

Finally the future of e-mail on iPad? - evahenson
http://sendhello.to

======
michael_miller
Minor nit: it's a little annoying that the the site takes over horizontal
panning. It effectively makes the swipe forward/backward gestures useless in
Chrome. The information could have been presented in an equally effective
manner with a simple vertical page layout.

------
laumars
The problem with e-mails are not the front ends we use with them, but the
protocol itself.

Everything is transferred as text, which means binary files (embedded images,
attachments, etc) have to be Base64 encoded. This adds a CPU overhead, but
most importantly inflates file sizes by ~30%

Then there's security issues; the vast majority of mail servers default to
clear text rather than SSL. But that wouldn't be so bad if there was some
inbuilt method for end-to-end encryption. Sadly there isn't, so we have a
whole plethora of 3rd party hacks for the mail client - most of which are
incompatible with each other.

And while we're on the subject of clients - things are a complete mess there.
Trying to design a HTML email that will work on most clients is like trying to
design a webpage in the 90s. So we need a more standardised way of displaying
that data - and if that means forking HTML for email purposes specifically,
then so be it.

Also, horizontal scrolling webpages are counter intuitive and a complete pain
for most users who only have vertical scrolling on their mice / trackpads.
Quite frankly, if that's an advert of their product design then it leaves me
less than excited about the 'innovations' they'd make to email clients.

I know all this seems highly critical against this project - which isn't
really the best etiquette on HN. But honestly, why are the old ARPNET
protocols (FTP, email, etc) still in widespread use when we have the
technology and experience to release vastly improved specifications?

------
asmosoinio
The site has very annoying scrolling on the page (Chrome on Mac) -- it seems
to scroll horizontally when I do the motion for scrolling vertically. Took a
while to figure out what the heck was happening, and it still feels non-
intuitive.

------
mfincham
Please allow the user to disable sending / viewing HTML mail.

This is the number one bug with Apple's built in iOS mail client, imo. It
drives me nuts.

------
cageface
An entire page of whinges about the web site, instead of the app itself. I
guess this is some kind of progress.

Here's one vote for all of you to submit comments like that to the webmaster
instead of posting them here and reserve your breath on HN for comments about
the subject instead.

~~~
asmosoinio
I think those are very valid comments on how the app is presented.

I did not bother looking at the app, because I got distracted by the
scrolling. This should be interesting data to the developers.

------
eps
How is it different? Aside from "Intelligent tags", "Files" and "Collborate".

------
xijuan
I am using Chrome on my Mac. The horizontal rolling is very very laggy.
Usually, when I swipe right, I can go back to the previous webpage I was on.
But I can't do that with this website.

------
redact207
Can't comment on the app itself (don't have an iPad), but I liked your pitch
of "first 10,000 to tweet get it for free". Clever idea.

~~~
lukifer
If it's a native app rather than a web app, I'm curious how they would do such
a thing. There's no way to get 10,000 evaluation codes.

~~~
rys
Probably a separate code to enter into the app to unlock it.

------
huhtenberg
When viewed in Mobile Safari, "Want hello?..." sits _under_ the input box.
Something to fix I guess.

------
pioul
It surely looks beautiful, but how is that different (feature-wise) from
Gmail?

------
ajani
Tweeting doesn't provide any link to download the app.

------
thejosh
site doesn't load

