I like Gmail very much, and use it every day. The only problem I have with it is that new mail is often hard to spot, because it gets filed away as part of a conversation, not necessarily at the top of list in the mailbox . I
have missed some important messages because of this. Since I tend to leave bits of unopened mail in the list, the fact that it is unopened is not sufficient signal that it is new.
   How about a flashing red indicator for mail that has come in and not been looked at? You could turn off the indicator if you wanted to keep the mail in the list but not open it straight away.

Just mark those e-mails as read if you've seen them.

This procedure does not work, because the flag you attach is the same one as is used for deleting: so you would lose all the 'read but not urgent' messages each time you deleted an obvious bit of spam. Also, I need a positive signal that will attract my eye , not a procedure that would require action on every piece of incoming mail and be dependent on the negative
signal of 'not being marked as read already'.
   Surely the software is clever enough to put up a special flag, meaning
'not yet looked at'.