Slashdot Mirror
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 ..."
Of course they are going to charge you to forward your email. Otherwise you could use their great spam filter and bandwidth without having to see their adds. And what do you expect from a Free email service. At least you can have some confidence that they won't sell your email address.
Queue bitching about targeted advertising.....
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Opera is my browser of choice (I've found it to be more stable than Firefox, if not as full featured) and so far it hasn't been compatible with G-Mail. Does this upgrade improve support for my favorite browser?
I still don't understand why I can't middle click on a message to open it in a new window...
A one window view into my mbox is not sufficient.
Can they really think that giving out features and then charging for them later will really work? It's simply absurb.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I saw the Atom link, but upon clicking on it, only a skeleton atom file is shown. It could be that I didn't have any unread mail...
I agree with Dave Winer, the author of the RSS format. With RSS feeds becoming more and more popular across a whole raft of different applications (including tasty new integration with Firefox), surely combining the two formats (Atom and RSS) would be beneficial, lest we end up with another VHS/Beta or DVD+/-RW/RAM situation... Rather than have the two battle it out to the death, why not get the best of both worlds?
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-- INSERT --
So I noticed the big red new features thing yesterday, clicked on it and saw a message saying they were adding new features, but nothing about them. I also had the mysterious ATOM feed as a button on my sidebar. I clicked on it and saw that it was a feed of new messages in my mail box. "This is a cool step in providing cool technology to the masses," I thought to myself.
Alas, it had one major problem. No API. So there was no way that I could actually subscribe. This is because the URL was non-descript and requires an authentication (as I would hope a feed of my new messages would). Today I went back to take a screenshot of the new sidebar and blog about my adventure in GmailAtom land, and the link was gone. Sad. Here's to hoping that it comes back soon.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Wait a second... where in the article did I complain? Just a speculation. Hell, I probably would pay for gmail features if they added them, or restricted some of the ones they have now.
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
OK, so who still does NOT have a gmail account? I have two invites left - what goodness will you do to humanity if I give you one?
AND - if gmail use is growing exponentially (I got 6 invites after 2 weeks use, and of 4 invites sent out, there are 2 new users), how long until eveyone on earth is buried in gmail accounts?
Time to test Google's true capabilities...two GMail accounts fowarding messages to each other...
"Send"
I want a gmail account! :)
Anyone know when they will move it out of beta?
Unfortunately the whole Google thing is starting to take on an ominous feeling for me. They are cool because they do so few things, and they do them so well. I think we are right on the cusp of them leveling out and heading down hill. I hope I'm wrong though...
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
I will always like pop 3. They just dont fill up, and even if you can only use them on 1 computer, I have a laptop, so i can just take it with me.
l33t.
We are all inundated with e-mail nowadays. Semantic parsing and bayesian filtering are commonplace, but no conventional e-mail client allows automatic grouping by subject in quite the manner of GMail. I enjoy the ability to search messages rather than arbitrarily tossing them into folders to be forgotten. Indeed, e-mail has called out for intelligent grouping for some time now.
It opens up some fantastic marketing opportunities as well. Already they exploit this with the excellent GoogleAds along the side of the screen that have relevance to the e-mail one is perusing; however, with the gradual acceptance of commercial e-mail by people and by legislation I believe there is a great deal of future potential in selling/buying general profiles of e-mail accounts using this same data. As search engines and e-mail combine, the quality of the search interface becomes a mute point; the most interesting information is pushed to the user based on relevance to their online lives.
The only real concern is privacy, but I'll bet it's possible to sell really general-type information without violating any policies -- thus using advertising to continue to deliver the kinds of features users expect without costing them a dime. If only they could do something like this with online backup/recovery as well.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
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)
If you don't know what to do with your invites, donate them to FireFox! (Well, it's currently suspended, but stay tuned!)
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I've only had a gmail account for a month and everytime I've clicked on conatacts, nothing happens. Now they're telling me improvements have been made to the contacts section. Am I the only one whose Contacts section does not work?
Deecrypt confused, plays Tekken Tag, becomes happy again
I just recently acquired a gmail account and the one feature that I have not been able to find anything on is permenancy(sp?). I would like to use gmail exclusively but without any gaurantee that I will always have my account it is a step that I am not willing to take just yet.
Get your Free flascreen whatevers here!
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
No new features?!?! How bout these:
1. Text-based ads instead of graphics or flash.
2. No taglines. Very nice if you want to send out professional emails.
3. Excellent spam filter.
4. FAST CSS (might be wrong about that) interface.
5. Google search built right into your email inbox, archive, etc.
I can go on if need be. You're nuts.
Well, the marketing is great. There are some worthwhile features, but since I can't get a gmail account--like so many un-sociably networked types--so I can't get too worked up about the new features.
:-) --Just ask anyone, I'm *really* dense. (Physics joke, doncha know...))
It is sort of like getting worked up over what features will be in the next Google employee stock option plan. Either way, it doesn't apply to me. (And as we all know, the world revolves around me
My old (not deleted because I have no idea who has it, and it is listed as point of contact in places that have no way to update that) was updated less than a week after the announcement was made. Of course I have had it since the day that hotmail opened (long before MS brought it, which was the day I stopped activly using it).
:o)
Those at the new end of the spectrum might have to wait, but us old timers are rewarded already
Beep beep.
More stable than Firefox? I find that hard to believe, since I've been using Firefox for ages and have yet to have it crash.
I'd use my gmail account a lot more if it supported imap clients. I have quite a few email accounts that I use daily; and it's really nice if I can access them all with the same client in the same session.
Download 7.54 and it works fine. Go now.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
My friend runs this IMAP and with the wording "It's free during the test", its given hope that google will implement IMAP(as a pay service) when it launches.
Brin talked about Imap for gmail in april but after that it seems there has not been talk about it at google. The most important features are in this order- IMAP, folders and retrieval of mail from other accounts to gmail.
There are other feature requests which you can check here
Maybe it isn't new, but I noticed today when poking at the new features that you can "Add more info" to contacts like phone number address, etc. which I don't think was there before. (again, I could be wrong).
I submitted a feature request for the ability to export the contacts list so I can rig up some kind of sync script with my PDA.
Who wants em?
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I'm using firefox 0.8 on SuSE linux 8.0, linux 2.4.28. At work, so I can't change things.
I repeatedly get seg faults whenever I try to enter something into the subject line. Not the message body. Not the recipient. The seg fault is limited to when I type the first character in the subject line. The whole browser crashes, and I get a seg fault error displayed to the terminal. It's the only site I've come across that gives me any trouble, but it's trouble sufficiently large that I can use gmail because of it.
invite invite invite
I have a gmail account, but I don't even use it for now because of this, but maybe with forwarding, I would use it. For now, I am sticking with my yahoo.ca account that gives me POP3 and SMTP.
When do you think gmail will support Konqueror?
Now if only GMail would add a calendar and notepad functionality, I would dump Yahoo Mail in a heartbeat.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
How about fixing the bugs in firefox. It is the second most used browser, basicly conforms to all standards, and is big among the geek commmunity.
3 48441 = 25895 0 [Copy&Paste link. Bugzillia blocks slashdot]
See: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123136&cid=10
&
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id
Firefox crashes about three times a day for me. This further illustrates that anecdotal evidence means dick.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
FYI, the message I get after I login is as follows:I do have Opera set to identify as MSIE 6.0 but that shouldn't be a barrier.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yeah, I'd definately agree. There's no reason to block all exe's, they could atleast scan them.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
>1. Text-based ads instead of graphics or flash
;)
Targeted ads that read my messages, gee, what a great *feature* !
>2. No taglines. Very nice if you want to send out professional emails.
No taglines as of yet. However, this still does not impress me as a 'feature'
>3. Excellent spam filter
Which free-mail services don't use Spamassassin?
>4. FAST CSS (might be wrong about that) interface.
Gmail uses Javascript to render most of the interface with XML for the message/content. Sure, the interface is light-weight, but all these 'new' features Gmail releases, have been around with other WebMail clients for a long time
e.g , Wow, Gmail adds a search feature to the addressbook! A new 'save' draft feature, OMG, isn't this unique?
>5. Google search built right into your email inbox, archive, etc
The search feature is probably the only feature that's a bonus on Gmail. Apart from that, I'm unimpressed by the entire Gmail 'hype'
- Just in summary, for those people that don't have a Gmail account, don't hold your breath, it ain't that exciting!
Why use crusty old ZIP files ... use WinRAR instead. Better compression and the filters can't scan inside the file to find those nasty .EXEs they're trying so hard to protect you from.
A lot of people are talking about the IMAP and forwarding, and how they would probably make you pay once its out of beta. Why couldn't they do something, so where each message had the ads added to it before it was forwarded or sent to the IMAP client. I'm sure google could do something so it would just look like regular Google text ads which aren't that intrusive. Google could also maybe just add one message that would contain the text ads, every time you checked your email(atleast for IMAP).
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
It looks like they have actually responded to what I wan't. About 3 months ago I sent a request asking for more contact info, and here it is. (If you doubt me, I can post the message I got back from them about it). They actually listen to customers, its great.
Its too bad we live in a world run by corporations, its rare to get that kind of service.
I think we should be thankful we get 1000mb free, who cares if they charge to foreward?
GMail sounds great but when'd it become lynx compatible!?
or atleast links compatible!?
When they claim they don't show any graphical ads, they ought to support browser that can't display images.
(so consider plain links and discard the graphics mode of links)
You need to have Opera ID itself as Opera. GMail uses ActiveX to display itself in IE, probably to avoid lots of complications from odd Javascript problems with IE. Since Opera is IDing as IE, GMail is assuming it has ActiveX support, which it does not.
It supports Apples safari which AFAIK is based on Konqueror. You have to hit reload sometime because it sticks, but other than that I've had no problems. So soon.
Hell, I probably would pay for gmail features if they added them
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.
You could change your extension, send it, and have it people change it back. Its not exactly easy, but it should work. And its alot easier than having to compress then un-neededly.
Yes, these are all advantages of gmail over Yahoo mail or Hotmail. But not over locally running email clients. Why use gmail if there are apps which are completely ad-free, work with any number of great spam filters, are faster than gmail, and work without a network connection?
Also, if people would check, this dude is wrong, it DOES work...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Go here. Or download Opera 7.61
More than mere navel gazing.
We broke gmail. *crosses fingers and tries again*
"I make people like me... WITH VIOLENCE!" - ATHF
I dunno. I just tried viewing my gmail (which I use for almost all email now) and I keep getting "Document contains no data" or "Sorry, the server's down, try again later" errors.
But you have, and I can actually get, a hotmail account. Can I get a gmail account? No. So WTF do I care if gmail has tons of space or cool features. I hate to be a MS fanboy, but when gmail is giving accounts to everyone, then you can dis MS. Up to that point MS is providing a service, and gmail is little better than vapour.
All these articles are free advertisements for a service that is not even fully available. Did South Park get the ploy from google, or google from South Park?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Web based email and POP/IMAP email are complimentary services and GMail is the best web based service I've used.
Yeah it is... Their heavy use of iframes is what makes it work with seemingly no refresh speed, and also probably part of what makes conversation view possible (although that can probably be done with divs). In general, though, after one quick glance at the JS, I looked away with disgust. I'd rather think through how they're doing it (which I've managed to do for the most part) than try and go through that awful mess of code (probably obfuscated to protect it, or shortened so it's *only* 300 KB of download :D ).
If it reports IE, then Gmail will likely try to utilize active-X as it would in IE. However with non-IE browsers it will not try and use active-X....
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Internet News is reporting that on Monday, some gmail accounts contained an Atom link for reading your email summaries in a news reader.
So I can see my summaries in trn?
A cool and innovative "messaging service" (email, IP calls etc.) but without the (potential) darker side would be welcome by me.
Money's no obstacle! ;-)
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
too late, are their any more. I'm desperate.
This Sig. is False.
I know I will probably get modded down for this one but it lacks the ability to take a message in your inbox and forward it to people in your address book while looking at it (i.e. using checkboxes for forwarding). You can type in their names and use autocomplete but there is no easy way to choose from amongst your address book who you are going to forward to.
I don't really forward emails off to a gazillion people but it apparantly is a very common thing these days which was the reason I could not get my Grandmother to switch to gmail (she's one of those people that forwards every joke email she gets onto you thinking you'll read it).
They do have this feature for sending new mail to people now, however.
People will keep complaining about GMail and its lack of features, GMail and its privacy issues, GMail and its ads.
Don't complain about a free service that no one is forcing you to use.
Cheers,
Adolfo
PS. I have a couple of invites left. Email me at adolfojp at g mail with a good reason or with a funny story and I will send you one.
Actually, it does.
I just tried it as well.
passed on his gmail invite still gets notification of your new e-mail address, you are STILL going to find that your pristine gmail address can become an instant spam magnet. A "feature" they need to add is opt-out on letting the ultimate benefactor know you have accepted. My gmail account was instantly polluted because it was passed to me by somebody I knew but ultimatately came from some lowlife spammer or address hawker.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Well, the new and simpler Contacts interface actually works with Firefox! That's good.
Now the only thing I've found that doesn't work is the Invite feature. I know it works for some other people, but not for me, and I've tried.
send a request to hotdawg at gmail
653899 - Another prime Slashdot UID
Gmail's biggest flaw is that you can't sort your messages by anything (i.e. there's no heading bar at the top of the mail listing that you can click, a la Subject, Sender, or Date). Yahoo Mail is seamless at this. With Gmail you get sorted by date, that's it.
Now you might say I could just search my inbox, but that's no good either. Why? The search results suck. I have 171 emails with the exact same subject line right now (running a promotion), and searching for that exact string gets me 68 results. Great... You also can't sort those results, either.
Love the interface otherwise, but the technology needs work and the interface needs sorting!
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
Actually, I've just checked and it allows to send executables in a zip file. However, it doesn't allow to attach executables.
Free posters and articles for business analysts and project managers
Should be on it's way to you now.
I does not work
It does, but you have to use "+", not just anything, between your login and the rest.
I tried e-mailing a zip file today and gmail spit back a warning: "Sending of this type of file has been restricted to to security concerns." Anyone else notice this? Interesting . . .
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I'm not a vegan because I love animals, I'm a vegan because I hate plants!
I'm trying to send in homework now. The professor has a strict format we must follow. Gmail isn't letting me attach a zip file (containing a class file and some text).
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
The only problem with that is I have had real bad problems lately with false-positives being delivered into my yahoo inbox. I'm talking 80+ messages a day to my bulk folder and 20ish messages a day delivered into my inbox. Yahoo's spam filter has been cracked by someone because there are quite a few messages that are getting around it easily. And from the looks of it, there is no fix in sight.
I'm using 7.54 and the workarounds aren't working for me: I just keep getting the blank page, and refreshing doesn't achieve anything. I'm reluctant to install replace 7.54 with a beta release of 7.6x so I guess I'll just wait until 7.61 is final before I start trying to get Gmail to work in Opera again.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yes, these are all advantages of gmail over Yahoo mail or Hotmail. But not over locally running email clients. Why use gmail if there are apps which are completely ad-free, work with any number of great spam filters, are faster than gmail, and work without a network connection?
I'd like to see you send email WITHOUT A NETWORK CONNECTION! It would be a technical breakthrough, but probably you would be sued out of existance by isps.
Seriously, web-based email is good for this simple reason: if you connect from more than one computer to the internet, is a hassle to go around installing whatever client you have in mind. If your are planning on connecting to a remote server, lets say, via ssh, you still have to download putty, etc (if you are on windows).
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).
I am sorry @gmail is not professional, taglineless or not.
Buy a freakin domain!
The thing I love about gmail is the javascript client -- it's really usable.
I'd love to see an open source competitor. Maybe even something that does good full text indexing of your mail, and provides those nifty searches.
Then whether google was going to charge, or whether they'd provide IMAP, or whatever, wouldn't matter. Anyone could do whatever they need.
I don't have any idea how you'd write something like google's mail client -- I didn't know client side javascript was good enough to do something so usable. If anyone knows of any tutorials (books, web sites, etc.), I'd love to hear about them.
ditto that, first 6 requests for invite to nyquil+invites@gmail.com get them. no msn or yahoo accounts tho, they apparantly filter out and i dont get my invite back for a couple days
Sure, it isn't professional enough to start a business with, but for someone like a college student to send out a cover letter or something, it is. No tagline is certainly better than "Do you Yahoo??!?!?!" :)
Oh no... we're targetting end users nowadays. *sighs forlornly* Which means we have to put up with no end of bitching, somehow provide support, and manage to create something decent even if nobody bothers to help with it anymore. Never mind. You're right. Firefox sucks.
Man, google gives you 1GB of free space, and you want free forwarding too? poor baby.
...
you haven't filled YOUR gig yet? i NEED free forwarding you isensative
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
Why the hell would you use a browser that crashes 3 times a day then?
"I've found it to be more stable than Firefox, if not as full featured"
What on earth happened to the accusations of bloat? I've never heard anyone complain about missing features from Opera, except perhaps lack of support for MathML, and that was me complaining. As for stability, I have found that Opera fairly often when fed very bad HTML. I'm using 7.53. It also has some bugs, like making duplicate emails.
Before you flame me, I'd like to say that Opera IS my browser of choice, but I like Gecko based systems too. (Especially for reading pages that use MathML)
Simon's Rock College
No one should advocate HTML mail - this is just crap, and the best way to inject all sorts of junk into e-mail. If a message isn't getting to you clearly in plain text e-mail, then the sender really needs to take a writing class. I think this .sig sums it up: (credit: Matthew Keller)
"No one ever says, 'I can't read that ASCII E-mail you sent me.'"
"I just keep getting the blank page, and refreshing doesn't achieve anything"
I actually had that same problem with firefox (blank page) a few times. I restart firefox and it seems to fix it. I had another problem where the gmail page would load, but the user/pass dialogue would be missing. I fixed that by removing java and reinstalling it.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
err, just how exactly are we to identify you from all the other AC's?
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Still its interface is really nice, because of all the javascript being used to produce smart links (for example, you can reply or forward a message without having to load a new page, and you can add as many attachments as you want at once).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's really simple actually and quite ingenius for the bandwidth speed. For instance, if you go under IE and right click -> View Source, then you see some random looking gibberish. However, if you go under View -> Source, then you see it referencing a JavaScript file. Just look at the [obfuscated] JavaScript file and voila.
Agree with all points except spam filtering. As far as I know, none of the major free web mail services offer personalized email filtering. That is they do not allow for bayes learning on a personal level. (yahoo provides that feature only if you pay them).
Btw, I know this from past experience when I was running a newsletter for some six hundred or so members of our ski-club. We would send the full newsletter out as a pdf attachment. However before meetings we would send out a reminder without attachments. A lot of people, and for good reason, object to Outlook-style rich-text. HTML is a reasonable alternative and gives the ability to organise the information.
If HTML is allowed, then either you have no support for automatic following of external links (like IMG) or the ability to disable it based on contact.
See my journal, I write things there
If you're one of the last remaining people on earth withous a gmail account, I have 10 invites available. Email me if you want one.
Send me an email to claim one : gmail_invite@fretnoise.net. I'll delete that account once they're all given away, so if the email bounces they're gone.
Expect support once Opera 7.60 is released. The current beta has partial support, but you need to jump through hoops to get it to work.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
OK, fair enuff then
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
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
I would say that with the amount of smart cookies working for Google, someone managed to write a script that takes a nicely commented and well written javascript file and removes whitespace, comments, shortens variable names and spits out the result. This means they can have a smaller download for end users and a maintainable source file for developers.
It wouldn't take too long for someone who really wanted it to "un-obfuscate" the source. At least the formatting part you could do via a script and then rename variables when you work out what they're for.
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)
Because it's still a better browser than IE, which also crashes.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
That's version 7.60 not 7.61
I got a GMail account but I won't switch to it if I can't have a calendar as I have in my Yahoo mailbox. It's quite nice to have your agenda on the go everywhere (and reciving emails when today's someone birthday, so I don't forget ;) )!
Everybody forgot the one feature I've been waiting for most: you can save drafts now! Kept starting to write an email, then had to copy it somewhere to look up somebody's email in my address book.
I've had it stall pretty badly on a system with 2 gigs of ram but never crash outright. It has crashed on my laptop though which only has 512 megs of ram. I typically have anywhere from 10-100's of pages open depending on what I am doing.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Except if someone sends you email from some stupid webmail system that puts ^M 's at the end of every line and you are reading in mutt. Thankfully it's easy enough to add a filter in mutt and remove all that junk.
It's actually quite the opposite. Anything released by MS Slashdot readers automatically flame. It's just second nature.
hi
What is with you people and thinking that Gmail is using ActiveX with IE??? IT DOES NOT USE ACTIVEX. ActiveX is a component (usually a dll) that is downloaded and hosted in the browser. Think of ActiveX in IE the same way you think about a JAVA app hosted in a browser (only ActiveX isn't an interpreted/bytecode language, nor a language at all for that matter). Would you look at Gmail and think that it uses Java? NO.
Here's a little hint for you:
Gmail uses Dynamic HTML aka DHTML aka JavaScript interacting with the DOM. Thats all. No components.
This post is not just directed at parent, it is also a reply to the multiple idiots in the current thread who stated that Gmail uses ActiveX, and I got tired of reading it.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I just looked at mine, and the version claims to be 1.0.21.0. No -1 error, no obvious automatic update, nothing.
So I just now right-clicked it, selected exit, and then restarted it. Voila. Blue icon, version claims to be 1.0.23.0.
It's clear that it *does* have an automatic update function, and no, it does not have an option anywhere to turn that off.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Even when I used IE it didn't crash that much, unless my win install was pooched.
I find it amusing and aggrivating that TWO MONTHS after "250MB account" roll out, I still DON'T have it. But within TWO DAYS after announcing termination of support for Outlook/Express, they cut off my Outlook Express access to a Hotmail account I have had since 1998.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
You need to have Opera ID itself as Opera. GMail uses ActiveX to display itself in IE, probably to avoid lots of complications from odd Javascript problems with IE. Since Opera is IDing as IE, GMail is assuming it has ActiveX support, which it does not.
Interesting that they had to resort to ActiveX. An interesting question though, is how long it will be before they'll detect Firefox/Mozilla users and have a powerful XUL interface available - if you could do a nice interface as rich and as fast as this GMail would start looking very impressive (and people would be moving very fast to Firefox to get it).
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Doubt anyone here *doesnt* already have a gmail account. But if anyone here hasn't, email explaining your situation, and I'll give you an invite. I've been storing them up for months. jshriver@gmail.com Sincerely, Joshua Shriver
Ya'know you don't have to be a complete ass... I'm sure you could have easily typed a short informative reply that corrected my [possible] misunderstanding.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Go into the Trash, click "All" beside the word "Select," click the "Delete Forever" button.
Hopefully the wizard will grant you that brain Scarecrow...
> Can they really think that giving out features and then charging for them later will really work? It's simply absurb.
Can you really think that giving something for nothing would really work (for Google)? It's absurd.
What about having each label be a folder? Now this surely would increase bandwidth, as an IMAP client would see a message in the Inbox and any other particular folder as two separate messages (although I'm not IMAP expert, I don't think it looks at message IDs or anything).
Also, gmail could always add their adsense-vertisements to the bottom (or top) of your e-mails upon IMAP retrieval or forwarding.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
That's really impressive. Up until this moment, I've thought that the reason corporations wouldn't switch to a Mozilla-based browser is that the available functionality of ActiveX, used internally for many applications in the corporate world, wasn't present in Mozilla. I was completely wrong.
What's the over head involved in developing apps like this?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
All of you are talking like Gmail is something we can all experience. I thought I was behind, and I paniced! I quickly jumped to gmail.com to see that they are still testing it!
This isn't fair... This is just like back in high school when the popular kids went to play some sport like "Basketball"!
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
I have had 250 MB at Hotmail for over a month. I am surprised that no one else has this. I can guarantee that I haven't paid a cent to get an upgraded account, or begged their staff for more space. I just woke up one morning and it said "1% of 250MB".
I'm thinking it's just because my hotmail account is so old, and it was kind of a beta test / thank you to me.
I guess that brings my free webmail space (hotmail + yahoo + gmail) to 1.35GB of storage. Not bad.
Does this mean gmail will start charging for some features?
Ok. I blame the american school systems for people who think businesses are there to give them everything for free.
First off, can we all just agree that Google is now a business with shareholder money? The guys who own the stock are a bit more concerned with generating a short term gain than giving several million geeks free *@gmail.com addresses with many features.
Do you really see Google sustaining itself on banner ads and advertising partners alone? I know you would like to see that happen, but if you were coherent in 1999 you would find this is not the case in most publically held companies.
I will be sure to link back to all my ill-modded posts about Google being a business to generate cash once it becomes another Hotmail or MSN in a couple of months/years.
Just speaking from the gut.
Care to explain this then?
GO!
invites@mailinator.com
Last one to get an invite is a stinky maynard!
fish and pipes
Opera 7.6 is supposed to have better compatibility with gmail.
Every time I think I've hit the bottom, someone lends me a shovel.
Security, Podcasting and the Truth (aka my personal opinion)
Not exactly accurate there. My hotmail account has been bumped up to 250MB just last weeek. Their plan is to upgrade from the oldest user accounts first, then proceeding on to the newer ones by year. I registered my hotmail acct. in 1997-8, and my other accounts (registered around 2000) have not yet been upgraded.
http://www.palmzone.net
Regarding Firefox support for gMail: why can't I open my e-mail messages in a new tab using Firefox?
"It opens up some fantastic marketing opportunities as well. Already they exploit this with the excellent GoogleAds along the side of the screen that have relevance to the e-mail one is perusing ..."
terrific? jeez. terrific only when adblocker can finally find them.
OK, with 100 pages I can imagine that there might be slowness :)
My other car is first.
Sure, the Google brand is great, but if Gmail was launched by M$ for example ( with the same interface/features ) , we would all be flamming how poor the service is.
They have already been flamed a lot for the targeted ads, here on Slashdot too. It was brought up in the news, and so on. It just seems people got tired doing it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Targeted ads that read my messages, gee, what a great *feature* !
It sure is better than untargetted ads.
Who cares if the ad generator checks your mail.
It checks your web searches too.
No taglines as of yet. However, this still does not impress me as a 'feature'
Uh, OK... Sucks to be you?
Which free-mail services don't use Spamassassin?
Uh, do you have a list?
Gmail uses Javascript to render most of the interface with XML for the message/content. Sure, the interface is light-weight, but all these 'new' features Gmail releases, have been around with other WebMail clients for a long time
All major webmails have had slow interfaces here at least. Can you give suggestions of other sites I can check out?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
You need to have Opera ID itself as Opera.
Still doesn't work for me. First a warning about the browser not being supported, then a blank page.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Man, google gives you 1GB of free space, and you want free forwarding too?
Size is everything? Then I've got some penis enlargement pills I'm sure you'll be interested in....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
And oh yeah, I have about 80GB of free storage available ;).
Wow! You're a lucky person who's given free hard drives.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
is feature scaling for different browsers. Sometimes you need to see whether you have new mail or look at an old message while at a computer that can't/won't support more feature-laden browsers (i.e. University machines that cannot be upgraded, dumb terminals, lynx).
I wouldn't mind a less-slick interface in those situations... I just want to read email!
I'd like to see you send email WITHOUT A NETWORK CONNECTION!
I can send an email WITHOUT A NETWORK CONNECTION! Granted, it won't actually leave my computer until the next time it connects, but I can fire up mutt, compose an email (or read one), and tell mutt to send it, at which postfix queues it until the next time I'm on the internet. Kinda hard to do that with webmail.
Full HTML may be a bit much, but what about allowing parsing of the few XHTML core modules, like the text, hypertext, and list modules? This is basically just HTML without images, styles (except for the email reader's style sheet), or other multimedia. This would make it infinitely easier to quote other emails and to link to sites on the internet.
At the same time, robot searchability would be improved while the "crap" you dislike can't be transmitted easily. I gather that you don't object to the semantic data exchanged via HTML email, just the (usually poorly done) multimedia.
Finally, as XML uses UTF by default, languages that contain letters not found in the English alphabet can be exchanged. ASCII is arguably an anachronism in an age of global text transmission.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Relevant story: I was ordering some plane tickets, and managed to find some at the lowest price (they have a number of tickets at each price point). Clicked through all the forms and was just about to confirm the order when (lo and behold) firefox crashed on me. Signed back on to reissue the order, and the cheapest tickets were all taken. So firefox crashing has cost me 500 NOK (~80$) this week...
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.
that's why you see your email on screen without the page reloading.
I do that for years now, all without using one bit of XmlHttpRequest. I'm not saying that GMail doesn't use it, but I'm saying that you don't need it to refresh content of a page without refeshing the page itself.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
It's nice to see Gmail add features, but it still lacks an obvious one: the ability to properly quote emails when replying to them.
The raw copy of everything with "--original message follows--" is really lousy. How can you quote pats of the message that way? How do you insert answers to different questions of the original mail?
I would love to see Gmail do better than this Outlook brain damage.
{{.sig}}
In other news, I've just added another icon on my desktop, but, according to my desires, is only available on my user account:
I don't wanna another user to see my fantastic icon, for now.
Why is so important another damn feature in gmail? will we have a front new of every new link and button that appears on google and gmail or what?
Your head a splode
... I sure would appreciate it. sm_jender@yahoo.com.au
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
I agree with Dave Winer, the author of the RSS format. ....
It seems that Netscape was also involved.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Doesn't work with my Opera 7.54 either. And Opera is set to identify as itself.
"Bloat" doesn't matter much, since Opera runs just fine with all these features included. They don't slow Opera down, and the latest UI is toned down so you won't get all features thrown in your face at once.
Then Opera would always fail. Most sites out there have very bad HTML. If a page crashes Opera, just report it to them so it can be fixed. Same with Firefox really. I've never seen this, ever. Not on my own PCs, and not from other Opera users. I have seen servers going mad and changing stuff so the email client downloads everything again, but that's a server problem. Opera itself does not duplicate emails. Maybe you are mistaking the fact that Opera has everything stored in one place and one email can show up in any number of virtual views, with duplication?Clever signature text goes here.
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 GML (Gmail Loader)? It works pretty nice, I could import around 250Mb of old emails and then filter them into labels.
Now when on earth are they going to upgrade their address book so I can store all the things I need, rather than just a notes section? (wants home/work-email/phone/address/mobile/IM) Also need to be able to hook their address book up, so I can sync it to my phone/PPC/IM client. Perhaps Jabber can use your gmail contacts to build its contact list?
The problem is that you'd suddenly be shutting out the vast majority of users - those using IE. Not a good idea, from a business point of view.
Clever signature text goes here.
Reality check... Firefox does crash. That's why you report crashes - to have them fixed.
Clever signature text goes here.
>>Targeted ads that read my messages, gee, what a great *feature* !
>It sure is better than untargetted ads.
It's also useful as it allows you to switch off adverts (at some risk to your personal liberty) - try sending emails with "hot" keywords such as "bomb plot president assassinate" in them. Hey presto - no adverts!
I have to go now, there's someone hammering at my door.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
No you would not. IE-users could use the service just like they have used it before. It just happens that Mozilla/Firefox-users would get additional improvements and benefits that are not available to IE. IE-people would not be "shut out", since they never had that functionality in the first place and since the service would still be more than usable for them.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Yes, the headers are all correct, but the date that Gmail displays is the received date at Gmail so if you do a mass import, all your e-mail is sorted as if it was sent on the date of the import.
john
While Rich Text (or HTML) sometimes does have its merits, it shouldn't be the default. Studies from the '80 have shown that people tend to invest their brain power into the looks ("Shall that header be 16 or 18 points? Bold or italic?") instead of the content ("Shall I write about world peace or the latest happy meal toy?") if they get the means...
(e-geeks begin drooling....)
Why use these types of email services? Other than for a generic email address to use in those stupid web forms I use the mail service provided by my ISP. Assuming you all have access at home (maybe not all but most) than you have an ISP. Then you can choose the mail reader you want, with the features you want...
I have hotmail and yahoo, I go there about once a month to clean out the trash.
"Scattered showers my ass" -Noah
A quick search on freshmeat shows that gmail notification is not totally new.
Well, it's not a good idea to browser-sniff off the user agent string. It's easier to see if a browser supports "document.all"-- you know that's IE and nothing else. Except that Moz might start supporting it just to get around all the stupid JS written using document.all instead of document.getElementById because the authors think MS' JavaScript is the spec.
The notifier needs to be configurable to have it open the browser you want opened. Not everyone can make Firefox or mozilla their default browser (work needs, company policies, etc.) and do not want IE to opening gmail.
I don't think I'd describe their spam filter as "excellent". I don't think I've had any false positives yet, but it only catches about half of my spam.
Curiously, nearly all the spam to my Gmail account consists of 419s - there's very little of the pr0n, v1agra etc that inundates my work account.
Gmail rolled out a host of new features today.
Is anyone else disapointed that the submitter didn't slip a vulgarity or two when describing the new features?
If I had submitted it I would have at least worked in one... like:
Gmail rolled out a fuck-ton of new features today.
Like at work yesterday, this newbie kid was like:
"How come we don't make a linux version of our software?" My reply was something like
"Because that would take a fuck-ton of money. Dumbass."
Anyways... I digress.
using System.Awesome;
In terms of spam, I have had only 1 false positive in about 4-5 months, and occasionally get the emails leaking into my inbox about increasing my p3n1s s1ze or about some wealthy Nigerian that is dying to have me hold onto his $28M US. All in all, though, the filter cuts down the amount of work I have to do to keep my inbox manageable, and that makes me happy as a clam. :)
Actually the real improvement in Safari (and yesterday Konqueror) to make GMail work is in the event model.
Gmail relies on a lot of onload-events for individual iframes, and this was not working in older version of KHTML.
I do that for years now, all without using one bit of XmlHttpRequest. I'm not saying that GMail doesn't use it, but I'm saying that you don't need it to refresh content of a page without refeshing the page itself.
And what do you use? An applet? Until I discovered XmlHttpRequest, I didn't think it was possible to communicate with the server sans page refresh unless you opened up a connection with an applet.
I was pretty excited when I heard about XmlHttpRequest, but if there is an alternative, I'd like to know about that as well to see which is better.
The Red Pill
I got mine via hotmail
Okay, well, I can still think of features ten times more useful.
Redirecting (not forwarding!) of email: very useful if I want to keep the same header information once it's sent to the new account.
Archiving of email: If I want to download the 5000 emails I've collected to my own computer (in text format) that would be great.
The clincher: Combine the above, and have redirecting of the whole collection of stored email. That means I would be able to switch email account if something better came out in the future. Okay, Gmail is very good, but say if someone wants to change email address or client? At the moment, you're forced to stick with Gmail forever.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I could care less about GMAIL until I can have an account
what?
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-91ca35e87a-24b94f9 3e7-3c6dff18e4
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-91ca35e87a-6c9ab78 6ab-afdc5b6683
Hey if you grab yourself a copy of the preview release of 7.60 http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/w760p1.html for the windows download then it works quite well with GMail if you ID at as Opera rather than the default MSIE 6.0 It seems pretty solid to me.
sig free since 1993
Frames? IFrames? Changing an (I)Frames location refreshes it's contents but not the entire page. That's the only thing I can think of, it's not exactly the same though.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I am using Firefox with the useragent set to Opera 7.54. Everything seems to work well with GMail on my end. :)
http://www.fundisom.com/free-gmail.php
20 invitations to give.and if you manage to catch one and feel like saying thanks -
there's that fat & ugly ad you might want to have a look at
http://www.fundisom.com/free-gmail.php
20 invitations to give.and if you manage to catch one and feel like saying thanks -
there's that fat & ugly ad you might want to have a look at
Oh, and the single feature that absolutely sells me on Gmail is that the ads are unobtrusive and targeted. The fact that Gmail's ads are targeted has proven to be quite useful an a number of occasions. It frustrates me to no end seeing huge, flashy, irrelevent, and sometimes distasteful ads hogging the Yahoo Mail screen. Gmail's implementation stands far and above the rest and doesn't insult me.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
The forwarding feature is also more extended than I expected. In the "Settings", click on the "Forward" tab and you can enable a "Global" forwarding where EVERY received message gets forwarded to another email address. You can also further configure what to do with the received message. But did you know that "Filters" now have a Forwarding option? You can optionally have a Filter forward a message to any email address based on the filtering criteria. This gives you a lot more flexibility
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
But, technically, it is only sent when you get a internet connection, doh.
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom
It requires that you log in as a valid gmail user before accessing it.
"...or about some wealthy Nigerian that is dying to have me hold onto his $28M US."
:)
That is a 419 scam email
Here is some info about it, found on this page:
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/
"A Five Billion US$ (as of 1996, much more now) worldwide Scam which has run since the early 1980's under Successive Governments of Nigeria. It is also referred to as "Advance Fee Fraud", "419 Fraud" (Four-One-Nine) after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, and "The Nigerian Connection" (mostly in Europe). However, it is usually called plain old "419" even by the Nigerians themselves."
You simply use JavaScript and the DOM. You create a new SCRIPT tag, point it to some URL on your website and insert it in your document. IE (Or Mozilla for that instance) will download the URL and execute the JS code in your page.
;-)
Simple.
And please don't insult me with a Java Applet as a substitute to XmlHttpRequest
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Okay thanks for the info. Wait, though...you're saying those are SCAMS?!?!? Yikes! Is it bad that I gave him my routing number? :)
Well, don't tell anyone .... but the REAL scam is the big coverup trying to convince people they are fraud! With the advent of email, so many folks were getting rich it got to be too crazy. So now there is a whole scam to convince people it's just fraud, so that the few in the know can continue to get rich and help out all those members of African Royalty!
..... ;)
But keep that on the low, don't want everyone finding out
You're utterly wrong, because IE's implementation of the required request protocol is done USING ACTIVEX. So you do, in fact, need activex activated in order to use gmail if your browser is IDing as IE.
Read jack phelps dot net
Internet Explorer's implementation of XmlHttpRequest is done using an Active X component.
Right... The posts that were originally stating that Gmail uses ActiveX though were doing so in a way that implied browser-hosted client-interface ActiveX. If you want to look at XmlHttpRequest in that way, then you might as well just call IE ActiveX as well. Heck, I use Maxathon, which hosts the IE ActiveX control and allows for tabbed browsing.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Agreed. I find that Mozilla/Firefox are the most robust browsers nowadays. IE crashes now and then, and Opera even more (7.5x on Windows and Linux). There's not a week passes by without my Opera crashes at least once, on random occasion and on various sites. I've had Opera freezes too (while eating CPU) several times, mostly due to deleting items in the Wand. The Opera team needs to improve their browser's stability. It's at least the same or worse as IE's.
What I miss from Opera is not the core protocol/language it supports, but HttpWatch-/LiveHttpHeaders-like plugin. I want to be able to peek into the headers of each HTTP request/response Opera is making/getting.
I got my hotmail account back in 1996 and I have 250 MB of storage as of a couple of weeks ago. So they are doing it. About time they do something useful!
"The respect to someone else' right is peace" -Benito Juárez
Did you say that OWA was the most impressive web email that exists? Are you serious? How so?
I've had to use it for years at two workplaces, and I can't STAND it. Admittedly I've seen worse webmails, but not MUCH worse. It's slow, has a TERRIBLE user interface (for example, to delete all selected messages you click on an icon of a checked box), doesn't seem to have any real use of scripting aside from popups...
What am I missing?
-Billy
most likely thay are using an XmlHttpRequest object to perform asynchronous I/O (i.e. load mailbox/message data without refreshing the whole page- you'll notice that pretty much no matter what you do in GMail, the page never actually reloads). In (Windows) Internet Explorer, XmlHttpRequest objects are instantiated by doing:
new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP") or
new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
(depending on the version of MSXML installed)
In Mozilla and recent versions of Safari, you just do:
new XMLHttpRequest();
as far as i know, no other browsers support XmlHttpRequest currently- in other browsers you can imperfectly emulate the functionality by using Java or hidden iframes.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I opened my hotmail account in 1997 or 1998 and this week I noticed that I have the 250 MB storage limit on it now.
The posts that were originally stating that Gmail uses ActiveX were stating that if they went to Gmail with a browser pretending to be Internet Explorer were being turned away with a message saying that in order to use Gmail with Internet Explorer you need to have ActiveX enabled. There were a variety of people speculating about how ActiveX was used or why it was required, but it came straight from google that it was used and required.... Your ass-itude was completely uncalled for.
var control = (agt.indexOf('msie 5') != -1) ? 'Microsoft.XMLHTTP' : 'Msxml2.XMLHTTP';
try
{ new ActiveXObject(control); }
catch (e)
{ top.location = '/gmail/html/noactivex.html'; }
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I've been doing it for years as well. you don't need XmlHttpRequest, but it makes the process a hell of a lot simpler.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Targeted ads that read my messages, gee, what a great *feature* !
:-).
Seriously, it IS a feature. My conversations in emails are far more likely to be about something of enduring interest to me, so ads targetting them will be of much higher interest than mere web ads. So I'll be informed of things that I'm interested in. Nice. So long, of course, as my privacy is respected (and it is) and the ads can be ignored so I can accomplish my main purpose in dealing with the email (and they can -- they're very tasteful).
No taglines as of yet. However, this still does not impress me as a 'feature'
You imply that Google is chomping at the bit to add taglines any day now, rather than advertising the fact that they don't have taglines and never will.
You're dead wrong about gmail's speed -- I've used a lot of them, and gmail is unique in this respect. You are right about the long-overdue draft feature, but at least they finally have it -- it's been pretty much my only complaint.
Just in summary, for those people that don't have a Gmail account, don't hold your breath, it ain't that exciting!
Well, this at least is reasonable. It's just an email account with a fast, cunning user interface, tons of storage, and excellent searching. That's nice, very nice, but it's not worth hyper or hypo ventilating over
-Billy
I have used OWA for about a year now, and noticed a big improvement a few months ago. I quite like it now, and I use Firefox.
The old version wouldn't work so well except in IE (which defeated my purpose entirely: to view my workmail at home, on Linux)
GMail is great, I'm switching to it right now!
Oops, no can do, not invited to this exclusive party.
Oh well...
I figure this would be the best place to ask, so:
I've got a friend with hotmail account, and a one with a yahoo account, and I've invited both to gmail.
I'm sure the first question I'll hear is "How do I get my mail off X service onto gmail easily?".
Anyone out there care to clue me in if this is possible?
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Whoa, mod ME troll?
WTF was that for?
I was just mentioning 7.60P1, with it's new features, and it's stability (being an alpha), and that the parent was misinforming the grandparent by suggesting 7.54. The only way to use 7.54 is to use Proxomitron to hijack the GMail pages to add a JavaScript implementation of the command that Opera doesn't support.
until 1997 or so.
If I am talking to a friend about code I am working on, I like being able to bold certian key problem statements.
If I am making a chronological list of
I like having at least the limited power of a simple HTML email client.
Heck just in general, I want at least minimalistic control over if the reader of the email is going to view my message in a fixed width of proportional font! (overridable by the reader of course, but still, default to proportional, and used fixed with when layout really matters.)
Lastly, writing classes are nice,
Writing classes also advocate how to properly format a document. This includes things such as a
and so on and so forth.
Preferably different sections, headings, and so forth, have some distinguishing feature aside from a few extra line spaces. Make scanning the document easier! I have read through enough ASCII FAQs to know what trying to jump around in them is like. If I want to go up to the beginning of a section that is once page before my current location, in a well made document there will be no need to use the find command.
I do not use HTML in every email I send, indeed, very few of the messages I send contain email (HTML usage patterns within my
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
At the risk of being the only guy on the planet without a gmail account ...
:) but can't justify spending time on gmail just yet.
1. Text-based ads instead of graphics or flash.
Graphics ads never bothered me. Yahoo has one, and it's not huge or intrusive. IMO anyway.
2. No taglines. Very nice if you want to send out professional emails.
I can do this without gmail.
3. Excellent spam filter.
I hardly get any spam to my yahoo a/c and on my personal domains accounts I have numerous good spam software covering those.
4. FAST CSS (might be wrong about that) interface.
Speed has never been a problem since I went broadband a few years ago.
5. Google search built right into your email inbox, archive, etc.
I have the google toolbar - I don't need a second search box.
I'm sure it's great for lots of people, but for me, I remain unconvinced it has something to offer that I don't already get elsewhere.
Please, prove me wrong though - I like playing with new stuff
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
The text ads are always going to be less obtrusive than graphics ads. Try it and you will see.
No taglines is a huge plus - especially for a FREE email service.
Spam filters may or may not be necessary, depending on the level you use your service. For me, I get about 15 spam emails a day, and it catches them all.
As for the speed of the service, I agree that broadband helps. But even with cable or whatever, Gmail will be faster than anything else. The smart links let you switch between inbox, trash, etc without refreshing the page. VERY nice - almost as fast as a local client.
About the toolbar...you might be able to search for whatever you want on the web, but with Gmail, you can search through all of your remotely stored emails with their search engine. Want to find that archived message that was related to the word "movies"? Just search for it! Pretty damn useful when you have 1GB of storage.
Trust me...if you spend some time to use it, you will be a believer. I spent $33 on Ebay to get an account early, and I feel that I got my money's worth. Do yourself a favor and check it out!
Sold :-)
So what's this "invite" thingie people here are banging on about? Do I just click a link from google.com and set up an a/c, or is there a better slashdot way?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Well Google has been constantly expanding the beta testing of gmail by giving out invites to gmail users based on the level they use the service. For example, I have been getting about 6 invites per week for the last few months. I can give them out to whomever I wish, and I usually just give them out to Slashdot users that want them. Since gmail is not yet public, you cannot freely set up an account. Keep an eye on my sig, and when I get more, I usually put a blurb in there that I'm giving them out. I'd be happy to bring you in to the "gang." :)
I've had cases of Firefox crashing - this is because you have somewhere old gecko libraries installed... Clean it out - suddenly Firefox becomes snappier and doesn't barf-out on random occasions.
As seen in other replies in this thread, actually getting the email into gmail is quite easy (I would personally just use a quickie script using formail to bounce each message to gmail). The problem with this, and with GML, is that the dates gmail uses to sort would be the date the email is newly received.
Thus my 10 year old archive of email would all be dated as being received in 2004. There's got to be a better way.
DIY is for nerds only. If you really believe what you are saying, then you must realize that while FF might be the best browser out there, the packaging management is much worse than everything I have ever seen and in the current state of it, there is no way FF will *ever* reach the true dummy users.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Thing is, its not a FireFox fault. Its the classic case of DLL (whoops! DSO) hell present in some Linux distributions *cough* SuSE *cough* where some ancient moz libraries installed conflict with new ones. Meh, use Debian or Slackware - never had an issue.