I got in to the oh-so-awesome GMail network courtesy of a friend last week. Now, another e-mail id to look after? That is not exactly convenient. I already take care of around 5 mail ids. And 2 of them are web based so they need manual checks every now and then. POP enabled mails do have their advantages. One click takes care of all the IDs in 1 go but GMail is not pop enabled. So, I won’t be using it full time of course… but a test ride? Sure, it needs to be looked into. It’s what supposed to be giving the web mail biggies nightmares and Yahoo! has responded with an announcement that free mail accounts will be upgraded to around 100 megs pretty soon.
So, what do I think about GMail? Here is what I discovered…
The first thing was a big turn off. I am a full time Opera browser user. I despise Internet Explorer and not exactly like Firefox. And with GMail, Opera is not even officially listed on supported browsers. I tried logging in anyways and was not successful. Next I tried on Firefox which is officially supported and weird, it did not let me login! The problem perhaps lies with my version of Firefox as I was able to login into GMail using an older variant of Firebird. Next I loaded myIE2… an Internet Explorer clone. It logged me in thankfully. But as I noticed later, many things were not working as expected so I moved on to Internet Explorer. So, as for browser support is considered, I would not like GMail at all if I am supposed to use IE for it! No matter it has Gigabyte space or what. I want Opera supported. Even Firefox won’t satisfy me. I wrote a mail to GMail people and got a fast reply back. They are looking into the browser compatibility issues and have planned to support as many of them before the final release as possible.
Using Internet Explorer for so long after such a long time was tough. I was constantly using mouse gestures which I love so much in Opera. But using GMail for sometime had me understood why GMail is not supported on many browsers. It uses too many funky features that are perhaps only IE supported that supporting other browsers with same functionality would be tough. Features they are, but they would not conform to standards as far as I see. Google does not have a DTD on its homepage makes me believe, Google is not exactly worried about supporting standards. Orkut too has minor problems with Opera but I am hopeful that Google will find some way out.
Click the image for the enlarged version
But I must admit, when it comes to user experience GMail knocks Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail hard. Speed is extra ordinary. It simply is too fast that you fear if it’s indeed a secure service. The pages load as if they are static html files. Scary at first, but you love it. And Google I believe loads a lot more than what you see. Coz clicking on advance options opens them in an instance. CSS and layers hard in usage! I loved it. Features that I have only seen in Opera’s M2 are available in GMail. Quick Reply/Forward box at the bottom of every opened mail lets you forward it or reply to it from there only. No need to open a new page! Mails are shown as a thread which is very convenient as you see all the mails related to each other in one single instance. There are labels for you to assign to mails and there is more. It’s one heck of a wonderful service that begs you think, how is it free! Here comes the crucial part. I did not see many ads. In fact most pages did not have any. One big mail with some good content showed the adsense ads which are creating furors in the market. They are not intrusive, irritating. They just are present at one side. It’s not something that’s in your face. And that is something wonderful. Compare that to Yahoo’s big flash ads and Microsoft’s heavy pages. You are in a world where you do what you are supposed to do. Manage your mails. And manage them fast!
One thing is clear, if the first impression is to go by; Microsoft and Yahoo! are in some trouble in the coming months. People might be using GMail currently for spams (in the name of testing it!) or Google might have listed Microsoft and Yahoo! as risk factors in IPO filing but I guess, people there are more worried.
Sushubh Mittal is the Tech Columnist at Search Engine Journal and also the publisher of TechWhack, an upcoming Blog Portal on technology.
MyIE2 is just a wrapper that uses IE. Of course you already know this. So unless you modified MyIE2’s options drastically to disable features such as JavaScript, Gmail should work smooth.
@Sri:
Yeap, myIE2 is just a wrapper for IE engine. But it sure comes with loads of inbuilt settings. Maybe some of those stopped some Gmail features for me. But overall the experience of using Gmail is refreshing if you are on a slow connection. It simply blows the competition at the moment.
Will the public release slow it down? Only time will tell… :)
Our logs register hundreds of thousand of page views per day. NOTHING like HUGE sites. 99% of all traffic use, like it or not, is IE. Almost all software development houses I know no longer bother to support browsers other than IE. Especially for advanced JS stuff. Our backrooms require IE6 and we make no apology for same. I understand fully your desire to keep this broswerr, but even I eventually had to dump Netscape! Robert
I’ve used both myIE2 and FireFox with GMail with no problems. Perhaps you have some weird non-standard settings in play, or a foobar’d computer or…?
With that said, I do pretty much agree with the rest of your review :)
yeah, problem just might be at my end… My PC is the test hub of all sort of experimentations :)
One thing I noticed, and I am not an expert, is that it doesn’t automatically forward you to a secure server, that you have to specify https:// if you want security. Otherwise, you may in fact be using a nonsecure connection.
But maybe that occurs to you much more easily than it does me.
Hi All,
Thanks for your concern and your support. We have been working with Google on this and it looks like we have a fix that will be released in Opera v 7.60. Please look for this and thanks again for your support.
so it means Opera will have another version before O8 :D
i tried several versions of firefox to login gmail (0.8, 0.9 RC and 0.9 release). all successful.
some people have reported problems with their version of firefox. i know coz people have commented on my blog. i even get a lot of hits from google related to topic :) it works fine on 0.9 here without a problem…
I really wanted GMail, but when I got it and found that I couldn’t use Opera with it – well, I just don’t check my mail much, as I don’t want to use anything but Opera. As far as Orkut, it was so incredibly slow with IE that I could not navigate the site at all. I am able to go there with Opera, but then, speed is what Opera is all about for me. Everything else is icing on the cake, and when it can be used with GMail, I’ll be checking my mail :)
How do i find my e-mail?
Just wanted to say hi, thanks and bye
Whoa….check out this page…hmmm, and I thought this was only for the kids
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no thank
no thank
quisiera sacar una cuenta en gmail
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ben hangi ayda doÄŸudum ?
Hi this is a very good site with full of inflrmation.
hai
I just like spam! I’m collocting junk email…
I haven’t gotten much done these days. So it goes. What can I say? I’ve just been letting everything pass me by. Basically not much going on lately, but it’s not important. I’ve basically been doing nothing worth mentioning.
Gmail is great programmed web based software. And it is nearly the first site that used web 2.0 and ajax technologies.
I am using gmail for 5 years and tested it in many browser, firefox , ie, avant(ie) and opera. I have never seen any problem.
Mehmet
I have to say that it is by far best the none-obtrusive mail clien available.
bob
yahoo and msn mail are nowhere. Google lies in front with Ajax Flex etc