Web Worker Daily

Andrew Flusche says: April 10th, 2007 9:39am

Anne,

This is a great critique of the PC Magazine article. Your post’s title even sums up the article really great. Keep up the wonderful work.

Andrew

Anne Zelenka says: April 10th, 2007 9:42am

Thanks, Andrew! Struggled a bit on the headline for that, so glad to know it provided a useful summary.

kelly says: April 10th, 2007 9:46am

Agreed, and well written! I recently switched back to Gmail, now using their hosted version. I switched from IMAP, mostly because I love the mobile interface, and the search works flawlessly for me.

Robert says: April 10th, 2007 11:01am

Also in complete agreement with this post.

I much prefer Gmail’s stripped down interface, it’s fast, even on older computers, plus if I wanted to use Outlook, that’s what I’d use.

Plus, the bonus of being able to access other Google apps I use (Reader, Blogger, Calender) right from my inbox. Oh, and not having ads appear in my sig without having to pay extra is nice too.

Chris Webb says: April 10th, 2007 1:08pm

Right on the money, Anne. I would also point out how the online community has embraced and extended Gmail – look at how many GreaseMonkey scripts there are for Gmail vs Yahoo! mail for instance.

Gmail is a poweruser’s tool – it’s really an apples to oranges comparison.

buster says: April 10th, 2007 1:11pm

well done!

Jay says: April 10th, 2007 2:14pm

I too was disappointed by PC Mag’s article. Thanks to you, I don’t have to come up with a response. You kind of nailed it. I particularly appreciated your clarification of what AJAX is for and that the keyboard is where it’s at. That part of PC Mag’s article really did just offend me.

Leo says: April 10th, 2007 2:26pm

I agree – Gmail uses a different model, and that takes getting used to if you like the desktop model. But it’s much more powerful. The tag-and-archive approach instead of filing everything in folders is also hard to adjust to for many people, as is the threaded conversations approach. But both are better than the traditional approaches, IMO, once you get used to them.

arghyle » Blog Archive » Is Gmail Losing Its Edge? says: April 10th, 2007 2:49pm

[...] at Web Worker Daily there is a pretty solid rebuttal to PC Mag’s claim. The author at WWD points out that Gmail [...]

Anne Zelenka says: April 10th, 2007 2:50pm

Chris: thanks for bringing up the customizability/extensibility of Gmail via Greasemonkey scripts. That was also in the back of my mind as I read the PC Mag article. It’s not for everyone, because not everyone wants to download and install or even write their own scripts. But for those who do, it’s really cool and useful.

Jay: the conflation of Ajax with drag and drop was a bit strange. While I know some people think Ajax is only about dynamic effects I was surprised that PC Magazine promoted that idea.

Leo: I am so used to the threaded conversations approach that I forgot even to mention it, but it’s another point in Gmail’s favor, for those who like such an approach.

Rob says: April 10th, 2007 2:52pm

Ditto here – I’ve moved most of my accounts into Gmail. It is a much cleaner interface.

Plus I find Yahoo’s new client and Live’s new client to be very slow when compared to gmail. Ajax is great, but sometimes it’s use goes a little overboard.

Logical Extremes says: April 10th, 2007 3:19pm

I use a mix of Gmail and Yahoo (Plus), but the desktop is still where everything coverges for me (see today’s Lifehacker article about this too).

It did take some getting used to the conversations in Gmail, but I find Gmail very useful. The for-fee Yahoo (included at no extra cost from my ISP) also has some features I take advantage of (see my post comparing the two), but I’ve steered clear of the Yahoo beta as I found it too slow, buggy, and missing features. I’ve never really considered Hotmail a contender.

Robert says: April 10th, 2007 11:32pm

Another thing to note…does anyone REALLY think Yahoo’s “unlimited” storage is going to last?

It won’t be long before people use it to backup their entire hard drives and it also becomes a major warez distribution center…far too open to abuse.

I’ve learned from Canadian cellphone providers that nothing is “unlimited”

learncaptivate says: April 10th, 2007 11:43pm

hey anne,
your review of gmail contra the new drag and droppers is light on the key facts which make gmail the pure winner. in short, gmail always auto saved everything, and it was always a single click away.
moreover, gmail did not get caught up in all the flashy colors and squeezing of ms and yahoo which are a total distraction and unnecessary. gmail which adapted the desktop hoopla would be like trading your favorite everyday practical outfit for a flashy costume. really one size viz email fits all.
bye

Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction « Tons of Fresh News says: April 11th, 2007 3:57am

[...] Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction Has Gmail been left behind? PC Magazine thinks so… But desktop email does not represent the [...]

Kailash Nadh says: April 11th, 2007 4:23am

Gmail = simplicity.
Yahoo = bloated bulkiness, what a waste of pixels.

Jason Keirstead says: April 11th, 2007 4:25am

Something you touched upon but not nearly enough – GMail doesnt’t need drag and drop at all. You’re not SUPPOED to organize emails in GMail. Recieve it, if its something important label it, if it’s trivial, archive it. Thats all.

You don’t have to spend any time moving things to folders cause there is NO REASON to keep your inbox “tidy” like their is with other mail clients. This is because GMail’s search is so good. Any email you want from any time in the past is right at your fingertips. I say that as a person who currently has 1000+ messages in my inbox, (and countless thousands archived).

I think this is the big problem I have when I see people reviewing GMail. They just don’t know how to use it properly. Once you learn to “just forget” about handing your email, and let Google take care of it, you will find you spend much less time screwing around in your inbox and more time being productive.

Navdeep says: April 11th, 2007 5:09am

I hope GMail is the best online email client. Google has been doing wonderful stuff from their start.

Andy says: April 11th, 2007 5:28am

gmail just sucks in different ways to other email clients…

There’s no good way of controlling what gets automagically added to contacts (as others have mentioned the contacts bit is sucky).

Some things are really hard to represent using labels e.g. hierarchical information that could be easily represented using folders. I see folders and labels as complimentary to each other.

There’s no way of showing stuff that’s not labelled

I’d love to adopt gmail fulltime there’s just plenty of things about it that get on my wick

Jeff says: April 11th, 2007 5:47am

Before I post my reply I just want to state that I use GMail for my blog’s email traffic, so I am not Google-bashing for the sake of Google-bashing.

That having been said, this article reads to me more like an apology for GMail from a Google fan than a real critique of GMail as an “anti-Outlook” Web application. There’s very little in GMail’s alleged “different direction” that is that actually different from the immediate pre-2.0 upgrades of Hotmail or Yahoo!Mail (I’ve never used AOL so I can’t comment on it).

No one would ever have accused those products of being innovative, exciting, or fresh – I suspect because the word “Google” wasn’t part of their name.

The things that are pointed out as “different” about Gmail vs. the newer Web-based email offerings in the above piece (tagging, keyboard shortcuts) are both present in Outlook, and keyboard shortcuts are prominently (and irritatingly IMO) pushed on users of the new Yahoo!Mail product.

Three years ago GMail’s GB of storage and early AJAX-based interface was way ahead of the curve, but Google’s well-known pattern of leaving their products in perpetual beta, clinging to a stark (as opposed to minimalist) interface design, and inexplicable lack of real sorting capabilities three years out has rendered it an also-ran in my opinion.

morris says: April 11th, 2007 5:47am

Glad you cleared gmail’s good name —

I love the clean interface and accessibilty of gmail, not to mention the fact that it works just about 99% of the time (here and there I get JS bugs that crash – but rarely).

I also have a hotmail account for junk — using the new beta version of that is the biggest pain I’ve ever dealt with!! Load time = huge, links rarely work, and I can watch as my cpu usage steadily rises over the course of leaving the sucker open for a couple hours. May be from NOT using internet explorer with it, but that should hardly be a good reason.

-rm

Johnasp says: April 11th, 2007 5:50am

After using Gmail for years with it’s lighting search, I dread having to find an old email in Outlook….so slowwwwwwww.

Patrick says: April 11th, 2007 5:53am

A great post. I realy think the greatness of gmail is that reading the email is like reading a chat from an IM client. The replies aren’t hashed out with > and >> and >>> and >>>> and so on. You get a more clean response. Also the storage can’t be beat. Plus, the free pop forwarding is the best. Why would you charge for that. I also think the SPAM filter has been quite amazing compared to yahoo or hotmail.

Whiteboards says: April 11th, 2007 5:55am

I think that you hit this one on the head. It seems that their argument would be the same as saying that the Apple Ipod has fallen behind behind because it doesn’t have a tape player. Its about being innovative and about doing things in different way, rather than just copying the old model and throwing some new colors in there.
—-
Shredders

bgfay says: April 11th, 2007 6:00am

In terms of updates to Gmail which I use exclusively, the first thing I want is to completely integrate Docs with Gmail. They should really be one thing. You type something and at the end you have the choice to save, print, or email it (or a combination of those). If they were to make it so that the word processor and email program were one (something I’ve wanted since I first began using email) the thing would be great.

Now, think of that as a first step. Next, Blogger gets pulled into this. Now the choices are save, print, email, or blog the item. Cool. Get the calendar to work more seemlessly and my life is pretty much inside Gmail, which would fine for me.

All this said, I always have my first tab open to Gmail. I also have Yahoo and Hotmail accounts that I use for spam (signing up for mailing lists and the like). If anyone thinks that Yahoo is half of what Gmail is, they are using something I haven’t seen so far. Yahoo almost always requires reentry of password and I have to stare at that dancing guy for five or ten seconds on a fiber optic line.

I’ll stick with Gmail. I do hope that they offer some new features soon.

Neil Albrock says: April 11th, 2007 6:27am

I have to say that as a recent switcher to GMail from Yahoo Mail, I am delighted with the lightweight paradigm being put forward. I love the interface, the search is fast and bang on and the stacked conversation style for email threads is brilliant.

I wouldn’t go back.

Matt says: April 11th, 2007 6:33am

I do like the new Yahoo! Beta, but Gmail’s uncluttered interface and OUTSTANDING SPAM filters really can’t be touched by anybody else. I’ll stick with Gmail…

Ron K. Jeffries says: April 11th, 2007 6:59am

You are spot on. Gmail is a different animal than other web mail systems. It has served me well for several years. I’m even considering paying for the premium Gmail version. Now if they would also support IMAP so my Treo700p and ChatterEmail could more easily read/write Gmail…

Muebles says: April 11th, 2007 7:15am

I agree. But i still love GMail, you know ???.

There is no way i would go back to Outlook !!!

Regards

M.J.A. says: April 11th, 2007 7:21am

Great article Anne! Well written as well. Between the Gmail spam filter, and thought-out filters I get almost no spam in my inbox, the organization has taken a little while to get used to, but once you have it down, you’re better off. Simplicity is key. I don’t have time to go through fifty folders by hand, between search + labels + keyboard shortcuts you can’t lose.

GMail is a great service with an uncluttered interface, and if you aren’t a fan simply ask for your money back.

Joining Dots says: April 11th, 2007 8:20am

I use Gmail and Outlook and I wouldn’t want to give either up. My domain email gets forwarded both to Gmail and to an ISP account that is sync’d through Outlook. I use Outlook to mange my diary and contacts and do the majority of my email. It syncs to my PDA and mobile phone and gives me offline access – important because I travel a lot and am often disconnected from the web but want to check info without incurring a mobile data connection cost. I used Gmail so that I can access email whenever I am without my PC and for its excellent mobile client that I run on my Nokia – not perfect (and download costs are currently expensive) but quick and easy to use UI for checking if I have email that requires an urgent response.

Ranjit Wassan says: April 11th, 2007 8:31am

Yahoo Mail and Live Mail are just Outlook Clones…

They are rubbish…

Why doesn’t some scream threaded emails!!! You fools you are getting passed off the old tosh in a shiny new package and loving it.

You must love those HUGE UGLY banner ads in the middle of your screen in yahoo mail and the distinct lack of features…

Feature for Feature there is no competition!!

Google innovates – Yahoo and M$ scramble to copy eg
maps.google.co.uk = maps.yahoo.co.uk = maps.live.co.uk

thats is juts one small example!!

Absolutely Bollocks – who the hell reads PC magazine anyway…

I wonder if they take monetary contributions??

Jon says: April 11th, 2007 8:57am

Hi;

One of the best developments capabilities for Web apps is Flex2 or Flash. Unlike AJAX, it has better security, can connect with a socket for great ASYNC capabilities, and is far better for cross platform/browser compatibilities. Pronto! is a Flash UI for all media, already more advanced than outlook.

https://www.communigate.com/demoFlash/demo_10.html

Zoli's Blog says: April 11th, 2007 9:00am

Webmail: PC Magazine Confuses Productivity with Popularity

PC Magazine compares the 3 major Webmail providers: AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, and makes the summary call of declaring Gmail “left behind” – without reviewing Gmail.  How funny. They key criticism is that – unlike the other three -, Gmail does…

gingermiss says: April 11th, 2007 9:00am

I much prefer Gmail’s stripped down interface, it’s fast, even on older computers, plus if I wanted to use Outlook, that’s what I’d use.

Right on target. Part of the joy of using Gmail is that it’s perfectly simple.

Having used several other e-mail clients in the past, I vastly prefer Gmail.

Juan says: April 11th, 2007 9:10am

Excellent review!

tim says: April 11th, 2007 9:36am

Recently I also got a yahoo-mailaccount, to see the diffence with gmail, which I’ve been using for a few years now.

And it didn’t take to long to realize that gmail still is better in many ways, but mainly it’s simplicity is it’s key advantage. There are some ads but they don’t flash into your eyes. Gmail does what I want it to do, mainly emailing quick en effectively.

Milt says: April 11th, 2007 9:57am

Its the Folder Problem that ruins it for me. I work with a large database corresponding with distant colleagues via email. Without a hierarchical sorting system it borders on useless trying to work in an intuitive fashion. Yes I can search for all my needs and eventually pull up the information needed, but if your working with hundreds of labels, labels that all have the same value without hierarchy, its a lost cause. If your working with so many data entries that you can not remember them all to know what to enter in the search field .. your a goner. With a tree based hierarchy you just follow the path with ease intuitively. It baffles me how google has dropped the ball on this one point for so long, and a major point at that.

bvontease says: April 11th, 2007 10:25am

must see this:

http://bvontease.wordpress.com/

Rob says: April 11th, 2007 10:43am

I prefer gmail to all other webmail, and while others may gave “slicker” interfaces gmail works where it counts namely behind the scenes. I use thunderbird as my desktop email program and it works beautifully with gmail, something I cannot say the same for either hotmail or yahoo, so of the 3 gmail is the best at doing what it’s supposed to do provide quick reliable email service. If however what you want is a program that allows you to drag and drop emails from folder to folder without doing any actual emailing then may gmail inst for you.

Louis says: April 11th, 2007 10:59am

Google Search Suggest in the “to:” field is very web 2 to me: that list of addresses that is pulled down when I type the first letter of a name. It’s one of the main reason I stayed with gmail. Hotmail tried, just doesnt work as well.

Labelling is pretty awesome once u’re used to it, although giving the options for folder is neat.

Google’s strategy works, tying google account to so many services: I use notebook and picasa regularly. Sending photos through picasa (using my gmail’s address book) is sleek and fast.

Other features; “conversation” make my inbox neat, excellent filter, quick reply and forward (how is this not ajax?) and so on

Yahoo and hotmail has a long way to catch up. Speed and Simplicity is key. On hotmail I cant even see the number of messages in my inbox, due to the limiting viewing left panel and incompatibility with firefox. If I have to pay gmail, I would.

rjowen says: April 11th, 2007 11:29am

The last thing I want GMail to be is outlook. I’m not opposed to adding new features, but really, gmail has PERFECTLY addressed my needs as a user since day 1. The paradigm was different, to be sure, but I found that it made MORE sense. I like the emphasis on search rather than sort. As you said, the sensible functions of sort are taken care of by gmail’s labels. Maybe it should be easier to add labels, but the feature is there. The other use for sorting – finding emails to delete – shouldn’t be a problem for gmail users, since with 2 gigs of space you should just be archiving everything that doesn’t demand immediate attention anyway. If it’s really junk, well, you’ll never see it again, and it’s not your disk space, so who cares? And if not, maybe some day you’ll come back and try to find it, and thanks to google’s great searching abilities, you’ll be able to find it again.

Hooray gmail!

Marc Gayle says: April 11th, 2007 11:48am

pcmag…*ugh*

lnxwalt says: April 11th, 2007 11:58am

Yahoo’s client is buggy and slow. I find that I frequently can not open a message until I log in again later.

GMail, on the other hand, is almost everything I want in an e-mail client. Plus, on my personal GMail account, I do not have to install a chat/IM client to chat with family members.

Outlook? I support Outlook users. It is anything-but-intuitive. If anything, one should move away from the Outlook-style interface for Web-based products, much as ThinkFree trying to duplicate the interfaces of Word and Excel causes frustrated users.

tech says: April 11th, 2007 1:06pm

yahoo mail is better than g m a i l ;)

absolutly…

The New Basement Tapes » Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction says: April 11th, 2007 3:20pm

[...] Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction « [...]

eteraz says: April 11th, 2007 3:25pm

This is such a heartfelt and impassioned and intelligent defense of gmail, the best technology for an average computer user.

I don’t know what Yahoo or PC Mag find so great about Outlook.

You can just integrate your gmail into your outlook if you want that.

Yahoo’s beta client sucks. It is slow, cumbersome, and has a HUGE lag every time you scroll down more than 20 emails at once.

Besides, with Yahoo you have to separately download a HUGE CLUNKING instant messaging service while gmail integrates that into their email.

Gmail Rules.

eteraz says: April 11th, 2007 3:27pm

Gmail Guys: If you are reading.

Please introduce some new features soon. It’s been a while.

Different themes would be nice. A black and white one, for example.

Also we need a shortcut key to “Delete” – which sends stuff into the TRASHCAN and NOT to permanently Delete.

I do NOT use my shortcuts b/c ultimately the most important function — deletion — is not available as a shortcut.

WordPress Wednesday News: Security Release, Hot Tips for WordPress Bloggers, and a WordPress Plugin for Your Next of Kin at The Blog Herald says: April 11th, 2007 4:25pm

[...] Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction [...]

Patrick says: April 11th, 2007 4:30pm

By far, I think Gmail is the best email client. Labels are powerful and much better than folders when used properly. The problem is they’re foreign to people trained on folder hierarchy. What surprises me is that Google hasn’t made the attempt to merge label and pseudo-folder behavior yet. It’s not difficult – in fact a wonderful implementation already exists in iTunes. Think of the Inbox as the My Music and labels as Playlists. The Gmail interface only needs to be modified so that email (songs) dragged onto labels (playlists) automatically gets assigned that label. Unlike songs, the typical behavior for viewing emails is a single click so to get around that, Gmail needs to add a “handle” hotspot for dragging an email conversation. Boom! Easy as pie and the great part is that a huge Internet-using population is already pre-trained due to the iTunes ubiquitous interface.

ETERAZ, that feature does exist. It’s the “Archive” (button). Keyboard shortcut is “y”. Email which is deleted does go into the “Trash” folder however it defaults to cleaning out anything older than 30 days. You need to program your brain away from Outlook. Think of Gmail’s email handling as paper letters and the Archive as an infinitely large storage bin and the Trash as a paper shredder.

tecosystems » links for 2007-04-12 says: April 11th, 2007 10:36pm

[...] Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction « Anne’s piece is worth reading in its own right, but check out the comments supporting her take (tags: AnneZelenka Gmail Yahoo Ajax Outlook UI) [...]

Biggy says: April 12th, 2007 12:44am

I would prefer GMail not choose the track followed by Yahoo and Hotmail. The so Called Ajax Interface is really a problem for us people in 3rd World Countries where the internet is slower then the Dial Up in western countries. It takes ages to load my inbox in Yahoo or Hotmail, but GMail opens up in a flash. Way to go GM

Danno says: April 12th, 2007 12:58am

Using other clients is painful for me since I’ve adapted to GMail.

GMail itself was never painful.

Threaded view is god.

A delete kb shortcut would be nice, but j/k plus x and the occasional mouse click isn’t that bad. Of course, I keep my inbox pretty empty, so deletion never involves going through multiple pages.

Danno says: April 12th, 2007 1:02am

Oh, damn, forgot three things:

1) It took too damn long for the delete button to actually get added.

2) The spam folder should NOT show you how many spam messages you have. That’s just something meaingless to attenuate to. Luckily, there’s a greasemonkey script to make that go away.

3) Mark as read kb shortcut please? Perhaps v (viewed/not viewed)?

Bryan says: April 12th, 2007 2:46am

If I could make rules to label things based on certain criteria then I would be fine with Gmail. Until then, desktop email client for me.

Sam says: April 12th, 2007 7:37am

My yahoo forwards to my Gmail account. Thats the best thing I can think of about the yahoo interface. And this feature can’t be accessed from the new AJAX version yet!

James Governor says: April 12th, 2007 7:47am

how many people use gmail? any civilians? just dorks? i am interested because i just dont know. it doesnt really do it for me although the performance is seriously impressive. and i dont like offline, but thats a differnt question

betonbetts says: April 12th, 2007 8:04am

hope google don’t sell us out. the G-mailer….is it true that relevant online ads come up co-ordinately with the topic on email you looking at? if you guys are interested in some google facts…drop by http://betonbetts.wordpress.com i found the GOOGOL book very fascinating. should check it out. xo

betonbetts says: April 12th, 2007 8:07am

i mean…are they really moderating our email content??? but again…doesnt hotmail/yahoo also do so?

dpcough says: April 12th, 2007 1:39pm

I like Gmail the best, it loads the quickest and I rather search and all the messages are organized into one.

wwwnewnews says: April 12th, 2007 10:05pm

thanks! gmail is a very good email provider.

ZePy - Just Short Tips » Blog Archive » Latest Google Interesting News says: April 14th, 2007 10:34pm

[...] Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction “Has Gmail been left behind? PC Magazine thinks so… But desktop email does not represent the best or only paradigm for handling email. Just because you can now make an Ajax-based web client that feels like Outlook doesn’t mean that you should.” [...]

Mungo says: April 15th, 2007 12:46pm

How to delete all cookies in Firefox on closing, EXCEPT for those from selected domains – also very useful!

http://mungobah.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-delete-all-cookies-in-firefox-on.html

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Yes, You Can Make Outlook Gmail-like... Sort of « says: April 20th, 2007 5:58am

[...] mean you don’t want to explore new ways of interacting with it. Gmail represents a different way of interacting with email, one some people find quite [...]

Motorcycle Guy says: April 27th, 2007 7:13am

Yeah I agree gmail is definitely stepping in a different direction. I think it eases people into a work in which they have no privacy.

lnxwalt says: May 3rd, 2007 3:58pm

I have since retried Yahoo’s new interface. Yikes! It is HORRIBLE! It takes forever to come up. At least it doesn’t seem to be Flash, like their new maps. The single good feature I found with new Y!Mail is drag-n-drop DHTML for moving messages into folders.

Y!Mail’s right-side ad banner sometimes crowds the actual content that you are trying to view into half or less of the screen. Perhaps it is just an advertiser’s bad JavaScript, but it makes it hard to use when it happens. Yahoo! also still has those distracting dancing cowboy ads–if you want me to respond positively to your ad, don’t make it so that your ad prevents me from paying attention to the site I’m using. That is definitely one lender that will never get me as a customer.

GMail still rules. Besides the Web interface, I also use it with Thunderbird (no extra charge), although I would really like IMAP support, so I can use the account from multiple computers. Y!Mail does not have POP/IMAP support in the free version, last time I checked.

» News to know: Patch fiesta; Boot Camp; Apache calls out Sun; Slow hard disks | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com says: May 23rd, 2007 2:47pm

[...] Web Worker Daily: Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction. [...]

Gmail: Not Behind, Just Going in a Different Direction « Susanwc’s Weblog says: October 8th, 2007 8:30am

[...] read more | digg story [...]