

Fixing the little things in Gmail - abraham
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/fixing-little-things.html

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paul
They should fix the speed.

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gregschlom
Hehe, I hope they don't, we're already fixing that with our desktop client,
BetterInbox

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greattypo
Details? :)

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gregschlom
We're making a cross-platform desktop client in C++ / Qt.

We access Gmail over IMAP, and we specifically optimize for their servers (ie:
we don't bother supporting the full range of the IMAP protocol, and we take
advantage of Gmail specificities)

This allows the client to feel fast, even though actions that have to sync
with Gmail, like deleting or archiving something aren't really faster or
slower than with the web interface. But they happen in the background, so it
feels snappier.

We will be releasing a private alpha in a few days. It's still very early,
though. You can read / delete / archive / reply to emails in your inbox, and
that's all for the moment.

Drop me a mail if you want to try it out, or sign-up for the beta at
<http://betterinbox.com> (The beta will be released later, in a few months I
think)

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rmccue
I didn't think I'd signed up when using that form, since it doesn't appear to
have any visual feedback. A "Confirmation email sent!" would be nice. :)

That said, I can't wait to see what you come up with!

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gregschlom
Thanks for the feedback, you're right.

This whole sign-up page seriously needs some love.

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davej
I preferred when the refresh button was a link. It made sense because all of
the buttons are actions to be performed (POST) whereas the refresh link simply
checks for new emails (GET).

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rberdeen
I suspect this distinction isn't clear to most people, who see "check for new
emails" as an action to be performed.

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jacobian
I'm glad to see there's some forward motion on Gmail; it's seemed like
development stalled out a year or so ago. However, it's a bit depressing. If
it takes this long to get around to fixing the small things, how long is it
going to take the fix the big things?

Gmail's still the best web-based email client I've seen, but at this rate not
for long. There's a big honking opportunity here for someone to move in and
eat Google's lunch.

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abraham
> If it takes this long to get around to fixing the small things, how long is
> it going to take the fix the big things?

Generally the small things don't get fixed _because_ the big things are
getting fixed.

Gmail has been regularly releasing new features and new labs over the past
year. <http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/>

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raquo
Strange that the "refresh" button does not provide any visual feedback if
there are no new messages. Not good. Even refreshing inbox by clicking on
"Inbox" on the left briefly shows a "loading" message.

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brown9-2
I see the same "loading" message briefly at the top when pressing the new
Refresh button.

You can also get the same behavior if you turn keyboard shortcuts on with
either "u" (to refresh current view) or "gi" (to go back to the inbox).

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btilly
I just suggested to them that if I send an email and it bounces, that I be
asked if I want to remove that email address from my contacts.

I have a lot of non-working email addresses in my contacts, and it is a PITA
to clean them up.

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rberdeen
Sad to see they didn't fix my "one thing": nothing should take more than ten
seconds.

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elbelcho
I'd really like to see them improve search speed.

It's the one advantage, in my opinion, that desktop outlook has over gmail.

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jedbrown
Need a better way do inline quoting. Gmail insists on top-posting even when I
select the part I want to reply to, it's several extra steps to cite and trim
properly, especially if you want to reply to more than one part of a message.

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zavulon
The most useful thing for me out of that list is "Shift + ?" shortcut. For too
long I had to open another tab, open Google, and type in 'Gmail shortcuts'...

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jedbrown
That has existed for years.

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Niten
I really happy to see the option to disable auto-saving contacts. Now what
about fixed-width fonts in plaintext messages? :-)

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Slackwise
Came here to mention the same thing. It is incredibly surprising to see that
they've not improved the usability of plain text after all these years. Arial
is still the default font both for composing _and_ reading.

Now, what I'd also really love to see is a 80 character width guide while
composing plain text emails. That may be too nerdy though, but I'd just love
to get as close to my usual Vim/mutt config as possible.

Maybe they'll at least get a lab feature out for us plain text users. At least
let us customize our plain text font choices. For now, there are a few Chrome
extensions that fix this issue.

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AndrewDucker
What I'd like is a preview window on the main page, so I can select an email
and see the contents.

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cma
Did I really just waste time reading this?

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hsmyers
Certainly did if you don't use gmail--- maybe not if you do :)

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geekam
I think he did waste his time. So did I. I use Gmail. I was so hoping for a
lot of performance fixes but no, they are taking care of creating a Refresh
button instead of a link. :|

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spicyj
It does say, "Fixing the _little_ things in Gmail".

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geekam
I have to give you a +1 for that and wish I could give -1 to myself.

