bonaldi at 7:40 PM on July 8, 2006
It’s not that Gmail doesn’t do “exactly” what I’m looking for; I did not walk up to Gmail and present it with a shopping list. Instead, I have 15 years of good E-mail habits to fall back on, including intelligent filing of messages (usually with filters); searching for things, even fragments of things, when the going gets rough; and using interoperable mail standards like plain (but flowed) text and no goddamned top-posting.
So in fact, I am a reasonable use case for someone with a lot of mail who has no trouble using existing methods to keep conversations together (e.g., by Option-clicking in Eudora). I like the fact that Gmail puts sent and received messages together. (I do have a separate Out mailbox – which only makes sense – but that’s trivially inferior to Gmail’s method.)
Based on a year of use of Gmail (I check my disposable account regularly) while also still using Eudora and Pine, I reiterate my conclusions: Gmail is great for beginners and people who don’t get a lot of mail and inveterate top-posters. Gmail by its nature encourages top-posting, so the group of people who get a lot of mail and also don’t care how mailed replies should be presented is well served by Gmail. Other serious people aren’t.
And to answer your question, Option-filing a message (by any method) files a copy, not the original. No, it isn't an alias.
posted by joeclark at 11:33 AM on July 15, 2006
So in fact, I am a reasonable use case for someone with a lot of mail who has no trouble using existing methods to keep conversations together (e.g., by Option-clicking in Eudora). I like the fact that Gmail puts sent and received messages together. (I do have a separate Out mailbox – which only makes sense – but that’s trivially inferior to Gmail’s method.)
Based on a year of use of Gmail (I check my disposable account regularly) while also still using Eudora and Pine, I reiterate my conclusions: Gmail is great for beginners and people who don’t get a lot of mail and inveterate top-posters. Gmail by its nature encourages top-posting, so the group of people who get a lot of mail and also don’t care how mailed replies should be presented is well served by Gmail. Other serious people aren’t.
And to answer your question, Option-filing a message (by any method) files a copy, not the original. No, it isn't an alias.
posted by joeclark at 11:33 AM on July 15, 2006
In which case you don't have messages filed in multiple folders, you have multiple copies of the same message. Which is redundant, and also why gmail doesn't have folders.
posted by bonaldi at 8:31 PM on February 10, 2007
posted by bonaldi at 8:31 PM on February 10, 2007
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posted by psyward at 3:23 AM on July 5, 2006