http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SkrosMaBnaI/AAAAAAAAAWU/LQ4pF4TSR9M/dragndrop1.png

   Well, everything you would like to know was told by the Gmail team already! See this:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/labels-drag-and-drop-hiding-and-more.html

Boo!

The biggest problem with this is that Google has now removed right side labels which was in labs.

"All of these changes also mean the end of Right-side Labels, an experimental Gmail Labs feature. This is the first Labs feature we're retiring. (The idea behind Labs was always that things could break or disappear at any time or they might work so well that they become regular features. More on that soon...) Now that labels aren't in their own little box and take up much less space, moving them around the screen didn't seem as important."

For any "GMail Master", as GMail's Ninja Guide puts it, right side labels is a must. I think the new label system should be able to be toggled with right side labels. With right side labels you don't have to worry about condensing infrequently used labels. Boo!

realy nice!

I like it, but I wish "Contacts" and "Tasks" would appear right below "Trash" and right above my personal labels like they used to... Now they're at the bottom, and if I turn on a bunch of labels, it makes me scroll just to get to my contacts and tasks :(

The evolution of Gmail labels
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/evolution-of-gmail-labels.html

[Moved from "GMail adds Drag & Drop support." – Tony]

I like this new feature, but it seems a little hassle if you have more tags.

if you want Google to bring back right side lables, you can vote for it in GMail's Help Forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=58656
49ae329f3f1&hl=en&fid=5865649ae329f3f100046db33c74e83d – many people did.

PS I blogged about why Left Side Labels are sooooo bad if you have more than 10... http://blog.konieczny.be/2009/07/02/gmail-right-side-labels/

What's quite irritating is that I don't use labels in my Google Apps email account, so they decided to automatically create some for me:

http://blogoscoped.com/files/more/gmail-drag-and-drop-labels-defaults.png

Annoyingly, I *do* use Starred and Trash though, yet they've just hidden those. Oh well, at least this would force me to learn how to use the new functionality...

Tony
If you drag Stared, Chats or Trash upwards they get added to the list above the separator. And you can drag tags down to hide them. You can't hide Inbox or Outbox though.

I've also got a added label called "Sent Items" which is strange as they already have "Sent Mail".

Thanks, I was aware of that... I can read you know! :-P

My point was that they'd hidden features that I use on a daily basis and replaced it with features they'd completely made up which don't help me.

I think that's the first time they didn't give us a choice...

I hope they'll make their threading more reliable next thing they fix.

Moreover, for some reason I don't get the new uploader in my Firefox 3.5.

I know they're LABELS not FOLDERS. Still, I wish I could NEST or BUNDLE them.

Now posted with 'my' ID.

So now this causes a minor UI element that I find annoying. When you first click the 'more' link, it opens the list and shows a tip caption at the top: "Tip: Drag labels in and out...". The problem is that this caption forces the 'more' label box to expand horizontally (to the right) into the email header list (you can see this in Tony's image from his comment above). When that happens, it doesn't allow you to select and drag messages that are partially hidden underneath the expanded More labels box because to drag messages, you need to select the left most part of the message – where the the little gray dots are (which is now hidden). However, I noticed that after you open/close the More box a few times (need to open/close it more than once though), the Tip caption disappears and the label box is resized to fit correctly in the left side column container.

Not a big thing...but an annoying little UI issue that should not be there. BTW, this occurs for me in FF3.5 and Chrome – not sure about other browsers.

over 25,000 spam messages, wow!

>> When that happens, it doesn't allow you to select and drag messages that are partially hidden underneath the expanded More labels box because to drag messages, you need to select the left most part of the message

Why don't you just close the "more" box and then drag the message to it.... The "more" box pops open when you hover over it while dragging a message, so there's no problem....

The "Settings Tip" also goes away after you drag and drop a few labels in and out.

Drag and drop mail? Maybe handy.
Drag and drop labels? Most useless.

I have a feeling that I've used dragged and dropped my last label – undoing the random classification of "most commonly used" that was imposed.

And now I've got a little less screen space, with the forced "more" drop box (even when no labels are there) and the 8 pixels or so dedicated to the dragability of the mails.

Not a good change, overall.

Why is everybody freaking out over this? Just click on show all labels, move the chat to the right---from my screen it looks like at most your missing just 4 labels difference between having them on the left vs the right

mbegin...thanks, hadn't tried it that way. Although its still a UI defect to allow that tip to increase the list width.

The main usability issue is that this can hide labels with unread messages, which may make you miss some messages entirely.

The [n more ▼] button should really display an unread count too (e.g. [19 more (560) ▼] so that you're aware of any messages that are labelled and archived by a filter.

Or/and they could have an option to alwaysshow labels that have unread messages.

I want right side labels.

Philip, I have just below 200 labels. I think there should be a better way done, like scrolling.

Google put up a survey on new labels:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cjFLZmdPbnl3QnZlV0oxOHlWRmVGTXc6MA

You can rate them and describe your feelings.
Go and do it now ;)

P.S. The link to the survey was found here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=118708

I personally like it... There's a lot of room for improvement.
One thing I would like to see is dragging labels on to emails in the Multiple Inbox View.

For now, it only works with the actual inbox, it would be great to work with other Sub-Views.

Outlook interprets the labels as folders if you use IMAP instead of POP3 in the Outlook settings. I use Outlook 2007, probably the same for 2003 as well.