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Gmail Adds Features
tommertron writes "Gmail rolled out a host of new features
today. Big improvement in the contacts list, with the ability to search it and
organize messages according to contact. Also, you can now forward all incoming
gmail to any email account, but, according to Google, this feature is only 'free
for now.' Does this mean gmail will start charging for some features? Meanwhile, Internet News is reporting
that on Monday, some gmail accounts contained an Atom link for reading your email
summaries in a news reader. Also meanwhile, my decrepit Hotmail account still hasn't given me that promised
250 megabytes ..."
Forgot to mention that they updated the gmail notifier. New icon, and a little better. Updated automatically though, without my permission...
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
We're testing a new feature that lets you forward new incoming messages to any email account you want. It's free during the test and you can set it up in seconds. Even set up filters to forward only some of your messages. It's your mail. Get it the way you want it.
Open the message, then click the "New Window" icon. An extra step, yes, but pretty easy.
One feature that's been there since the beginning, but apparently isn't mentioned anywhere on the site, is unlimited sub-addressing. Say I sign up for foo@gmail.com; I automatically receive mail addressed to foo+work@gmail.com, foo+urgent@gmail.com, foo+slashdot@gmail.com, or whatever I make up. Then I can filter or forward messages based on these criteria. Why isn't this nice feature getting any press?
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Won't work. They use a "Delivered-To:" header, like Postfix (and most current mailers?).
Download 7.54 and it works fine. Go now.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I sent them this question about two months ago. Here is the reply I received:
Hello Alice,
Thank you for your message.
Once you have a Gmail account, it is valid. This means that even after Gmail becomes more widely available, you will be able to keep your account, and your username will remain unchanged. Hopefully, this eases your concern.
We hope you enjoy Google's approach to email.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Go here. Or download Opera 7.61
More than mere navel gazing.
I second that. In fact, I sent them a similar message via their suggestion form. I explained that I would pay for the ability to have my old email (in mbox format) imported with the correct dates.
Have you tried using mutt to bounce the messages to Gmail? Such messages should retain the date attributes, as well as sender, destination, and other such goodies, assuming Gmail doesn't mangle this stuff (and I don't believe it does).
There's been a lot of discussion on the Atom feed at InsideGoogle, including a link to make your own Gmail Atom feed if your account doesn't have a link yet. Also, some stuff here and here
No, it does NOT use ActiveX - it just uses the full HTML support IE provices (dynamic HTML) - same sort of thing that makes OWA (Outlook Web Access) possible ... (probably the most impressive web email that exists - granted you need an exchange server so it's hardly fair to compare it to free mail systems)
Okay, I just spent a while browsing the source, and really, it doesn't look that hard. Laying out the controls with XUL looks largely straightforward, and everything made perfect sense to me, and I know no XUL at all. The rest of the functionality is provided via javascript, and that's where a little more work went in, but it really doesn't look like anything more than one would expect for an app of that complexity.
All up, my general impression (having only skimmed through the source) is that it looks to be no more difficult to develop such an app than with anything else one might use instead.
I am very impressed. Many kudos to the mozilla people for making such things possible.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The GMail interface uses HTML, with Javascript doing the DOM manipulation (as you correctly state). It also uses XmlHttpRequest to get content (such as the full email) from the server via Javascript - that's why you see your email on screen without the page reloading.
Internet Explorer's implementation of XmlHttpRequest is done using an Active X component.
Gmail works with the new version of Safari mainly because that version also now supports XmlHttpRequest. Opera 7.6x is starting to support XmlHttpRequest too - its buggy at the moment.