
There is a pure HTML Gmail, and it still works - amaks
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LouisGray/posts/epGfV7kqhDv
======
mxfh
Since they switched the the non-Android mobile view to this unusable joke
(especially if you rely on tags/folders):

[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile)

I'm glad I can force my mobile Browser to use the HTML version instead, which
lists all tags at once.

[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html)

Also you can force[1] your browser to display the normal version no matter
what:

[http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser](http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser)

Force non-feature complete touch-enabled iPhone view[2]:

[http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/](http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/)

[Edit] current iPhone view

[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/)

[1]
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en)

[2] [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-
modes.html](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-modes.html)

~~~
mahouse
The iPhone view doesn't work well. The Compose button doesn't work, the Menu
doesn't work either...

~~~
mxfh
added the current URL I found via chrome's emulator features:

[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/) OR
[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/)

Here's another one for tablets[1]:

[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca)

[1] [http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-
fo...](http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-force-gmail-
website-us-ipad-view.html#post3129899)

~~~
mahouse
403 from my Lumia phone. Interesting.

~~~
mxfh
can confirm this, it works if your change your WP/Lumia browser setting's
website preference to desktop version. Though it's still apparently
fetching/rendering the wrong sprite size.

------
kisielk
I am glad this still exists, it's helped me out a lot while living and working
in Africa for the past month. Sometimes I don't have access to a fast
connection. That being said, a lot of other Google products are _awful_ across
slow links, for no particularly good reason. Google+ doesn't work at all. Even
clicking the little bell in the top right of another Google page never loads.
I get the feeling Google needs to do more testing of their products over low
speed and high latency links.

~~~
curiouscats
Very true. I can't understand how bad some of their stuff is over non-super
fast links (probably super low latency is my guess). It isn't just very slow
links, I have problems with their stuff frequently when no other sites I use
have issues (and if the connection is bad enough to cause others problems,
Googles site will almost surely not even load - other than search which does
load).

I get the feeling they don't bother testing on anything but super low latency,
of if they do they don't care about a horrible user experience.

For me the super bad user experiences in this area have been greatly less, for
me. Maybe they actually did something to address the problems (they are still
far worse than any other sites I used, but still much better than they were
for the last couple years).

~~~
sigmaml
My experience is rather different.

I travel to rural areas in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh every
month. The connection quality is as poor as its availability is flaky. I find
that GMail, Google Drive and the Google search page always load. Business
correspondence and collaborative editing have not been problems at all. I have
not tried Google+, though. I shall try it the next time.

On the other hand, my biggest problems have been with GitHub. Not once in the
last 18 months have the GitHub Web pages loaded. That makes reviewing and
merging pull requests very painful. I reported this to GitHub long ago, but
have not seen any improvement yet.

~~~
kisielk
Weird. I am in Malawi right and have basically the opposite experience. Google
is dog slow, but I can get GitHub just about anywhere. Probably has something
to do with where the packets are routed.

------
DigitalSea
Having redundancy in a web app like Gmail is just good practice in my opinion.
Any Javascript reliant application should still work without Javascript, I
haven't tested it, but I seriously doubt something like Asana would work with
Javascript disabled nor really any other JS heavy application.

Some people often forget that not everybody has access to a fast Internet
connection, as pointed out Africa is one of those nations, but even here in
Australia there are people out in regional areas still on dial-up because
satellite is too expensive and DSL is not an option because of the distances.
Then you have countries like Libya, Iran and even parts of India too.

I do wonder if Gmail didn't build a HTML version out of necessity, if Gmail
were built in 2014 or even back in 2009, would it have had a fully functional
HTML version to boot or would it have been only partially functional?

~~~
kibibu
> Africa is one of those nations

Presumably you meant "regions", but even then, it's only some parts of Africa

~~~
davb
> it's only some parts of Africa

I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Africa is
connectivity/bandwidth starved.

Even in a (very) affluent South African neighbourhood, I struggled to get one
of our remote workers a connection faster than 512kbps. And even that cost
significantly more than our local (UK) connections which are comparatively
overpriced.

(This was about 18 months ago, the landscape could have obviously changed).

Many of my African contacts rely on low-bandwidth comms such as GPRS or SMS. I
guess that's why mobile banking (often via SIM Application Toolkit) is so
popular. Same goes for WhatsApp.

~~~
Nitramp
Don't forget about North Africa, i.e. all non-sub-saharan Africa. That
probably has much better connectivity across the board.

------
alirazaq
I agree with Paul. A website that does not function without JS is a poor
design choice. I have JS disabled by default and only whitelist specific
domains.

If your website content doesn't load up, there's a good chance I'm not
sticking around unless it's imperative.

~~~
nemasu
Curious, why do you disable JS? Security? Preference?

~~~
josteink
Lots of pages, news-sites in particular, use JS to load more bloat, animated
slide-decks and lots of things causing slower loads, including "beacons", and
lots of fancy/noisy UI-elements distracting from what you actually came for:
the nice, static HTML content that was the news.

You will be shocked to see most pages on the internet load almost instantly
the second you disable JS instead of spending several seconds loading all
sorts of non-content.

The performance gain of disabling JS is immense.

------
gmays
Oh yes, I'm well aware of this version of Gmail. I left the military in
October of last year and this is the version of Gmail I was forced to use on
our piece of shit government computers running IE6 or whatever they had.

------
conradfr
IIRC Gmail even give you the option to use it when your connection is slow and
loading of the regular UI does not complete.

~~~
Trufa
I does, in the loading screen (every time), down right, it offers a link to
the html version.

------
eik3_de
...and one day google will just switch it off b/c "focus", "little user base",
whatever..

~~~
kayoone
yeah, how about all those fancy startups that never even think about building
a html only version ? At least give google some credit for actually providing
this alternative for a decade.

~~~
CalRobert
Not just HTML only, how about "not an app" version? It is really annoying that
things which could be accomplished perfectly well in a browser are now apps
because apparently the web is terribly unfashionable these days.

------
qwerta
I found POP3 access much better for poor connectivity.

~~~
blueskin_
Maybe I should have tried that when I was working at a company that used
gmail, as their IMAP is so slow it can only be described as glacial.

------
bluthru
Users can actually find the "Contacts" button in this version.

~~~
pcurve
Not to mention it still has pagination. In the new Gmail, I bet half the users
wouldn't even be able to find one.

------
basicallydan
This is awesome. Not only really professional of them for doing this but it
works so well.

It's quite disturbing how many labels I have, though.

------
nemasu
Actually, the link for the HTML only version is at the bottom of the page
while it's loading.

------
adamors
If only this allowed sending email from an alias, I would switch in a
heartbeat.

------
tdsamardzhiev
I like it better that the standard gmail site.

------
benwoodward
This Chrome extension toggles between standard view and basic html —
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-
email-t...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-email-
toggle/oocjbicmfkpndkahldljaebmjaimehkk)

------
ajkjk
I prefer this so much.

------
pjmlp
How the web was supposed to be.

------
jamesgeck0
When Gmail first came out, I remember having to use Firefox or IE6, both of
which were much slower on my 100MHz desktop than Opera was. The basic HTML
version was super nice.

------
tiedemann
Enabled it for my father-in-law just the other day since he has both a slow
laptop and likes to scroll the entire window with the arrow keys.

------
Argorak
When in Africa, on a very slow connection, GMail actively suggested using this
version, when the initial load took too long.

~~~
lmm
On a kindle you have to quickly click the HTML version link, because if it
loads up the full version it freezes.

~~~
72deluxe
Quality! Does it just run out of RAM and the system not clean up?

------
blueskin_
This would be amazing if I hadn't ditched gmail completely for privacy
reasons.

------
72deluxe
What an awkward URL. What does /u/0/h/ mean?

Pretty useful nonetheless.

~~~
regecks
The 0 refers to which Google Apps/Gmail user session you want to open. For
example, 0 gives me my personal Google account, 1 gives me my work account.

I guess h stands for html.

I find this interface to be slower/all-round worse than the JavaScript one.
Maybe it's because I don't live in the US and notice the 500-700ms+ page
render times more when the whole page reloads.

~~~
72deluxe
Thanks!

------
drunkenfly
I wish Yahoo would have the same option for Yahoo Mail...

------
BonoboBoner
You tell me I could have had the old gmail back again all this time?

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kleiba
Well, of course it does. What else are you using?

------
supercoder
I wonder if Gmail was being written from scratch today whether they'd have the
same aversion to the reliance on JS ?

~~~
enneff
What aversion? Gmail had used JS since launch. This is the basic HTML version.

