I need to report on a development that, in all probability, has passed most of you silently by. For reasons too varied to mention, I run Gmail exclusively in Basic HTML mode, ie. CSS + Javascript, but no AJAXy rendering at all. It runs surprisingly well, and I've been relying on it for the past 3+ years (extensive correspondence, the works). All of a sudden, approximately 2 weeks ago I observe that, whereas up to this day all messages in a conversation were individually repliable-to/-to-all/ "forward-able," etc., now Gmail displays only "Print | Delete | Show original" beneath each header block, and "Reply-To | Reply-To-All" options *ONLY* following the last message in the thread. With "Forward," which, alone among response modes, possessed the ability to bounce/ redirect already-received attachments without local saving and re-uploading, NOWHERE TO BE SEEN.

Thus, the only method to reply to a msg that wasn't last in the tail WITH proper Message-ID-followup headers, was to temporarily delete all messages after the one in question, seed the now-trailing reply form with the automagic "On this date you wrote..." quote, etc., and then restore the deleted conversation from Bin/Trash by moving it back to Inbox. Where, Sergey and Larry Who Art In Mountain View willing, it will latch back onto the just-replied-to message trail in correct temporal order. Are we loving Our Google Enough Yet?

Well, I'm happy to report that all that is in the past: Gmail-team has regained its collective senses, purged the fundamentalist ascetic-streamlining spirit that must've perverted their souls for a while, and restored, half an hour back or so, the previous default response-option block

Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Delete | Show original

again piggybacking it to each and every message.

Well done, Googlers!.... unless that change was accidential bi-product of some other changes and you'll soon be reverting back to next-to-last minimal-option block--in which case I already now reserve a special "!Carramba!" just for you.

Probably I misunderstood your problem, but for me every messages has the "Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Delete | Show original " bar...

You didn't read it closely enough. I wrote: "... I run Gmail exclusively in Basic HTML mode..."; you most probably in default full-AJAX one. Had you changed to Basic HTML (beneath main messages list) in the last two weeks, you'd probably noted the same minimal-option misbehaviour that I recorded.

I am running Gmail in Basic HTML mode from USA and same as David Mulder, I can see all of the buttons.