When gmail was invite-only, the threaded collapsing feature was amazing and perfect for what I got my invite to do (roleplaying). Since then after innumerable redesigns and behavior changes, I don't even remember what the old behavior or look really was like, except I liked it and had fewer complaints. These days I'm annoyed that gmail doesn't collapse messages enough, i.e. the "random" threading or not threading of emails that seem like they ought to be part of the same thread (some seem only different by time). I get annoyed with their UI on multi-party emails. And you have a point about marking the whole thread as read when you didn't even scroll the wheel once, though you do have a number indication before drilling into it of how many message are there. Make the number bigger? If you try to reply it's also obvious there are more messages. At least it knows you read earlier messages in the thread and collapses them by default.

There's still a lot of improvements for mail UX. I don't expect google will be the one to make them, but maybe they'll copy the other people who do.

Also, long exchanges with someone who uses Outlook as a client are incredibly painful.

Does it not collapse them? I have a few people I used to talk with that had the included reply but GMAIL just replaced it with [...] that I could click to expand.

I came to say the same thing, but you said it first and probably better than I.

No personal swipes on HN, please.

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