Justin Dickinson
I Blog, You Blog, Weblog

Justin Dickinson I make things that go on the Internet. I live in Brooklyn and design at Vimeo in a cool building. On this blog I write about UX design, NYC, and technology.

Follow me on Twitter where I do most of my talking.

Why does Gmail suck at adding your signature?

I have a custom signature setup in my gmail. I use it so all my relevant contact info is at the end of each message as I tend to forget to include things like my cell, etc.

Gmail signature entry - good

When writing a new message, no problem. Gmail handles this fine and I can send the email and continue with my life, stress free. Thanks Gmail!

Gmail signature entry - bad, wrong, boo!

When I’m replying to someone it all falls apart. The signature is inserted at the end of the chain. How is this remotely helpful? It’s totally lost, especially when responding to long email chains. Including the previous thread when replying is useful as a built-in reference so that the recipient might scroll down and refresh their memory but is not read over with each reply.

What this means is I have to scroll all the way to the bottom, cut and paste the signature at the end of what I just typed. That’s a pain in the ass. Gmail knows to insert the cursor above the thread when you first hit reply, why can’t they also insert the signature there as well?