
Ask HN: What does gmail do when showing the “Loading” screen? - daxfohl
I&#x27;m curious if anybody has investigated this.  It seems like (a) it should be unnecessary to have a loading screen <i>at all</i> for a mostly static page, (b) even for a lazy-loaded dynamic page there shouldn&#x27;t be all that much involved in loading your last 100 emails, and (c) it&#x27;s the antithesis of google to make things unnecessarily slow (okay debatable, but <i>most of the time</i> speed seems like a primary concern for google).
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imaginenore
Gmail is anything but static. Once it loads all the scripts and your email
data, it doesn't reload the page, it's almost a one-page app. You can do all
kinds of things - search, compose, send, label, chat, receive video calls,
make phone calls, etc.

I will agree with one thing though - they could make the initial inbox loading
faster, much faster, but you would be limited to just that.

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nathancahill
Yeah. If you want to see what that feels like, turn on the Basic HTML version.
It loads instantly, then has to reload as you click around the app.

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afarrell
I wish there was a chrome plugin that kept all of the scripts and data for
your gmail/gcal accounts stored and, when you actually went to that url, would
intercept that request.

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lsiebert
I wish they would profile users based on the most commonly used features and
data segments and load those first, and the rest asynchronously.

