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Google To Force Basic HTML Gmail On Older Chrome Versions (computerworld.com)
Earlier this week, Google quietly announced that Gmail will only be partially supported on older versions of Chrome browser soon. From a report: Users of Chrome version 53 and older editions of the browser could start being redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December, the company said in a blog post. Starting next week, users who will be affected by the change will start seeing a banner at the top of Gmail telling them to upgrade to an up-to-date version of Google's browser. The affected browser versions include Chrome v49, the last version of the software that supports XP and Vista. While Microsoft officially ended support for XP more than two and a half years ago, Gmail has continued to work with it. Vista Service Pack 2 will reach the end of its extended support period on April 11.
Some other browser, like Opera or FireFox
Or don't use GMail in the first place
I will continue to use XP on my desktop and if Google doesn't like it, they can release a newer version for XP. Screw 'em.
I will continue to use XP on my desktop and if Google doesn't like it, they can release a newer version for XP.
Screw 'em.
I don't think they particularly care if you use XP. They just don't want to support XP in chrome or gmail anymore.
If the user agent string is configurable in those older Chrome versions, that should solve the problem. If changing the user agent doesn't solve the problem, then perhaps Google has been doing something shady in their browsers all along.
Also, if Google is going to stick users of older Chrome versions with basic HTML, I wonder what they'll get up to with other brands of browser.
I'm so glad I never liked Chrome and never liked Gmail, so I never used them. It's bad enough that their search engine has mostly become a steaming pile of irrelevancy that can't tell the difference between a user trying to drill down through the clouds of shit they throw up, and a bot. I'm getting really sick of being forced to go through endless captchas as a result of Google's 'lowest common denominator' philosophy.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
... cutting them off because ...
They are not being "cut off". They are just being downgraded to something that is still functional, but not as fancy.
My point was that they won't release an updated version of Chrome for XP, so I have to use what they left for it.
So the experience guys have not yet found the basic version? If only all the websites would have a basic version, which would not be ruined into modern rich hipstery mobile responsive experience. Quite likely the basic version loads 10 times faster and does not eat 100% of CPU in mouse movement polling loop.
It's faster, and lower attack surface for vulnerabilities.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
At some point, every team has to make a decision on how much effort should go into supporting "legacy systems." Maybe they made internal changes that don't work under XP, require Microsoft libraries that weren't released for Windows XP, etc. At that point you then have to write and maintain two different code paths, one for XP and earlier and one for 7 and later. The point eventually came where they decided the XP codepaths were too much for too little benefit. I don't know what challenges they had to face, but this is a choice that just about every software project makes eventually.
My goodness, gmail's interface is so freaking bad that perhaps going back to a simple HTML it may become useful. Some good news at last.
Just use the basic html version (or use an external client that connect to gmail through POP3 or IMAP). Problem solved and works much better.
But yeah, not sure why you would use chrome in the first place though.
I liked the more basic interface while I had to use it recently for a short time. (The newer interface kept crashing Firefox at work, but they finally upgraded the version on our work computers.) Unfortunately, I don't believe it has much support for folders, which Gmail has renamed to "Labels". I couldn't figure out how to move messages out of the Inbox and into other folders. (You could ADD other labels, but not remove the Inbox one.) Maybe I'm just stoopid.
So as well protected as the nuclear facility in Qum, Iran, right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I am pretty sure not a single person give 1 single shit what free email you use, let alone google, to them you are a burden and I think the message is pretty clear... its google telling you go fuck off
Occasionally if Google Search decides that your recent queries look like those of an abusive bot, such as pasting in your credit card number to see if it's on any public list, it'll return a CAPTCHA and/or links to popular Windows antivirus software instead of search results.
There are millions of PCs in the 3rd world running XP, 512Mb RAM is very common
For 512 MB, why doesn't Lubuntu work?
Yes indeed, I've been using the basic HTML GMail interface for years now, never liking their slow JS version that blocks every time you click on anything.
I've posted instructions to do so before:
http://pipedot.org/2TPQ
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I don't see why this is a problem. I went to great lengths to figure out how to stop Google updating my Gmail from the old simple HTML version. It's simple, fast (even on dodgie wifi connections) and does everything I want to do.
The "Basic" interface has always been more useful. It works on more web browsers, including embedded ones (I think I once used it on a PS3) and it isn't slow. I'd use it if I didn't use Gmail with real e-mail clients over IMAP (on both mobile and desktop).
Hardly surprising. I just found out that if I access YouTube with Firefox, instead of Chrome, some key features are missing, such as highlighted comments. You know, features driven by plain HTML that don't need or utilize special functionality exclusive to Chrome.
I guess Google isn't content discriminating against the competition, and now they're doing so against their own software, too.
Please?
It does have some Gnome or Poettering-ware tools, such as Network-Manager. So it's not the lightest LXDE desktop around. It has Chromium as the default browser, too. On the other hand, having Network-Manager instead of wicd makes it compatible with 3G/4G modems.
That is their normal practice.
Is there a reason other than megalomania why Google should want to force users to one option or another?
No, thought not.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
It worked just fine.
Fortunately these browsers all support HTML5. We're good. That's why we count IETF and the good standards they bring.