Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo! Mail Superior to Gmail ?
ynotme writes "In his column, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal writes that the new Yahoo! Mail beta provides a superior webmail experience to Gmail. Some quotes: 'The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect ... Gmail has none of these new, fluid, desktop-like features ... Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.'"
i've used yahoo's beta mail for a few days, and i'm changing it back to the original.
-- lol pwned
The new yahoo mail looks like outlook, but it's more annoying since it's isn't as useful (no newsgroups). I much prefer gmail, the interface is fluid, intuitive and comfortable, and it's oh so pretty! I don't think copying the look of e-mail software should be the next step for webmail.
While it seems a lot of advanced users on Slashdot seem to love being derived of features by our Google overlords (more in response to Google Talk than GMail), the plethora of features in Eudora were the most appealing reasons I still use it and I'm glad WSJ is recognizing Yahoo for its new interface and features.
Whenever I checked my mail remotely in the past with either Yahoo or GMail, I would always reminisce about how fluid the process was at home with Eudora. Scanning email by opening new pages for every email with old web interfaces was quite frustrating, even with GMails quicker load times. The new web interface on Yahoo is actually making me consider finally leaving Eudora.
So, I for one am glad to see Yahoo head in the direction of both panes and continuing to focus on adding useful features (and unlike some products, doing it without ads or clutter). Improving the initial load time would probably be enough to get me to make the transition.
The new yahoo mail has drag and drop.
TAKE THAT GOOGLE
Does Yahoo mail let you use an interface like gmails? Or do they 'arrogantly' deny us that choice?
So basically what they're saying is that Google is being innovative instead of being a trend follower?
If I remember correctly Gmail came out almost 2 years ago. What would be more surprising is if Yahoo mail did not have a better engineered GUI. In 6 months or less Gmail will be better than Yahoo and the cycle will begin again.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Anyone with a link to the beta mail client? Or is a closed beta?
but no one else delivered.
* A nice user interface that is very responsive.
* Web-based.
* Auto-complete/tab-completion of email addresses.
* Ability to search my email.
* Advanced sorting and rules. I can place my mail subscriptions into different labels and archive them for later.
* Reliability. Gmail is much more reliable than previous hosts. My mail is delivered and I receive my mail.
* Group email threads together.
* Mail filters.
* vi-like keyboard shortcuts.
is gmail still by invitation only?
if so, that's a big plus for yahoo.
(yes, i know, there's a website that sends invitations, but still, why is that necessary?)
You can also use any of your normal programs (thunderbird, outlook (shudder), etc) to access it Gmail.
/. were more than ads for one service/program/etc over another these days . . .)
Yahoo! mail does not have this feature.
So if you've always liked your Netscape Messenger . . . you can use it, with Gmail. You don't need to get used to using a web browser to read your email.
*shrug* Frankly, I use PINE, so I couldn't care less.
(Meanwhile I'd really appreciate it if the articles on
I wish they would add a calendar to Gmail like they have in the Yahoo accounts. That would be very, very handy!
Does Yahoo mail have or plan to implement free secure POP access like gmail has?
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.
Well, you could always.. not use Gmail? Isn't that considered a choice?? Or will the arrogant Google engineers come beat you if you use Yahoo mail?
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
...arrogantly denying users any choice.
Well they have the choice to use a different bloody email service for one.
C17H21NO4
Yahoo! Mail is experiencing some temporary problems. Please try again later.
I don't use my yahoo email account because it sucks in comparison to GMAIL. So I went to check out the "improvements" and this is the message I got. Yeah, really great improvements.
If the new interface does not include keeping email conversations threaded then it's not for me! That is the number one improvement with GMAIL. That and the ever expanding storage capacity. Sorry Yahoo but you need to try harder.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This sounds like some of the critisisms that Linux software devs/power users get a lot of, being elitist, arrogant and not giving users a choice etc. Besides the original article being a troll, it's overlooking the main point: If you like yahoo's interface, go with yahoo, if you like google's interface then go with them. They're both free for chrissake... Same goes for linux apps too, and while gnome are a bit arrogant about the whole spatial nautilus thing is true, you can allways choose not to use it, like I do. Nobody is telling you what to do!
Hey, GMail open it's SMTP for me and my outcoming mail... Does Yahoo! do the same ?
I far prefer Google mail .Perhaps it is that I have become use to the interface .
I find it simple to use , it has ample storage , the interface is perfectly useable and takes little effort to learn .
The search functionality is also rather good and very useful .
"The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience "
Though I must ask , Which desktop is he referring to , certainly not mine .
" Gmail, by contrast, is quirky and limited. Its only advantage is its massive free storage, which exceeds what most people will ever need."
Well I don't find google quirky , everything does what I would expect . That to me is not quirky
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I've used gmail now for oh... 18 months, and have yet to get a single spam.
I'd like to see my yahoo account, which I have solely for [cursed] instant messaging do that. It's about 30 days old, my yahoo account, and it's already deluged with that oily, meaty goodness.
That goes beyond a product review. It sounds like he has some kind of grudge against google. Gmail isn't just missing a feature he wants, but it will never have the feature because google is run by arrogant bastards! Take that google! Feel the wrath of Walt!
I love gmail to death, and so does every single person that I've sent an invite to, which is all my friends and family. It is definitely the best email service by far. I don't need fancy things, I just want to be able to send emails, to search them, a speedy interface, and to have simple convenience factors, all of which gmail provides. I love how they bundle conversations together. It would be nice if you could somehow merge conversations together, but frankly I don't really care.
THANK YOU GOOGLE!!
Touché!
C17H21NO4
While my features may not be much to look at under normal conditions, once you take the 1st derivation of my features, I start to become quite the looker. Around the 3rd or 4th derivation, well, all I can say is "move over Brad Pitt!"
The only thing is, since I started trying to integrate myself back to my original look, I keep getting one that's real close, but something's just not fundamentally exactly right about it...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I'm getting quite annoyed at GMAIL saying "Ooops... pls try again"...
Of course, hotmail is horrible, but Yahoo has always at least been consistant in this area.
I've never had Yahoo mail time out or not respond.
would prefer VIM...
I've been using Gmail for over a year now. Before that I'd used a variety of webmail programs including Yahoo and Hotmail. I've found that Gmail has some very nice features. Yahoo also includes some nice features. However, none of this inherently makes one service "better" than another. If Yahoo's interface and format is easy for me to use, then Yahoo is the "better" service. If Gmail is easier to use, than Gmail is "better". We can argue about who's better until the world ends. I perfer to pick the one that matches me and let every one else do as they will.
"and I recieve my mail?" I mean wtf pal? Is this a feature you are grateful for? Wow that's quite the tall-order that Gmail delivers - email that works like, er, email. What will they think of next? I sure hope Google invents the Internet soon. zealot.
Who's denying anything to anyone? If you don't like the Google Way (TM), go elsewhere.
Outlook-style desktop mail programs are waayyyy too complicated for most users. Send mail, receive mail, search mail and maybe even an address book. Frankly, with that you satisfy most email users.
It's time to stop pushing complexity on people who don't even benefit from it!
I am glad that Google actually feel like trying something instead of stupidly copying what's already existing.
The author makes the accusation that google are 'arrogant' by throwing away common email metaphors, and one of them is the common 'folders' practise that just about every mail system except google uses.
However, I think Google's way of doing things is FAR better. Folders is great, it allows you to file your mail away in a flat or hierarchial organisation. however, it DOESNT easily let you file a mail in TWO locations, unless you make a copy of the mail, and that in itself is really awkward.
Applying labels, or some kind of keyword system, or however you want to call it, is in fact a far more natural and flexible way of doings things, and I fully intend to apply that idea to a few other projects I'm working on, where 'file away into nested folders' was the original way of doing things.
So... perhaps Google needs to play a little catchup, but Google's idea of 'labels' instead of 'folders' I think is far superior.
The author of the article, with his accusations of Google's "arrogance", is really letting his "must put google down at all costs, because it's the cool thing to do" attitude really show.
Few people are going to rush out and switch to a new email provider no matter now revolutionary or "superior".
I've no desire to miss communications from friends, colleagues, and business contacts. I will remain easy to reach.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was used to hate webmail until I knew GMail. Now I am a convert to the GMail approach and I would like desktop mail clients to copy GMail. And Yahoo! takes the inverse route and simply clones an Outlook interface using Ajax! Argh!
Now, as for this Mossberg guy commenting on "serious email users" and desktop clients, guess what? Most people that I know are not "serious email users", don't have a clue on how to use an email client and use webmail only; actually, most people that I know don't even *know* that it is possible to download emails in their own machines so that you can see them without having to plug into the Internet. So, for those people the simplicity and intuitiveness of GMail will look more appealing than Yahoo's kinda convoluted interface...
Whats the big fuss about it, the new interface from Yahoo reminds me a lot from the interface i'been using with Spymac. And this interface its avaible when you use the Atm@il webmail script.
Yo no le temo a las personas: a lo que le temo, es a su maldita ignorancia... I'm not scare of people, what i'm really
So will the new Yahoo! mail interface also increase it's spam blocking? I was a Yahoo! mail user for years but as soon as Gmail was opened to private invites, I grabbed an account and to this day can count the number of spam emails that I've received on half of a hand. And I use and put my gmail address everywhere -- on all my forms and contact info.
Until Yahoo! can implement spam blocking anywhere near Gmail, I will be sticking with my "1 optioned" email site.
Does yahoo allow me to search through emails? Does it have text only ads for the free version?
You can right-click on various items to see short menus of useful tasks, like "add sender to address book."
Doesn't gmail automatically add every sender to the history? when you compose a new message you can just start typing the address and it will show you the email address. Isn't that easier than manually having to add?
And there's no preview pane, only a feature that shows a snippet of the content of an email.
Showing the snippet IS preview! How much more do you want to see ?
It forces you to view all of your email in groups of related messages called "conversations," instead of viewing them individually as they arrive.
Tell me why would i NOT want to see the messages which are part of the conversation?
But i have to say tabs in messages by yahoo looks cool!
POP mail.....only thing that matters
I don't have access to the new Yahoo! Mail interface. I used the old one for several years, and was never very impressed with it. I am very fond of the Gmail interface. I wonder if Yahoo is just closer to a Windows app that Mr. Mossberg is used to, or if it's truly better than Gmail.
Some of the things I like about GMail, that I have not seen in any other
web mail application:
- POP Access. I consolidate several mail accounts into a single e-mail application. This is great for offline access. I can look up things in GMail e-mails on my laptop, without needing to be online.
- Labels. I find this to be very good for organizing mails. A message can have multiple labels, which improves on simple folders.
- Keyboard shortcuts. GMail has good keyboard inputs, j/k up & down in menus (like vi), u to go up a level, gi - go to inbox, etc.
Does the new Yahoo! Mail match or improve on these features? Does it add others that GMail doesn't have?
Does anyone even need all that crap they tack on their mail service? It's all bloat. Yahoo Mail is filled to the brim with gimmicky/useless features. Gmail keeps a simple interface with mainly features that are needed, not just there so they can say that their e-mail service is better.
...web mails you!
* Saving your e-mails in conversations ( an incredible concept)
*Works stable on all browsers ( I'm not sure if anyone else noticed buy yahoo doens't play well with opera)
*2 gigs of space.
*pop access
*and most of all simple.
I switched my mom (not computer savey) to google and she picked it up in seconds. People need to learn more bells and whistles doesn't always equal better.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes I RTFA.
I up until about 2 months ago had Yahoo's SBC DSL. This means I had 2 gigs of storage back when gmail was still at 1 gig. Ofcouse I had pop access long before gmail offered pop access and quite afew other extra's from yahoo. Even then I choose gmail.
Yahoo is full of bloat. It's a hassle to get to your email and do anything with it. Gmail, like alot of what google does is alot cleaner looking.
The only props I will give yahoo is for things like email attachments. When at work and I have an idea, I often draw out a rough diagram in paint and write up several paragraphgs about it. Being as we use 2k at work, I can's save the pictures as jpg's and gmail dislikes bmp's. So I email them from my yahoo account to gmail. Or gmail bitches about screen savers, something about they contain executible code. So once again I email them to myself from yahoo.
If gmail would get around the 10 meg limit for file attachments, I think that would be the only improvement I would suggest. In this day and age, 10 megs is nothing. Why not give atleast 25 or 50, or make me cream my pants and give me 100 megs.
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
The author comes across being very emotional and too judgmental for me to take the review seriously. Why was it even necessariy to add the arrogant bit? Oh right! That's the common sterotype Google has on Wall Street. I forgot! No doing a traditional IPO and not taking themselves too seriously apparently runs counter to Wall Street traditions so Google is automatically arrogant. I guess then all innovators are in a sense arrogant because they refuse to do things the same way it has been done.
I work in the finance industry but some of the narrow minded people who work there makes me want to puke. If trying new ideas and being innovative are arrogant, then I hope everyone is as arrogant as Google is. On one hand, Wall Street throws out terms like "think outside of the box" but on the other hand some elements hates change. Take this quote for example:
By contrast, Gmail has none of these new, fluid, desktop-like features.
Uh... hello? This is WEB mail, not desktop mail? Maybe things aren't all the same in both realms? My Gmail is fast as hell and gets the job done. I go on there and answer my mails as needed. Then I'm out of there. Total time taken is usually under one minute. That's how I want it to be.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
.. Yahoo! Mail beta is better than Gmail beta.... time to hit back with Gmail Alpha!
Does anyone have a screenshot of the yahoo interface or a link to one? I'm willing to look into it because my gmail account is getting a fair amount of spam that the filters aren't catching. I just don't want to sign up for something unless its worth my time.
If the new Yahoo mail is better than Gmail, then google will have to improve their offering. Webmail service was a pretty stagnant cesspool until google stepped in. The preexisting providers (Yahoo, MSN, et al) were far too happy maintaining the status quo. A webmail provider war can only be good for us consumers. Yay capitalism.
If you don't like the ultra-perfect gmail web interface you could enable it's pop3 support and use any pop3 client
X~
Really impressed with Yahoo's new mail. I saw an associate's preview. I use Google and use the POP option to download my Apple Mail app but I know someday (probably sooner than later) that will be a pay $ option instead of the free option it is know. But $20 a year for a ad free application on the web, I'd pay that whether it is Google or Yahoo that has the best system...I do agree with many that Google is becoming the mega corporation to fear as it replaces MS as the dominant force. Think about it. You deal with MS if you use Windows, but Google if you use Mac, Windows, or Linux. So they will be the new arrogant empire soon.
Even before the beta, I think yahoo has offered great features that gmail does not have. For example, they have the personal address service, which lets me send and receive email on my domain but using their servers. That is a huge benefit, since that makes me free to switch email provider if i feel like it - I own the domain and therefore I own my email address. This service is not free, but it is worth it. For me, that feature is more important than labels, conversations, POP access or what have you
The ads are definitely "superior". I mean, they're in full color, scattered all *over* the dang place. And some are even in flash!
--
Do you Yahoo?
The Yahoo! ads, as pointed out by this blogger, really are quite bad - GMail doesn't even come close to having objectionable advertisements.
Google's interfaces (for email and in general) have the advantage of being pretty simple and non-bandwith-intensive. For those people on slower connections, an interface with whiz-bang drag-and-drop bells and whistles will invariably be noticibly slower than a clean mostly HTML-based interface like Google's. I hate Hate HATE Flash websites for the same reasons.
-b.
I am troubled by the title of the post: Yahoo! Mail Superior to Gmail ?
I know 90% of people here dislike microsoft more than google. There is also an obvious bias against all-thing-not-google (which includes Yahoo!). But do we need to be biased even when we are submitting a story?
"Yahoo! Mail reported Superior to Gmail" seems more balanced.....does anyone else agree?
Since I have been using gmail, I find that feature to be valuable.
Don't expect that to stay free for very long. I'm willing to bet money that this is gonna be a bait-and-switch. They can't make any money off of POP3 mail.
I haven't yet found a webmail that's as rich, fast and feature-rich as mutt...
I like gmail mainly because it gives you 2.5 GB space, and free POP3 access. Also I can use any browser, even lynx (which I use most often than any other) or even a cell phone (which thankfully I don't have but I'm sure that day is coming) to access the site.
Gmail doesn't allow folders, only color-coded labels, as an organizing technique
But Gmail's labels *are* its "folders", just done slightly differently to allow a unique mail to exist in more than one place.
I also notice it fails to mention Gmail's free POP3 support, a key feature for many users.
I assume Yahoo Mail does not support that service for free, and that's why he tries to hide it.
And what about Yahoo Mail's filters? Are they at least as powerful as Gmail's, or is he yet again avoiding to mention things because it's a place Yahoo would be worse off?
Overall, I don't like the slight bias in this article, also leading to him calling Google arrogant for making simple interfaces, instead of giving the possibility it's their goal to be simple. I agree he's correct Gmail isn't too customizable, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure it was done to simplify their service, like all other Google services. Google has shown they can make advanced services code-wise if they want to (see e.g. Google Maps), so when they don't, I believe it's for a reason. In that regard, Google seems to be much like Apple but on the web service market. They don't hesitate much before cutting features, if they feel the reduced complexity / speed would give their users more.
And although I admit I haven't checked out the Yahoo Mail UI closely, replicating a client application on the web sure sound like a hell of a complex UI. But props for Yahoo if they manage to pull it off and make very quick and as browser independent as Gmail with a static HTML version for fallback reasons.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"Similarly, Gmail forces you to view ads alongside your emails. Unlike Yahoo, it offers no paid option to avoid the ads." Google text ads are inconspicuous (vs. Yahoo graphical ads) and I would never consider paying for e-mail.
Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.
Yea, it's a shame they shook up the whole "search engine result sorting" thing too. Bummer that didn't work out for them.
-brain
I've stopped visiting my yahoo account frequently since half of the damn buttons/javascript don't work in Firefox. Is there any chance that they finally fixed that?
I agree, that's about what I got out of his article--that "better" means more like Outlook. And I don't see the damn point of a preview pane--if it shows the whole message, how is it a "preview" of any sort, anyhow?
Although I suppose it might be nice to have a split view in Gmail where you could see the email in a box below and still scroll through the emails above. Opening multiple emails at a time is nothing new, though--Gmail introduced that with 'threads' ages ago!
Frankly, using Outlook here at work is something I consider *painful* because the UI is so clunky, so I certainly won't be going over to Yahoo any time soon. And invites are hardly a problem any more--I have *100* of the damn things, and anyone who knows anyone at all with a Gmail account should be able to get an invite. As for multiple deletions, clear any labels it has & hit "archive" (or "report spam") as the case may be. Umm, who cares that Google has a collection of your spam? If it's that sensitive, you're an idiot to send it via webmail, anyhow. And even there, there's the HTTPS hack for Gmail, where a tiny protocol change allows you to go back to HTTPS after you log in, so that your whole session is encrypted (hint: after you log in, change the URL from http back to https like it was when you logged in... voila, your session is now encrypted).
That and they have that SMS signup thingy. Can't blame them for restricting the signups so that you can't just create dozens of accounts there.
Which leaves me with the only thing the other services are useful to me for any more: throw away accounts.
What's with the headline? If there were reviews of gmail would we see "google mail superior to yahoo!?"
I'm sick of this google lovefest. They were not the first, they're not some godsend. Other engineers, companies and innovators can do better than google so stop giving them and not others the benefit of the dought.
shit.
Of course users have choice: They could use Yahoo! mail. They could also use Google mail.
I like google mail.
I don't like Yahoo! mail.
That's _my_ choice.
If google mail were Yahoo! mail, I wouldn't like it.
If Yahoo! mail where google mail, I probably would like it.
That's _my_ choice.
GMail's primary feature is space. Frankly, I don't care for the interface. Deleting mail is problematic. I've found stuff I've removed show up. You move stuff to Trash, empty Trash, and expect it to be gone. They have no real filtering. Folders are basically non-existent replaced with labelling that difficult to follow. Thank goodness you can attach via a pop client. That being said, I use it.
Reviewers (and slashdotters) lke to throw around the word "choice" a lot. True, it's a good thing that you can choose between Linux and Mac and Windows, or between Yahoo and Google.
... conversations is "arrogant". It's a good thing you can choose not to use GMail! You could use ... well, I guess you can't use Yahoo mail yet.
But then they start to interpret it as the similistic "choice=good", and try to apply that to every level. If I had 4 brake pedals in my car, one per wheel, that would allow me more choice as to how to stop the car, but would that be at all better? If an email program let me tweak TCP parameters, that would certainly be more choices, but would they help or hurt the overall experience?
Mossberg, sadly, falls straight into this trap. He says Yahoo is better because it "more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect". So 100 years ago a car with a buggy-whip interface would have been better? Geez. Look at the user experience, not whether it's awkward in the same way as your old program.
Oh, and never mind that you can't even sign up for the new Yahoo mail at all yet. So you really don't have that choice: use Yahoo's old-and-extra-klunky mail, or Google's latest.
Mossberg: "But Gmail's limitations go beyond this. On several key issues, Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice."
Oh, right. Forcing people to view conversations as
Damn them Google engineers for not giving me the choice to use Yahoo mail yet!
[Note to CmdrTaco: slashcode sucks for not giving me the choice to use any HTML tags I want in here.]
Seriously, I am a die hard Google fanatic but I still use Yahoo mail because it is very good. Gmail is not bad, but is still isn't Yahoo mail.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The only thing is, since I started trying to integrate myself back to my original look, I keep getting one that's real close, but something's just not fundamentally exactly right about it...
Did you remember to add a constant?
Based on his comments in the article, he just seems pissy because GMail works differently than the mail client he is used to, and he isn't given an option of working the way he wants.
One clear indication of this is: he complains about having labels rather than folders. Labels are essentially the same thing as folders, except labels allow you to put the message in several labels/folders. The only difference is how they are stored in the filesystem, which is irrelevant in a webmail environment. If they put folder icons on his labels, I bet he would love it.
He also complains about the "Conversation" view of e-mails (threaded view). I like the conversation view. But, I can see his point that it should be an option (even though I still think threaded/conversation view is a better way to use e-mail, because it allows for better context).
He complains about the ads in GMail, which cannot be turned off. Okay.. I guess that's a point. If it used large distracting banner ads, like Yahoo! Mail, I would want to turn them off too. But, the small text ads in GMail blend in and don't distract at all.
There is certainly room for improvement in GMail. But, Mr. Mossberg is a bit harsh when ranting about Google's arrogance for deciding they have a better way to do e-mail..
my experience when composing email at http://mail.yahoo.com/ is that with any web browser besides Internet Explorer in Windows, such as mozilla/firefox/konqueror/opera only get a plain text option, with IE i can do HTML email including imbedding jpg files too...
i have not tried the new beta yet, but before you praise Yahoo's new mail composer try it with alternative browsers and maybe in GNU/Linux to see what is missing compared to what yahoo offers when using IE & Windows...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
...and prefer Gmail. My Yahoo account is my spam account.
When they started the open beta for this thing my mail UI looked totally different. I'm not part of the beta (as far as I know) and when viewing in Firefox my Yahoo mail looks terrible. It's all pretty much no frills HTML, except none of the pictures load. I don't have any of the "fluid" features mentioned in the article. I checked, and in IE it uses the old UI.
So basically, Gmail's interface is, IMO, superior to both the old and my own ugly Yahoo interface.
My Company - Red Cedar Technology
To trash a group of emails, usually all you need to do is click the checkboxes and and select "Move to Trash" from a menu. You usually only need to load multiple pages if you're deleting emails from a wide range of time, which is rarely something I have to do, and when I do need to, deleting the emails on one page and moving on to the next does not inconvenience me.
Gmail doesn't allow folders, only color-coded labels, as an organizing technique.
Labels are pretty much folders with a different name and the advantage that you can apply multiple labels to a single email. This is an advantage of Gmail, not of Yahoo.
Similarly, Gmail forces you to view ads alongside your emails. Unlike Yahoo, it offers no paid option to avoid the ads.
Good, I won't get emails from Gmail about it :)
...arrogantly denying users any choice.'"
He's right, I want use an Outlook Express GUI on my GMAIL!
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Send As from a webmail client is a beautiful thing.
My big question is whether it will work in Firefox? (or Konqueror, Safari, Opera, etc.)
Even the current Yahoo mail interface doesn't work correctly on Firefox for XP. The buttons don't click right. And now they're going to move to a newer technology and add more features. That sounds like more compatibility problems to me...
But to be fair, they do sound like nice features.
This comment's a little out of place for a comparison between two webmail system. Seems like Walt Mossberg missed out on the IPO and isn't happy with Google.
A: No.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
And I am thankful to that people, because the average "desktop experience" always sucks.
Arrogantly denying users any choice of familiar practices is the best way to make something new and fresh and revolutionary (if you're lucky enough). It may end good or bad, but it won't change the innovative value of things made by Gmail team.
exit();
Mossberg makes some good points on the disadvantages of GMail, even if some of them have been known for a long time. The contact system is clunky. Not all the options and features are intuitively located in the GMail interface. (Why do they call the headers and actions I can take with an email "More Options"?) However, Mossberg says and implies some things that are blatantly false. He seems to imply at multiple points in the article that Yahoo! uses better technology than GMail when they both use what is essentially AJAX. Furthermore, he says that Google forces "labels" upon people when everyone is used to "folders". The one advantage folders have is that you can have subfolders. Labels allow for emails to be listed under multiple groupings. Saying one is clearly superior to the other is a stretch at best.
He also doesn't allow for the fact that Yahoo! has had a user account system for over a decade, whereas Google's first system requiring accounts is GMail. He complains that Yahoo! lets you pay a yearly fee for more space and no ads while Google provides no choice. Despite Google being the "it" company right now, they are still nascent in this area compared to the likes of Yahoo!. Even they need time to catch up. Also, how does Google make money? Advertising. Targeted adverts generate the vast majority of their revenue. It's difficult to shift away from the one thing that generates all their money. (I'm intentionally excluding IPOs here. In other words, I'm discussing money generated through goods and services offered to consumers.)
Does GMail provide far fewer options then the new Yahoo! Mail? Yes. But it's a week old. GMail sparked a new generation of webmail. Now Yahoo! has struck back. Give time for Google to respond. If Yahoo! Mail wasn't better than GMail in more than one respect, they wouldn't have begun public beta testing of it. Give Google a chance to respond.
But, in all fairness, two main criticisms of Google remain true. Not enough options for the user (bordering on arrogance according to some) and the fact that most software they have remains in beta. If they can improve on those two problems, they'll be an even greater force to be reckoned with.
Really, the only good reasons to use gmail is the 2.5GB of space and [like any webmail] you can check it from anywhere. But there's one more excellent reason - pop3. With gmail, you don't have to stop using Eudora. You can use gmail's decent interface when you're not at your computer, and otherwise use the same email client that you love.
:). NZ doesn't support pop3 for free members anymore, so I had to find something else. I had heard about gmail a while before, but who really cares about searching through your mail? Besides, if I needed to, I could do that in OE. But when I was looking at the site, I realized they had free pop3. HOLY DAMN.
That's the only reason I made a gmail account. I wanted to keep using (don't throw things at me... please) Outlook Express. I used to have a NetZero account ONLY because of the free pop3 email access, screw getting online with it
I hate web interfaces. I'm on dialup. I don't want pictures and an interface to have to download every time I check my mail - I just want the mail. Thus... gmail via pop3. It's worked marvelously for me so far.
Google's interfaces are so pleasing to the eye that I would sacrafice some functionality to remain in my zen-like web atmosphere. Yahoo seems just plain ugly, sporting angry tones of red and strangly prositioned letters in its trademark.
It's obvious. You forgot the constants. Always add the constant when reintegrating, indefinitely.
Mostly because of one important feature, which is AddressGuard. Sure, both Yahoo! and GMail spam filters do a nice work. However, that is a "new" approach and it's what makes me not to receive any spam at all. You have an explanation here:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools?tool=3
And a Flash animation/tour/explanation at the end of that page.
Gmail lets you POP for free Yahoo charges you $19 a year. nuff said.
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
Ok, I'm a bit fuzzy on the Google vs. Yahoo thing.
I use Yahoo mail and think it's fine - I hope the new one is better still.
So when confronted with a Google vs. Yahoo story, are we PRO Google and ANTI Yahoo here, or as they're both not Microsoft are they both ok?
I like being antiestablishment with you guys, but at the same time I do want to conform.
Please let me know how to think so I don't post inappropriately positive Yahoo comments.
Neither gmail nor Yahoo mail are useful to me until they support IMAP. The ability to use folders from any email client is essential.
Sadly, I use Google not because it's the best, but because I have a long memory -- and I remember VERY WELL YAHOO how you guys screwed us with your two megabyte/ten megabyte limit. Yahoo will not get my business again, no matter how much Gmail might frustrate me.
CUSTOMERS HAVE LONG MEMORIES YAHOO!
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Now with new journalist snitching features!
How does one provide a "better email experience"? Is this some sort of submliminal orgasmatron?
Call me a curmudgeon, but what I want out of email is text messages - you know, words, information and such.
I don't need farking fluff.
</troll mode>
I'm installing a new mail server for my company. I've been through this routine umpteen many times before. This time it's MY company. Literally. I own it.
So...I'm doing dbmail for imap. I was wondering though, are any imap clients (F/OSS ones preferably) doing the GMail-type approach? Dump them all into a bucket and make that bucket deeply searchable? I can't really use GMail for business e-mail, it needs to be on my own server. Anything come even close?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Windows is better than Lunix.
Cats are WAY cooler than dogs.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Another huge advantage of Yahoo Mail is that you can check from you mobile phone. Whereas, with Gmail, you need to hack your own PHP portal or something.
You can actually read Gmail within Eudora or even Outlook express. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=12103&query=pop&topic=0&type=f&ctx=en-uk:search
If you already knew i was mearly informing others :)
I personally like Gmail to any other thing...so what if they don't make the same layout as any other services have. I wrote a review on it, and it got a 5/5 easily. The layout of GMail is too easy and convinient.
...but maybe there is something to be said for the arguement. The Yahoo Mail experiance is much more an experaince of web mail, the combination of the traditional mail experaince with the web. You can use Yahoo mail to check other POP3 email accounts, it has a Outlook like interface. The Goolge Mail service is more service oriented, you can send mail through SMTP with them and use whatever interface you would like. Thier web interface is pretty stripped down and clean, but it is designed that way because they are thinking about building a service, not a client. I for one really wish the gmail would open up so that I could use the gmail service to archive all my other mail, use it to check my ISP email and the like that are avaliable over POP3. That might start making them more client like, and less service oriented, but I'd like the feature.
"Neither is easy to obtain and use." GMAIL is easier to obtain than a case of the clap down by the pier. Please send gmail invites to mossberg@wsj.com
In the early days of Wordprocess TOP!! word process MIMIC'd TYPEWRITERS. The first mass DTP program, MIMIC'd a PASTE UP TABLE.
None of those are around. It's a hard, long term BET but in the end if the new UI is better, it will always out last the old and familar.
http://www.hawknest.com/
sniff.
While it seems a lot of advanced users on Slashdot seem to love being derived of features by our Google overlords (more in response to Google Talk than GMail)
Eh, I don't see how GMail deprives anyone of anything. You like Eudora? Fine, use POP3. You like Outlook? Use POP3. You like Thunderbird? Use POP3. You like Yahoo Mail? Use POP3 to download your GMail to Yahoo.
What's nice is I get all that without having to pay for an upgraded account. Plus, I have the convenience of also being able to read my email using any web browser anywhere in the world, derived of features notwithstanding.--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
The ability to view mails without reloading the page is the biggest improvement I see in this new UI. That is one valid complaint about GMail: they use AJAX but still need lots of full-page loads, which messes up your browser history and is slow. Many people rave about GMail's speed but I actually find it not that great speed-wise. The AJAX parts are lightning fast of course (expanding messages in conversations, going to the inbox from a conversation view), but whenever it needs to do a full page load (which is often) it slows down. Also first logging in is too slow. The plain HTML version is actually faster in places.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
3 problems with gmail 1. when attacthing files to an email you have to tediously select them one at at time no option to select more then on at a time or to drag thefiles in 2. 10mb of files per email is to low how about 20 3. cant simply drag emails into a lable. you have to go though the tedious process of cheching the emails box then using the drop down menu then hitting the archive button
Yahoo! can add all the features they want, all the free disk space, all the spam protection, a slick web interface, etc. Until I can send and retrieve my Yahoo! mail from a POP3 or IMAP interface FOR FREE like I can on Gmail, it's not better than Gmail, at least not for me. I was using Yahoo! mail for over a year before they turned off their free POP3 access. I don't blame them, but that's why I switched to Gmail. Then Gmail activated free POP3 FTW.
Now I can't give a time or date when it will happen, but this guy's words will be eaten. His reasons given for Yahoo's superiority simply don't have any basis in the real world . "You can drag and drop!", "AJAX OMG!", "it looks like Outlook!". While he lambasts Google for innovation labeling (no pun intended) it at arrogance, he praises Yahoo for doing the same old same old. "It's just like a desktop application!" Web applications and desktop applications are very different beasts. There have been leaps and bounds in the past few years to close the gap between web and desktop apps, but until things in key areas such as standardization, latency and security are brought up to speed so to speak, they will continue to have very different requirements and user experiences. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Gmail is simple, fast and user-friendly. With the limitations of the internet, these qualities lend themselves to a well designed web application. I can get almost instantaneous feedback from gmail no matter where I am, even with a real spotty connection, and can work with my email quickly and intuitively. There are just the right amount of options and controls to give a power user reign over their email while allowing the less tech savvy to use the service almost as easily. Yahoo's motto has always seemed to be "lets throw in absolutely everthing we can fit on the screen. The user's bound to like something." Needless to say, that doesn't quite work out for a fantastic web experience. It creates lag, confusion, unresponsiveness and genereral user-unfriendliness. The new Yahoo mail doesn't look like it's going to be an exception to that rule, so while they can probably lure enough users in with their smoke and mirrors, there is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority that give gmail a shot will stick with it. There are more reasons beyond the user experience that this is so, but because this was pretty much all this guy targetted as Gmail's great pitfall and Yahoo's grand superiority I'll leave those alone.
once you take the 1st derivation of my features, I start to become quite the looker. ...since I started trying to integrate myself back to my original look...
You seem to be confused between derivation and differentiation.
So Yahoo offers a better desktop experience than Google, in the writer's opinion. As if it matters. I wonder what kind of experience the Chinese citizens are having whom Yahoo betrayed to the Chinese government to secure commercial advantage. Yahoo won't be getting my custom while it continues to offer "experiences" like that.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I am more worried about usability and accessibility of the webmail than its look. WebMail was meant to have a quick access, wherever you go, whatever system you have. I guess the new Yahoo mail interface will be much slower, will eat a lot more system memory and more error-prone. What will happen if I open that webmail in new IE version, or in Firefox, or in Mozilla, or in Konqueror, or in Netscape, or in Opera... And when a new browser version is released? What will happen if I use a Pentium 233 with 32MB of RAM? Will I be able to access it easily even on a 56K dial-up? And if I have disabled the right-click detection in my browser JavaScript options? And if I have a one-button mac mouse? I don't like these complex AJAX "systems". Sometimes I wish people have the "KISS" (Keep It Simple, Stupid) concept in their minds.
GMail has free POP access bitch.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I was really expecting it to be something Google would add, but where's the IMAP support?
Is there some technical reason none of them support IMAP? Too intensive from a bandwidth/CPU perspective? I'm always amazed at the number of places where you'd expect modern email to find just POP.
I currently have email accounts with Hotmail, Yahoo (old), Yahoo (new) and Gmail. The new Yahoo interface is by far the best out of all them.
But more than that, I have to say advanced filters are key to webmail for me. I can route the spam that comes from free newsletters right to the trash. Out of principal, I previously would unsubscribe from the obnoxious newsletters that don't allow you to separately unsubscribe from their spam, but with gmail I never see the "special offers." There are quite a few decent letters I'm much happier to be subscribed to now.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Which is worth it, if you actually use it. $20 is very little money (granted, Gmail has it for free, but $20 is negligible). I have accounts on both, I've been paying Yahoo the POP $20 for 6 years (before gmail came out), and Gmail is not quite good enough for me to take the trouble of switching to it for my default mail account.
;-). I don't know about Google's, I assume it's as good, but yahoo's more than good enough so that it's not a reason to switch away. I'm not even using Yahoo's "alternate addresses" feature that much, because the spam filter is so good.
;-) ) mails, once a week or so.
;-), so autocomplete and adress books are not important to me.
Plus, Yahoo's spam filter very good, both at flagging spam and at NOT flagging non-spam
I still haven't had access to the new yahoo beta, so I don't know how good or bad the new interface is. Right now, I quickly preview/answer (and delete) most mails via the Web interface daily, and then use an IMAP client to sort the remaining (worthy
Maybe it's because I'm used to them being so-so anyway, but I don't care a lot about fancy Web interfaces, since they are always quite less convenient then a fat local mail client anyway. What WOULD convince me to switch to google is IMAP access, so that I could have leave an exact, auto-synchronized backup of my local mailstores on the server. Right now luckily my ISP gives me 2gigs + IMAP access, and I use that account ONLY for backups, since I don't want to have to change my mail adress eveytime I change ISPs. The 3-ring circus (Yahoo -> Local -> ISP) is a bit cumbersome, though.
I don't use any advanced features, only the reply button, sometimes file attachment... and I try to memorize the most important email adresses (and phone numbers), because anytime you need them BADLY+URGENTLY, Murphy's law ensures that you DON'T have access to any kind of phone book/diary, just your memory
Anyway, both are quite good services. IMAP anyone ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Hey, to each his own. I'm glad homeslice raved about Yahoo Mail. I just logged in for the first time in AGES and took a look at it and it's lovely. Really, it is. It has ads in the mail body, as always, which sucks. And the interface is a bit busy, with ads and offers and this and that.
:)
But I like the Bulk folder and this interface is clean and nice and all. And I can understand people who don't like the archive, conversation and label metaphors being pissed about Gmail. Like I said, to each his own.
Oh, and let's not forget what else Google did. They went to 1 GB of storage when that was unheard of. And now Yahoo Mail has that, too.
So life is good on the free, web-based e-mail front
RP
I love gmail, but one thing annoys me about it.
I use my account for a lot of high traffic mailing lists, which get automatically labelled by gmail when I receive them. So its great that I can click on the label to see all the emails from that list, but how do I see emails that haven't been labelled?
My inbox is filled with hundreds of emails from mailing list, and if I'm not careful, regular email gets lost in the mess. Is there any way to do something like "view all emails without labels"?
Scanning email by opening new pages for every email with old web interfaces was quite frustrating, even with GMails quicker load times.
...
But this is exactly the reason why Gmail prints out the first 60-80 chars of the email text right beside the email subject. That makes scanning email even quicker than Yahoo's interface - you don't need to even click on the thing to see what it's about.
I don't know - I moved to Gmail from PINE, and I could never stand those multi-paned Outlook Express clone interfaces in GUI mail clients. I can see why some people would like that type of thing, but to me Gmail has a minimalist beauty that's hard to dislike. Give me keyboard shortcuts and a lightening fast interface any day
"Linux software devs/power users get a lot of, being elitist, arrogant and not giving users a choice etc."
Linux software not giving us enough CHOICE?! So apparently 20 different windows managers, 300 mail apps, and more distributions than there are stars in the universe isn't enough choice for you?
Damn dude...I mean Linux has problems, but not enough choices isn't the one that comes to mind.
There is more to providing a mail service than a providing a pretty interface.
Thing like...
- Yahoo! lets other companies that show advertisements on some of our pages set and access their cookies on your computer.
- Yahoo! collects personal information when you register with Yahoo!, when you use Yahoo! products or services, when you visit Yahoo! pages or the pages of certain Yahoo! partners, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes. Yahoo! may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies.
- Yahoo! collects information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners, including information about your use of financial products and services that we offer.
Which is better in terms of privacy?
I hate the way the gmail people wont allow MSIE to store the password. Don't give me crap about its insecure - its none of your damn business if I want to store it! Jerks.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I confess that I haven't used Yahoo! mail, but I love GMail so much, I don't know why I'd even try.
Recently I had a dispute with my university over an enrolment issue, where they claimed I hadn't taken a certain action. All I had to do was search through my GMail archives, and boom, proof that I had indeed taken the correct action.
Seriously. I love you, GMail.
Goowy mail is pretty good. You don't have to beg for an invitation, it offers both a really cool Flash version and a stripped down version for low bandwidth connections (You select which one you want at log on). It doesn't have ads (yet) and it even has news and games if you care to click on their icons. It's a credible effort.
Insert witty sig here.
...I wonder if they'll finally fix it?
I heartily disagree. Gmail gives me the option to use any interface I want with my mail client. With Yahoo!, I'd have to pay for that privilege. Not to mention the privilege of not having to view banner ads with each message I want to see.
The new Yahoo mail is ugly and looks bloated give me a nice pine view any day of the week.
My maths lecturers talking about differentiating something to get the derivative. I think that's right, as you talk about 2nd and 3rd (etc) derivates.
Logging in takes all of maybe one second from clicking send for my username/pw to full page load to my inbox from GMail using FireFox. What are you using again? I know my stuff is slow posting to Slashdot for responses to comments or posting a new comment, most likely due to server-hops, (But I use firefox to check Slashdot, so I shouldn't have any problems with speed as far as reading/submitting goes, unless it's something screwy with TCP/IP, as I don't get anything les than 300k/s on any other server I get info from.) but I know it's faster than Outlook with it's cruddy SPAM filters when GMail web already has it done for your convenience.
Heck, GMail (when my particular mail server isn't down for maintenance,) is faster than the majority of my CNET or DOWNLOAD.COM or independent HTTP downloads. Heck, even Limewire gets things at almost 310K/s. I wanna see Outlook Express do that one. I've yet to see that happen in my bandwidth monitoring program when I load Outlook purely alone with nothing else accessing the internet.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Always root for the guys who have more money. In this case, Google has more money than yahoo, but Google threatens MS, and MS is very dear to all the Wall-Street folks.
Magnus.
I'm dying for Google to add calendaring and real file storage (not just uploading your files in emails) and a more complete address book with mail groups, etc.
I still love Gmail, use it every day. Love the POP access, love the SMTP access which keeps copies of your sent mails sent through any normal desktop email client. And I love the threading that keeps my replies with the responses. I'm sticking with Gmail and waiting out the missing features. They'll come. But the experience is already better for me than Yahoo! mail.
The biggest problem for me is that I cannot use the nick I want because they are all taken. Every stinking one of them. When gmail came out I quickly registered the names that I wanted because the service was new. Yahoo mail does not even allow a "." in the name. That is lame.
You've been here long enough you should know better than to be surprised. :-) One could take a bowel movement and post the details on Slashdot and it will get modded "+5 Insightful" as long as it's one of the first posts. On the other hand, you could write the next "Principia Mathematica" as a response to said first post and it will be modded "-1 Troll" if you don't praise open source in the first few sentences.
But isn't drag and drop an Active-X component? Why do I wish to use something as insecure and vulnerable as Active-X??
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Just an FYI for all of you intrested:
Oddpost.com had this webmail interface first. Then they were purchased by Yahoo. During that transition time they improved it quite a bit (stablity, cross-browser support, ui looks). Yahoo's Beta is the latest version of Oddpost. Oddpost users will later be transitioned to Yahoo (From what I gather). It suprises me that Oddpost remained so unnoticed for so long.
For anyone who is interested in having their own Oddpost/Yahoo web client. Scalix offers it for free in their community edition. I'm not sure if you can use the web client alone without the rest though. I'm actually going to be installing it Monday, so I'm talking out of my ass until then. The only hurdle is that it requires Tomcat 5.0 to work. If you're on Debian stable that might be a hassle.
My #1 gripe about gmail: I can't click the top of a column and sort by date, size, sender, etc. Saving conversations in clumps and everything else it does is worthless to me without basic functionality like that. Do I need to RTFM, or is this feature really missing?
Plenty of other things I don't like as well, but let's start with the basics.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Gmail is the worst e-mail reading interface I've ever used. It is the only interface where I can overlook new messages. I get a bunch of mail on different topics and several times I have missed important messages because of the way that gmail displays them, embedded in context and sometimes easy to overlook. And my solution is not to use a POP client. I want to use a web client.
Google is a search company so you would think it would concentrate on that kind of interface. What they seem to forget from basic computer science is the "sorting" function that is elementary to interface. People like to search and they like to sort and browse. Desktop e-mail programs, and yahoo e-mail, allow you to sort on name, size, date, etc. I use sorting on size all the time to get my picture attachments at the top of the list.
I've e-mailed Google a couple of times on how bad their user interface is. I can't believe they've done any usability testing on it. The only thing I really like about it is how easy it is to SEND mail.
How about before stories are posted to the main page, subscribers or perhaps "pre-moderators" make/scan posted comments before the non-paying subscribing public, and allow others to moderate those comments so we don't have to deal with what we perceive as an advertisement for one service or another???
/. editors/submitters. We're looking for news, not advertisements we could just as easily/potentially/possibly avoid by not coming here to begin with.
/.er will move to something more reasonable than advertisements for products/services which we're only going to beat the hell out of to begin with.
Having seen loads of these advertisements for services/goods lately, this crap makes me sick. Wake up,
In this case, I'm sure *EVERY*
Get a grip on what's real news. Have we figured out a feasible way to cure AIDS? What about a feasible way to stop SPAM so we don't have to deal with hearing about new mail services? Maybe an article about a way to stop the **AA from screwing with us legally due to GPL or other open-source licenses, or perhaps a simple quote on how the second law of thermodynamics contradicts itself at the high-school and 4-year college level, thusly screwing people over information-wise?
Are you going to wake up, or what?
I accept any troll or flamebait mod you give me, the editors have deserved this for the past 4 years I've been reading, and the past two years I've been a non-paying subscriber.
Quit being Republicans (Thank you, Frank Zappa for that nice insult,) and post some newsworthy stuff that's "Fair and Balanced" less I call you out for being the Fox Network people you so claim to hate.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I've seen a bunch of cool stuff being done with Ajax style approaches. Does anyone think for a minute that Google do not have plans to upgrade GMail? I hope Yahoo does well, as it will raise the bar for Google (and does anyone talk about Hotmail anymore, remember tham?).
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
And if you criticise the Slashdot moderation system, or /. modders in general, you will always get modded up.
With my [free] gmail a/c I can send/receive from my email client (Thunderbird, in my case): I never use gmail's web interface, except to change preferences. With Yahoo, I have only webmail; POP access comes only at the price of an annual subscription.
Lag on the order of a second is noticable and annoying in a user interface, especially when combined with the flashing that accompanies a page reload. It may seem like nitpicking but instant smooth response is very, very nice and a real usability issue (compare google maps to the old mapquest; even with 1-second page reloads on mapquest Google beats the pants off it any day of the week). Just because GMail is faster than some websites doesn't necessarily make it fast *enough*. GMail isn't just a website, it's an application replacement, and it competes with applications running locally. More speed is always welcome, and very possible. For example, the first thing I do when loading GMail is click on my unread conversations. GMail could preload those and have them ready as I click, and switch to them without reloading the page, with all the flashing that entails.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
The author makes the accusation that google are 'arrogant'
;)
All your arrogance are belong to us......
I personally think the best way to sort email is thru a simple system I thought of while trying to decide on filters for a lawyer's email system.
The system is as follows. First, if you send an email to someone, you're allowing them to send email back to you (Kinda like a DNC list, but since you initiated contact first, you should be able to receive email back in return from that company/individual/entity/alien/government shill/whomever.
Second, if it's not in your sent/pre-defined allowed list, it goes directly to trash/bulk/spam email folder.
Third, it's not that hard to import your contact addresses from another webmail site, like Hotmail. Just show the people you have allowed to send email to you or have exchanged correspondence with in another email account, keep the addresses you want, copy, paste to the allowed list in GMail, then forget about most everything else.
Your only problems are the morons that forward chain letters, cutesy joke emails, and the absolute idiots that forward/send you Trojan Horses/Worms/Malicious Programs.
You're right, however. The article submitter has a definite bias against Google. He needs to be castrated so he learns his lesson.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is a funny topic to me. I just went through this exact comparison.
I've had a paid Yahoo mail account for 5 years or so. I recently signed up with gmail and started using it. I've used it for a few months and in my opinion, Yahoo is still better. It's easier to use and has more features (spamguard, virus scan, plenty o' space, big attachments) and...it's just better. Gmail is nice. It's not that I don't like gmail. It's clearly a solid system and lots of other people do like it. It's just that Yahoo appeals to me more.
Just my personal opinion. I'm not affiliated with either company.
"Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.'" "
Google's engineers aren't forcing anyone to use thier Gmail system, so the choice is still in the hands of the user: I will use or I wont use Gmail.
Gmail doesn't have to emulate anything other than what they choose to - or not. The arrogance lies not in Gmail's solution to web based email content, but rather in the authors tone suggesting "Google's engineer's" are somehow forcing users to not use Yahoo.
Absurd!
Brooklyn!
Ugh, Eudora is probably the worst email client I've ever used. The interface is far behind most other GUI email clients out there. Hell, you have to type commands in blank messages and CLICK THEM to make changes to the Mac client!
Give me Mail.app on the Mac any day.
->
The advantages: I have a stable email address that's fairly well spam-filtered, and isn't tied to my ISP; I also get secure connections (with POP, SMTP, and HTTPS). Meanwhile, I don't have to turn on my main machine, and don't have to set up multiple mail clients, but can still get the benefits of old-school mail management while being able to access my mail from anywhere.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
You like Yahoo Mail? Use POP3 to download your GMail to Yahoo.
Give your account password for GMail to Yahoo??
resigned
The combination of POP3 and Archiving allows me several benefits. I can use the interface of my choosing. If I decide I don't like one, all I need is a new client. I don't have to open a browser window, I can drag & drop emails with more speed than Yahoo allows, etc. Where that really shines is in combination with archiving. I can delete everything I no longer need to see on my local system, and still have access to old messages if it turns out I was wrong.
And thus denies some of us the possibility of access
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I don't think you use email much, otherwise you would never say:
"you shouldn't need to do it very often [deleting email]"
Deleting email is about half your time spent in the interface. Maybe not for a corporate email system, but a public email system?
is directly taken from The Exchange 2003 Outlook Web Access, down to the order and contents of the right click menus.
That's not a problem for me -- we're proud of our work, and glad to see it used -- but it's kind of annoying that it isn't recognized.
Yahoo's mail is full of ads, I'm looking to switch. Any one have any suggestion for a decent webmail provider? Gmail is no good, it does not work unless you allow it to set cookies on www.google.com in addition to gmail.google.com.
I find it hard to allow that due to the privacy concerns.
Good/Bad:
Yahoo as a whole offers better/more integration with other parts of thier site, whereas Google is just starting to catch up with this. For instance Yahoo has integrated Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Personals, Yahoo Profiles (360), Yahoo Music and Yahoo's Web Page area. Google with all thier content certainly has the capability to do this (search, image, labs, groups, froogle, local, blogger).
Google sometimes makes you wait an indefinite time to fetch an email (usually in a sent folder, but sometimes in your inbox). Yahoo, only seems to restrict email access during maintenence cycles late at night.
Google does offer more space, though so far I would comment that the spam filter on Yahoo seems to be at least as (though probably more) robust.
Google does have better organization of folders, mail items aka "conversations". It takes better advantage of CSS properties with html, whereas Yahoo seems to be more concerned about maximizing compatibility with all browsers. I'm not a big fan but some number of months ago, I noticed some glitchiness with Gmail on Safari. I don't know how they do on Opera, Lynx or other more limited browsers.
Yahoo does graphical ads, some of which seem to "take over" your navigation space, taking up your time reading as well as load time if you are on a slow connection. Google uses contextual text ads, which I actually don't mind "clicking" on every now and then because they don't seem intrusive and desperate - unlike many Yahoo advertisers.
I won't say either is better. They are both good at what they do, but they are as different as automakers Toyota and BMW.
Is that I cannot set the encoding of the text I am sending so it's essentially impossible to use their web client to send email in a non-european char set and I end up using a 3rd party email client with their SMTP server to do it properly...Also some charsets dont even display correctly in gmail. I love the pics I've seen of Yahoo! mail and I hope it doesn't have the same problem(s) gmail has.
Based on my experience in trying to find a keyword among thousands of email, gmail is much faster than yahoomail.
please give me folders and sorting back
Isn't it Yahoo mail that the reporter in China was using? Didn't Yahoo "give" release the reporter's emails to the Chinese government? All for freedom of speech? Humm. Personally, Google is my choice.
TheTiminator
Thanks to whomever modded me down. I ask a reasonable question, and it's as if you deem it unreasonable, so instead of modding it "Overrated" how about modding it as 'Troll" or "Flamebait?" I made note that I was asking a question, not making a point, directly in the topic of my post, which was an OBVIOUS QUESTION.
Thank you again, Slashdot-appointed mods of the day with your five points, for not understanding the common English language, or for paying attention to the topic line from my post. I made a point of making the subject line "Question From an Uninformed Person" for a reason, you 'tards.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Mossberg hasn't yet met a product by Steve Jobs that hasn't made it sound like he wants to get down on the ground and start immediately fellating it. If Apple brought out "AMail" that worked exactly like GMail (only with, you know, brushed metal or some other eye candy shit) then Mossberg would be all over it like flies on shite, praising it for its "forward thinking", and "radical re-invention", and "style".
Da Blog
Yahoo USED to, but then started charging people for it.
F' Yahoo, I'll be using gmail.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
The article is saying that innovation in UIs negatively affects the market. I remember something from college(really!) about innovation being the key to progress. This article's saying that because the new ones work just like the old ones, the product is better? That's their best argument? Yea, I'm not going for it.
I sent this to the idiot author:
Good evening Walter =)
You're probably expecting a 'you're wrong' from a Gmail user. Not so =)
I do agree, the new Yahoo interface allows for more windows-like usability, however, this is why it will not be as widely used. Nowadays we're having trouble explaining to our parents the concept of folders - but our parents are on their way out, they're not the next generation. I am in the middle of Gen-X, and I took quite well to Gmail - in fact it was rather natural. About 12 hours ago I first signed up for this account, knowing absolutely nothing about it except its popularity, and I've already taken advantage of every single feature. With KDE now available in Macintosh, it is only a matter of time before a larger population understands the power of environment flexibility, and can take themselves away from the Gates of Grandeur (also known as the Bill Gates Monopoly).
So you're right. Beta Yahoo does act just like Outlook, and Google is arrogant about Gmail. With your attachment to the Bill Bottle, I wonder if you've even ever experienced KDE.
Agreeably Yours,
Trisha
--
http://spreadingthought.blogspot.com/
Do you think that Gmail would turn over logs to the Chinese government so that they could put someone in prison for sending a "dangerous" e-mail? Yahoo did!! I am not sure if Gmail would or not, but if they wouldn't then I would say that Gmail is the clear choice as the superior experience.
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
Newsgroups are for oldies. Pipe down over there. Let us take the reigns. Didn't you hear that email is for old people? IM is what the kids like now. Where does that leave newsgroups? Porn freak is what you probably are.
did u try reversing the polarity?
Thanks to whomever modded me down. I ask a reasonable question, and it's as if you deem it unreasonable. Instead of modding it "Overrated," how about modding it as 'Troll' or 'Flamebait?' I made note that I was asking a question, not making a point, TYVM.
Thank you once again, Slashdot-appointed mods of the day, with your five points of bullcrap (one reason why I hardly moderate, your own mods have a *POOR* grasp of the English language,) for not understanding the common English language as far as the USA is concerned. I made a point of making the subject line "Question From an Uninformed Person" for a reason, you 'tards. How about doing what your English teacher taught you to do, which is read everything before making comments??? Well, unless you're in a school system approved by Bush, in which case, you're semi-excused for your ignorance.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Since I've never experienced connection problems with Gmail, which I use daily, perhaps the fault is with your own internet connection and not with Gmail.
The first thought is that Gmail users can choose to have Gmail mimic their desktop's exact look and feel. In fact, right now Gmail looks exactly like Mac Mail to me. This is because Gmail (unlike almost all other web email providers) allows you to use their email service through your own mail client. It was painless to set up, and they have instructions for most email clients.
However, for those users who do not want to use a native mail client, Gmail is still extremely usable. It is true that Gmail doesn't work exactly like traditional email clients, but that was one of their goals. For example, Google believes that using labels to organize emails and using the search box to find email contents will increase people's productivity. And they're right! Truly, people will need to learn new skills in order to work within this paradigm (though most people understand the idea of a "search box" well enough), but that is the only way to make progress.
Furthermore, I think that the paradigms that Gmail is using will become more standard in the desktop world in the next few years. Apple's Spotlight and Microsoft's WinFS will have some of the same ideas of "labels" and "searching". It's a powerful and flexible concept, and users will either learn to use it or get left behind.
Google it seems has been proactive in scanning my attachments. I recently mailed my google account with a tar.gz attachment (to save my documents in the seemingly unlimited google disc space) - I get a illegal attachment error -even though those were plain jpeg files. Yahoo on the other hand had no problems Is google more proactive than required?
And... if he already is castrated.... ? :)
My main gripe with GMail is their spam filter, which is overly zealous. Every month GMail marks up 700+ letters as spam, of which 5 are genuine letters. Fishing these out is a pain, since there's a limit to how many lines of "GENUINE REPLICAS!!" you can read in one session. Another problem is that it habitually eats online order "receipts" (like Amazon.co.jp sends out when you've purchased something).
One might think this is a wonderful thing, since it should keep the inbox squeaky clean, but the fact is I _still_ get spam in my inbox, most of which seems ridiculously easy to spot. Also wish I could just mark all Russian mail as spam, since I don't know the language, but the spam filter has no configurability whatsoever.
Of course, with my old Yahoo! mail, I'd get a gazillion spam letters without even giving the address to anyone. (Why isn't there a death penalty on spam yet?!)
Aside from that, it comes pre-packaged with wacky subject lines. Works just like outlook. Works exactly like you'd expect it to, with drag&drop. Flat out incredible.
I use Spam Gourmet for any site I deem suspicious. So far, it has worked great!
"On the other hand, you could write the next "Principia Mathematica" as a response to said first post and it will be modded "-1 Troll" if you don't praise open source in the first few sentences."
If you did write the next Principia Mathematica chances are it would be offtopic.
evil is as evil does
POP3 SUCKS for webmail. You don't get any sync features, so forget about keeping your folders consistant accross computers. Forget about having folders at all, in fact, because POP3 doesn't support them.
IMAP is a much better protocol. Until GMail supports it, I'm sticking with FastMail.
While I'm dreaming: the mod system should just be a voting system. Everybody with positive karma (or maybe excellent or whatever) should be able to mod any post. With the increased number of mods, statistical methods could be used. Outlyer moderations could be thrown out, and the rest could be averaged so that one single moderation up or down won't affect the score. Random moderations (everybody disagrees) would just count as nothing. Or maybe we could get cute and allow people to view based on standard deviation, as well as average score (in case you're interested in both the good and the controversial). Anyway, I won't hold my breath. But the idea that two guys with political agendas can kill a post is dumb. Community moderation should be done by the community. Not by a few blessed individuals at a time. We all vote at once.
How is getting first post not superior? I guess being first to waste a mod point on first post is superior by Slashdot standards.
Seriously, I think that people that waste their mod points on modding down first posts are idiots. If you have mod points right now think about this... How are your mod points best spent? By using them to moderate important posts? Or are they better spent on modding down the same post everyone makes on every fucking article.
People that mod down first posts are bigger idiots than the people that waste their time getting first posts.
There are other boards with moderation likes you suggest. Perhaps you could provide a link where such a moderation system has been successful (for a given definition of successful).
evil is as evil does
Another way to put it: why am I reading posts simply because one or two people liked them? There are thousands and thousands of users reading each comment stream. Why not harnass that more effectively? Look at all the ridiculous complexity brought about by the current moderation system? We've got the selection criteria for moderators. Then there's the need for moderation of moderations in the form of under/over-rated moderations. Then there's metamoderation. And finally there are all the moderation types, apparently needed so that people don't just moderate in an ad hoc basis (even though they do anyway). It's starting to look like a Microsoft solution. A simple voting scheme of +/- that takes a lot more people into account would get rid of all that complexity.
If you have a canadian yahoo email account (yahoo.ca) you can get the free POP access. If you have yahoo.com, that option is convienently missing, though the panel is still there
m &.done=
http://edit.my.yahoo.com/config/set_popfwd?.src=y
(prefix to your yahoo mail page, it will bring up the forwarding and pop page)
Suppose you have an Yahoo! e-mail account for a couple of years, meanwhile containing plenty of e-mails, contacts and personal information. Suppose you don't have a back-up of those contacts and e-mails. Suppose you have to change the password after you dared to use a terminal in an Internet caffee. Suppose next day neither the new nor the old password matches anymore. Suppose you are cautious about leaving personal information on the 'net and hence didn't enter the correct birthdate during the creation of the Yahoo! account. What now? Yahoo! customer service says: start over, create a new account, forgo the information stored in the old one, even though you are able to authenticate yourself and prove that's you, who created the account (CC information still stored there, e-tickets, cell phone, etc.). Thank you Yahoo!
Have both gmail and yahoo mail. Dont care what WM of WSJ thinks, but I will have to say Yahoo Mail is better. Gmail has a number of bugs, and yahoo mail has been problem free. But then, gmail is suppose to be in beta. Or is it no longer in beta? The bug in gmail that bugs me is when composing a letter all of a sudden the letter will disappear. This is solved by clicking gmail on the task bar and I get the letter again. Dont know what WM is talking about all these features on both email services. But then I havent looked into all the features of either of these services. When WM talks about Yahoo's new email, is he talking about the one that is free, or the one that is not? I use the free version, of course, but am not aware of any changes. But then I dont pay much attention to the Yahoo anouncements.
And if the constant fails, add beer...
Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.
The only "arrogance" that I see in this "debate" is Mossberg's. Google made available a high-quality web-based mail service based on AJAX and was the first to give users a gigabyte of space. The Gmail experience was closer to any desktop experience than any other webmail service. There were likely lots of usability experts and user testers involved in its development. And if it were for Yahoo! and Microsoft, we'd probably still limp along with 10Mbyte mailboxes and page redraws for each message view. And, yes, the Gmail experience is different from a desktop client. I fail to see how that "denies choice"--Mossberg always has the choice not to use it.
Apparently, Mossberg's 35 years at the WSJ have gone to his head and he has forgotten that he is a journalist, not a usability expert. It is supremely arrogant for someone with his background to make judgements about the usability or quality of applications. In fact, someone who actually knows about usability wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions.
Fortunately, we all have a choice: we don't have to read the ill-informed drivel Mossberg publishes in the WSJ.
This is very true. Google uses your mail as a marketing analysis tool. Of course they won't tell you this, and instead depend on excuses to trick rabid gmail fanboys..... If they're going to do this they ought to just allow us to delete our email, and store it behind the scenes. The lack of an easily accessible delete button is the reason I don't use gmail. There is obviously a reason for it, or it wouldn't be that way. Just think about it.
The article is suspiciously trolling for a professional journalist. For me the author gets way too emotinal and is aiming at Google as a player too much, instead of the ball. Sounds like this article is not about webmail, but about the company Google. Well let me think... who declared war on Google lately? I expected to begin read such articles in the near future, and here they come. Watch out for the weapons, and who is using them. Mercenairies!
--------
* Sigh *
...and I'm kinda disappointed that the WSJ's standards have spiralled so far out of control.
When you look at the facts, Yahoo is playing catch-up, and they know it. Google came pretty much out of nowhere and released a wholly unprecedented level of quality with gmail. While most, and probably all, other free webmail providers were little more than ad spots first and email clients second, Google provided a service that was incredibly powerful that happened to run ads the same way the rest of their site did. All of this was done in a very elegant, simple yet powerful interface hosted on Google's servers. It's only a rare moment where you get errors from Google servers. It's also only a rare moment where you see something shoddily hacked together from Google's engineers. It doesn't just work, it works very well, and damned near all the time.
Did I mention it's free and nobody forces you to use it? To use the word 'arrogant' to describe the free service that set the current precedent for service and design is laughably irresponsible. How the hell do you get to use such a loaded word with negative connotation towards the parent company in responsible journalism? You don't. The fact that this hack can get paid to write this crap astounds me more than the fact that he clearly doesn't understand a single thing that he's writing about. I mean, I could spend all my days writing about crap I don't understand, but I don't think I'd get paid for it. While I admire his ability to get paid for workplace incompetence, I have to admit that I am baffled by how he manages to pull it off.
I bet he thought he was really clever with other loaded phrases such as "Not Gmail, where 'option' is a term too rarely employed, except in reference to employee compensation." Yeah, great job, ass. Way to make a thinly veiled snipe at the fact that Google happened to find a way to become fucking billionaires giving you great service at no cost.
And finally, since I seriously have to get to bed, my proof that the author has no goddamned clue what he's talking about: "I'm sure Gmail will get better and better, and will eventually adopt the new programming techniques that allow desktop-like ease of use."
This quote just proves that the author doesn't get the point at all. Google has never been one to compromise functionality with form. Just go to www.google.com if you're not sure. The whole google design philosophy almost wholly forbids gmail to ever get to the point where it will adopt these "new programming techniques," and I don't think we can realistically ever expect them to, or even want them to. If Google were to cheapen itself to the point where it were simply copying other peoples' interfaces in order to please woefully uninformed tech writers, I think we'd be much worse off than if they'd just done things the way they always had.
I'm not going to make any statements about which is better between Yahoo mail or gmail. I'm also going to point out that both are free, and you should expect nothing more than to get what you pay for both. In the event that you are pleasantly surprised by how much functionality you get out of a free service, you should be thankful. If you're into Yahoo's interface, use Yahoo. If you prefer Google's interface, use Google. Neither is going to be "far superior" to the other for all people as all people have different needs and preferences.
As for the people who keep hacks like this employed, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
-c
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
For your information, Apple Mail has that before GMail and so did a few other clients.
A big advantage of webmail is that you have access to the same exact thing no matter where you are.
It's hard to achieve that with POP, and even IMAP has a number of it's own issues.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I'm on dialup too, and gmail is fast as hell.
The reason all web-based mail sucks, is encryption. What are you going to do -- allow a remote untrusted system owned by somebody else (e.g. yahoo) have a copy of your private key? If you don't, then you either have to live with being unable to sign outgoing mail and decrypt incoming mail, or you have to do cumbersome crap like running gpg locally and then copy/paste from/into your web browser. Lame.
To have mail that does not suck, you have to use a real mail client that lets you sent by SMTP and receive mail by IMAP (or POP, which still sucks, but sucks less than webmail). Web browsers are the wrong tool for the job.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yahoo! has email???
really 867993
Karma schkarma
No, but the great-grandparent forgot to add a consonant.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I find that the article is rather one-sided. Some of the "disadvantages" of gmail the author mentioned i consider to be advantages, like the lable system (allows you to have email in several different categories without having duplicates in folders). I reckon he's just a dyed-in-the-wool desktop email client user, and likes to see that duplicated on the internet. I personally like the much lighter Gmail interface, not having to wail for loads of images to load (my other account is hotmail. Even on broadband i have to wait for all the eye candy to load) and having quick and searchable access to my mail. Some features need improving (notably the contacts) but i like it. Some people prefer the email-client layout. Putting that on a web page isn't very original but keeps the service familiar to many users.
It's a matter of preference, which i think the article didn't really take into account. It seemed to assume "looks and works like a traditional email client=good. Looks unusual and provides novel but unfamiliar functions=bad"
Agreed. It's also idiotic to mod down posts by ACs that start at 0 anyway, and have no chance of going up. Most first posts start at 0 or -1. Why bother?
Some major sites (Yahoo, Tripod, Hotmail, Netscape, and quite a few) seem to reserve ALL common words and mostly all "all-letter" derivatives, and generally anything that wouldn't pass as secure PASSWORD. They claim given name "is unavailable" or "is already in use" or such, but if you send email to any of these, it will bounce. They are just reserved so nobody. I can't have my username composed from my first.last name (I actually -KNOW- it's world-unique), I can't have any of 10 or so variations of my nick, and unless I stick at least two digits into the username, I won't get any, and a hour of trying, with some REALLY wild variations that are plain impossible to have been all taken, all resulted in "is unavailable".
I definitely refuse to have address Sh4rpf4ng@... or Sharp77@...
Google luckily doesn't put any of this kind of bullshit. If someone else doesn't use your login, it's free.
I will never ever register with a site that provides anything similar to the above. Once upon a time I had an email @netscape.net, and used it as my primary. A neat 4-letter login. One day they introduced the new policy and wrote me a not-quite-polite letter that "they are integrating their services and someone else on some other service is using this name already, so please choose another". And then a hour of trying available ones till I came up with one composed of 8 chars including 2 digits. So why is it me who has to change the login and not "that someone"? And now "that someone" will start receiving my mail too? Fuck you assholes. As I understand all the sites that do this now, underwent this kind of change sometime, so fuck you Hotmail, fuck you Yahoo, fuck you Netscape... Google rules.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I run dnsrbls in my sendmail server and I've noticed that a number, not all, of Gmail's outbound mail servers are rejected by some of the black holes. Now that is not a good think for what is supposed to become the premier e-mail system around.
I only use Gmail via GMailFS/GMail Drive as a off-site file store. I don't like the interface, but it does have its uses.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Edit as HTML: IE only. ;) - columns designed to fit english "add-edit" don't fit "dodaj - modyfikuj".
Want POP3? Send me spam. (luckily you can set it to send spam to other address than Yahoo, say admin@microsoft.com)
Sending mail from Yahoo? Have spam attached as sig.
Reply doesn't >quote.
No way to see message source e.g for reporting scammers. (localized header names in "full header" view)
Poor localisation (sometimes encoding header missing, encoding has to be changed manually, sometimes (within the same page) some strings are localized to Unicode and some approximated with ISO-8859-1. Sometimes whole long bodies of text is just approximated with ISO-8859-1. Help not fully localized. Localization breaks layout (same as in Gmail
Slower.
Don't like GMail's interface? Use pop3 and YOUR desktop client. In this matter Google whips Yahoo's ass. No spam attached in sig, no spam received from mail service.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The poster applied to work at Google, got rejected and just wants to show his anger to the slashdot crowd!
lets's say u are used with the X app to read your mail, in that articol the new beta yahoo webmail is prezented to have function more desktop-like, and it is said that the only advance that Gmail has is that it gives as more space. This is not true it is not only that. Gmail gives us free POP3 access witch give as not "desktop-like" features but desktop-integration and about not having the option to pay for not having an ad display near our mails, again the same thing has been omited: free POP3 access this gives as no ads...
Yes, what's funny about this is that the few thousand Yahoo beta testers are going on and on about how fast it is. I'll evaluate which is faster after Yahoo has a few million users. Here's the thing-- Yahoo doesn't really have to beta-test all that much. They swallowed a kickass webservice called Oddpost about a year ago, and they're just now getting around to crapping out a product. The only thing they really needed to do was load-balance their servers. Oddpost was awesome as-is.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Well at the kuro5hin site most users with accounts can mod. But I find that site appears to have tons of trolls, people full of bile and hate.
Anyway, if you take things to the extreme: given enough computing resources, everyone should be able to mod, as much as they like, AND see what they'd like.
After all, most people are likely to fall into a smaller number of groups who think in similar ways.
So as you mod, the system figures out which group(s) you are likely to be in (thus saving storage and computing), and so stuff that the group(s) you belong to regards as highly modded will appear highly modded to you.
Whereas other people belonging to other groups may not see the same thing as highly modded.
Of course, the "trouble" with this is it encourages polarisation - likeminded people grouping with likeminded people and hardly ever learning from others.
If you are wise you don't surround yourself with people who keep agreeing with you.
But I suppose you also shouldn't surround yourself with stupid people/fools all the time either.
My vote goes to CowboyMail.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
My Yahoo Mail account looks almost exactly the same as it has for the past 4-5 years: screen filled with 40% adds and 60% email interface. I've clicked on every link on the page, and I'm not able to find any information about "upgrading" to the new Beta. Give me the nice, clean look of Gmail ANY day.
It's only /., dude. Better skip that second cup of coffee tomorrow, and try to relax.
The only way I'd switch to Yahoo! Mail is if, every time I log in, I get the yodelling Yahoo! guy, and even if it was there, that voice would get so annoying after a while.
On top of that, I don't need colors and pictures cluttering up my webpage and taking longer to download. I use these services for one thing: accessing email. If that's not the top priority in the UI, then I want nothing to do with it.
I'll admit it. I'm an all-things-google fanboy, but do you know why? Because it's simple. I'll save all the complex stuff for coding Java or reading politics (haha). But when I'm on the web, I know what I want, and I don't want to have to wait just because some programmers/developers felt like adding some "pizazz" to my screen.
On a final note, fella's, I'm just way too lazy to care about whose service is better. If I were to switch to another email address, I'd have to go into everything I use online and redirect where my newsletters are subscribed to. It's a hassle.
If you like what you're using already, why bother switching?I for one would like to see more web pages behave like web pages - these funky html-based interfaces are impressive, and gmail is definitely one of the better ones I've seen (I haven't seen the yahoo beta yet) but I find it extremely annoying to actually use it a lot of the time. Going from a "normal" web page - i.e. one where all the web elements behave the way my browser wants them to - to one of these DHTML-enhanced "interfaces" - where the web elements behave the way the page designer wants them to - is infuriating. Best/worst example of this is the keyboard shortcuts gmail and many forum web sites use - sure, they're handy to use them, but I *already* have keyboard shortcuts in my browser, and I don't want any old web page to obliterate them. I want alt-s to open the sage sidebar, and not send the message I'm currently writing.
Another awful example, because it's just so pointless, is my online banking sign in page: you enter in your card number, and then the cursor automatically jumps to the password field. Of course, anyone who has every actually used any other web pages will have already hit the tab key to move to the next field, so that you then have to switch BACK to the password field. Annoying, and not beneficial in the slightest.
I'd just go back to turning off javascript entirely like I did until a couple of years ago, except that it's just too prevalent.
I've had a yahoo account for years. I opened a gmail account when they first started up, and tried using it for a few months, but it lacked quite a bit of the functionality I had gotten used to. I can sync my yahoo contacts list and calendar with my treo, for example-- does gmail have any sort of sync yet?
As a pure email client, gmail is fantastic. But I'm still hooked on yahoo's sync.
Uhh... the choice is: use it, or don't use it. It's free dude... no one's forcing you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This guy clearly has no idea what he's talking about.
I'm sure Gmail will get better and better, and will eventually adopt the new programming techniques that allow desktop-like ease of use.
Yes, damn you Google. Why won't you listen to your users, learn about these "new programming techniques" and provide us with an AJAX-based webmail service? Oh wait...
CNet and PCMagazine already call it for Y!Mail (not the beta, the current one) because of its security, antispam, and global language support:
s p9 80704-2.html?tag=top
.dom-apocalyse makes.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1830114,00.a
http://reviews.cnet.com/Yahoo_Mail/4505-9236_7-30
I read people writing about Yahoo! playing 'catchup' - that is so ridiculous.
Google has maginally better web search, made a great marketing move with 1GB webmail, and has done an absolutely unparalleled job at serving the needs of both sides of the advertising market.
The weirdest part of the Google phenomenon is when everyone started hyping how superior Google was for web search back in the day when Yahoo! was *using* Google for *their* websearch! This really illustrates how much difference fresh branding in the post
However, side-by side comparisons show that Yahoo! has competitive and frequently better products (Messenger vs. Google Talk, Y!Mail vs GMail, Y! Toolbar vs. Google Toolbar, Y! Desktop Search vs Google Desktop Search) and most of them have been around a lot longer.
If there is one place Y! got its ass soundly kicked where it hurts its with AdWords and Web Search.
But certainly not all that is Google is god and some of their products are just plain lame (Google Talk). And dont talk to me about judging betas either because Google has a habit of just calling everything a beta forever to avoid scrutiny and invite interest, which is really, really lame.
hmmm... Last I checked Google offered pop access to their mail servers allowing users to use whatever crufty old mail reading program that they wish. Seems to be pretty stick in the mud conservative interface to me.
Now given the above mentioned pop access, users would only see the Google mail interface IF they accessed their mail via the web. Now, at least in my experience, MOST users will be using either a) their own notebook or b) desktop or c) palmtop and therefore will most likely be able to use POP and their crufty mail client at, I'd hazard, at least 80% of the time.
So. They're going to whine about that 20% of the time when they have only web access to Google mail? For Christ's sake, it's FREE(for now). IMNHO that right there eliminates any validity of whining and moaning about the Google web interface. Hell, they even get POP access for free. Try that one with Yahoo mail. (Last I bothered to look many months ago, this "feature" was only offered in the "premium" "service" packages.)
I guess that some people will never ben happy is the moral of the story, and it is true that Google should be able to relatively easily fix up a nice crufty outlookish web interface is it really worth the bother?
I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure exactly how to do it, algorithmically, but I think a only system which allows moderation from the majority of people at any given time has a chance at achieving this goal. Right now, I think the current moderation system, being so subject to the whims of a few, ends up being very polarizing. I think you pretty much only get the party line on /. (Does one end that sentence with another period?) In theory, a system with more data would be able to statistically distinguish between a post which is just crap and one which is just controversial. I would imagine, for one, that the variance in voting for one would be different than the other, even if the mean is the same. Anyway, I'm not sure it's worth messing with, but I think it's fun to think about how one would best handle a moderation system. It's essentially an embodiment of a social protocol for judging Quality.
That is the exact reason that I pay for FastMail, as opposed to using my ISP's e-mail service. Well, my old ISP (Cablevision). I think Verizon supports IMAP.
...I browsed an old topic, and read this post of yours..
You really should check out David Brin's "Stones of Significance", it's a good read, about exactly what you mention in that post.
Sorry for OT, but you have no active discussions in your journal, and Slashdot lacks PMs. The discussion in question has been archived.
Well, there's another form of voting - you can easily vote with your feet and choose Slashdot or Kuro5hin or some other site.
:).
Despite the complaints Slashdot seems to get more users than many other sites (which allow voting from everybody).
Different sites for different folks
Back to the topic: "Different sites for different folks" goes for Yahoo Mail vs Gmail.
I don't see how Yahoo Mail is significantly superior to Gmail or vice versa. They're both pretty basic in features and most people only need basic features. AND _more_importantly_ users of either service can still easily communicate with each other. So there's not that much point advocating either service.
In contrast users of Yahoo Messenger can't easily chat with users of MSN, ICQ, various IRC or Google Chat and so on, same for various services. That to me seems a topic/area of more interest and significance. Come to think of it, users of Slashdot can't easily communicate with users of Kuro5hin...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, POP3 sucks quite nicely. POP3 sucks down my email every 15 minutes and puts it in my Inbox on my notebook, where I can organize it into folders to my heart's content and store it forever without fear that any particular webmail provider will go out of business or start charging usary fees.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
Different philosophy on email. Although I occasionally use my GMail (and, less often, my Yahoo! mail) accounts, I would never consider them "primary" addresses. Having been around the block several times on "free" email, I know that sooner or later someone has to charge a buck somewhere to pay for the service. Maybe GMail will be different, but empirical evidence suggests otherwise.
My point was rather that if you do want to use your GMail address but don't like the interface, GMail allows POP3 downloads to whatever client you prefer. So you can stick with Eudora, or Outlook, or Thunderbird, or even Yahoo.
Personally, I don't think I could ever be comfortable storing my email on a third-party system. I prefer to own my own domain name that I can move to any hosting service, and download my messages to my own system for organization and storage. Yes, it's true that method doesn't give me full access wherever I may go, but since I keep everything sync'ed to my laptop, and that's with me almost always, I have no problems. On the few occasions that its been necessary, webmail (either through my hosted domain or using GMail/Yahoo) fills the gaps.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I prefer to own my own domain name that I can move to any hosting service, and download my messages to my own system for organization and storage.
I use my own domain name, and simply host the mail at Yahoo. It's a pay service, but I already use Yahoo/SBC for DSL. I don't own a laptop, and this works well for me.
I haven't been hosting email at home because the costs are prohibitive-- I need an extra machine, increased electricity bills, etc. Although, I just bought a $200 server from Gateway, and am looking at hosting email from home again.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Yahoo recently cancelled my email account without warning, and without any possibility for me to retreive my archived email, and all because I had let the account sit unused for four months. They had two other email addresses on file for my Yahoo groups account, but they didn't bother to give me any warning. I used that account for specific types of infrequent communication, and I'm really pissed that they cancelled it without warning and with NO possibility of restoring the old messages.
On the other hand, I recently logged into my Google gmail account, which I hadn't used for 10 months, and it was still there.
Short answer: Yahoo will screw you over with no chance of redress. In contrast, Google is still smart enough to not abuse its customer base like that.
I guess I wasn't clear. I also use an outside hosting service. It's $55/year including the domain. CPanel on Linux. Unlimited mailboxes, webmail, pop3, imap4, unlimited email forwarders, choice of webmail interfaces, frontpage, mysql, everything I need (except shell access, but I've managed to get by without).
With mail-only services running $20/year+ per address, this seems to be the best value for me. I've got over a dozen mailboxes setup for friends and family. And I never have to worry about changing my email again.
One feature I'd never give up is the ability to make up an email address on the fly when registering with on-line websites. The confirmation email gets routed to my default mailbox. Then, when the spam starts rolling in, I just setup a forwarding address to reject and never worry about it again.
I have an Exchange server at home. I used to use a Pop3 retriever on the server, but since I switched to the notebook its more convenient to suck the mail in through Outlook and just sync my data store to the server when I'm home. I also use Thunderbird for my personal accounts, and use XP/2003's file & folder replication to update a copy on the server for use on my desktop.
There are certainly other ways to do things. This works for me. I tried IMAP and didn't like the folder organization it forced on me. But as with everything else surrounding technology, your mileage may vary.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
But you still can't keep the mail in sync across multiple computers-- you'll have two message stores which will get out of sync over time.