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My feedback about gmail

 
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Hey all.
this is my own feedback about gmail and I want to share it with you.
Good things :
1. Fast
2. Huge storage.
3. starred mails
4. the new approach for email conversations.
Bad things :
1. no powerful composer.
2. UI is somehow plain.
3. you cant save your mails (using Save As option).
what do you think ??
 
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3. you cant save your mails (using Save As option).

hence...

2. Huge storage.

Why do you want to save your Emails to your harddrive?
 
Hussein Baghdadi
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Sure.
but I really miss a powerfull composer like Yahoo's one, I hope they will provide such one.
:roll:
 
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For those of us who've never used Yahoo's email, can you describe what their "composer" does that's so cool?

Oh, and regarding the "plain" UI: plain is good. That's part of what makes Google itself such a pleasure to use, compared to the competition.
[ September 18, 2004: Message edited by: Ernest Friedman-Hill ]
 
Gregg Bolinger
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Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Oh, and regarding the "plain" UI: plain is good. That's part of what makes Google itself such a pleasure to use, compared to the competition.



Amen! I hate waiting for crap to load on yahoo and hotmail. Even with broadband. In fact, I wouldn't care if Yahoo's search engine was just as powerful as google. I can't stand to look at their site. If Google ever makes their store font more "unplain", I'll be pissed.
 
Gregg Bolinger
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Originally posted by John Todd:
Sure.
but I really miss a powerfull composer like Yahoo's one, I hope they will provide such one.
:roll:



I don't see anything powerful:




[ September 18, 2004: Message edited by: Gregg Bolinger ]
 
Hussein Baghdadi
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I mean a composer that allows you to select fonts, size of text, colors, use HTML markup and emoticons ! (I like emoticons)
its just MHO.
 
Ernest Friedman-Hill
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Originally posted by John Todd:
I mean a composer that allows you to select fonts, size of text, colors, use HTML markup and emoticons ! (I like emoticons)
its just MHO.



Ah. OK. As you say, this is a matter of opinion. I hate getting HTML mail. The fact that GMail doesn't let you create mail with fonts and colors and such is a big plus; I think everyone should use it!
 
Hussein Baghdadi
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Amen! I hate waiting for crap to load on yahoo and hotmail


Yahoo is now advertising for Dodge Durango !
I wish if Dodge is a crab so I can get a one.
 
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Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:


Ah. OK. As you say, this is a matter of opinion. I hate getting HTML mail. The fact that GMail doesn't let you create mail with fonts and colors and such is a big plus; I think everyone should use it!



HTML mail is a pain and should be banned.
HTML mail is typically 10-100 times the size of a text message containing the same information, which is why I originally started to despise them (when I was still using dialup and paying by the minute). Now it's the ugly fonts (often with a low-contrast background of course), sounds and other useless stuff people do with it (not to mention the massive abuse made of it by spammers).
 
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Originally posted by John Todd:
I mean a composer that allows you to select fonts, size of text, colors, use HTML markup and emoticons ! (I like emoticons)
its just MHO.



Have you used the spellchecker in Gmail? It is much more powerful and intuitive than Yahoo's. As for the other editing features of Yahoo... I could not care less.
[ September 21, 2004: Message edited by: Chris Mathews ]
 
Gregg Bolinger
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Originally posted by John Todd:
I mean a composer that allows you to select fonts, size of text, colors, use HTML markup and emoticons ! (I like emoticons)
its just MHO.



Looking at my screenshots I don't see how Yahoo allows you to do that.
 
Hussein Baghdadi
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Looking at my screenshots I don't see how Yahoo allows you to do that.


usually, I use firefox for all my web surfing except when I use Yahoo.
it seems to me that Yahoo and Hotmail are using special components in IE in order to provide this functionality.
using FF to use Yahoo, I am unable to use these features.
 
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I'm also against HTML emails. I have never used HTML composer in Yahoo or Hotmail except for few initial days when I started to use emails and had some kid mind in my head to put colors and all

Regards,
Maulin
 
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I don't like that you can't open emails in a new window or tab. That is sort of annoying when I want to look at 2 emails at the same time. I guess there is the option to open a new browswer each time and browse to different emails. Just not as convenient.
 
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Google is excellent, powerful, and intuitive. I love the option of applying multiple labels on one email.

Top that Yahoo.
 
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Originally posted by Mani Ram:
I'm happy with the auto-complete feature.



Auto-complete feature is really great, no doubt about it.

But if you want to send mail to more than 4-5 people then typing and selecting people names become tiresome and time taking.
 
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Welcome back Ravish.Any good news? .
How was Air Deccan journey?
 
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Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:


HTML mail is a pain and should be banned.
HTML mail is typically 10-100 times the size of a text message containing the same information, which is why I originally started to despise them (when I was still using dialup and paying by the minute). Now it's the ugly fonts (often with a low-contrast background of course), sounds and other useless stuff people do with it (not to mention the massive abuse made of it by spammers).



100% agree. HTML emails serve no useful purpose at all, except for marketing which no one really likes anyway.

Why why why do people send personal HTML emails to each other? What on earth do you gain by sending a HTML email? Some clashing colours and nasty fonts. Big deal. Its hardly worth sending 100 lines of code in order to have "hi mum" in bright green flashing letters.
 
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BTW, is Gmail using layers to popup different windows, becoz for each click the browser does not seem to reload the page.
 
R K Singh
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Originally posted by Arjun Shastry:
Welcome back Ravish.Any good news? .
How was Air Deccan journey?





It was good journey. You are suppose to buy everything even water and prices are also not to high. There is no seat number, you sit where you want ;-). If you are lucky then they will on the TV also (while going they on the TV but while coming back they did not.)

I liked their service. And I feel if one plans his trip in advance and carefully one can save good amount of money.

I dont know why they have not started flight for Pune yet??
 
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why would it be 10-100x as large? Wouldn't it just be a few extra characters, which the recipient's machine interprets?
 
Jeroen Wenting
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not really.
HTML email clients insert tons of CSS code, superfluous paragraph tags, etc.

Every linebreak gets turned into a

with the
containing style= code with font information, colours, etc. etc.

Remember HTML generators are not efficient. Just look at the HTML generated by applications like MS Word (which is typical, no worse than other word processor generated HTML) to see what many HTML email applications will produce.

If you then consider that people take the opportunity when presented with the option of using HTML for email to add background images, sound (shudder), all kinds of colours and fonts, you name it, and 10-100 times the size becomes a realistic figure.
 
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airlines have to start somewhere. Maybe they lack the aircraft and/or crew to operate the route, or can't get slots and landing rights.

Lowcosts are changing the face of the airline industry and the older airlines are fighting the only way they can, through their stranglehold on landing slots (and the government interest in the old airlines).
 
R K Singh
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Originally posted by Joe King:
Why why why do people send personal HTML emails to each other?



I think HTML e-mails are for personal mails only.

Though I dont compose HTML emails myself as its time consuming but I like to get one.

But we were talking abt GMail.
In Gmailm, one can not select recipients, one has to type the names and that sucks when you want to send mail, say more than 4 people.
 
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Originally posted by R K Singh:

In Gmailm, one can not select recipients, one has to type the names and that sucks when you want to send mail, say more than 4 people.



I'm happy with the auto-complete feature. The moment I type a letter, it lists all the possible mail-id's and all I have to do is to select from that list.
 
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I found this thisa very interesting and well thought out argument on the reasons that GMail is not a good thing. Anyone want to argue the case for GMail's privacy policy ?
 
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good article but I did notice one flaw. It states that under EU law GMail is in violation for not deleting content after an account is terminated because EU law states that content may be retained only for as long as the original purpose of the collection of that content exists.

As the original purpose of collecting content by GMail is to further Google's marketing efforts (and not to store emails for you, that's just a derivative purpose) that purpose does not end when you terminate your account.
Of course that original purpose is not made explicitly clear in GMail's TOS but reading it more closely reveals it at every turn.

While I somewhat disagree with their claims that simply retaining and parsing messages is evil (after all, every email server does that simply to facilitate it to get the message to the proper recipient) I do think the purpose and duration of that retention raise serious concerns as do the rest of GMail's TOS (which effectively says among other things that you're barred from moving your messages to any other medium, they could in theory sue you for forwarding or printing them for example and says that they can effectively use the content of everything you write or receive (from people that never agreed to those TOS which is illegal) for any purpose they wish).
 
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I like the cool scripts GMail has, and the way it displays things - very organized and simple. All interactiveness and plainnes makes it very easy to use.
 
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Like someone in the thread said...HTML emails are for marketing and I hate those kinda emails...they are mostly spam and a waste of my time. I'd prefer text-based emails anyday.

GMail is a search-based email idea...so its got its own "Big" pluses that other emails don't...its just a matter of personal choice though.
 
Mani Ram
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Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:


Looking at my screenshots I don't see how Yahoo allows you to do that.



Try with IE 5.5 or above. Next to the "Compose" heading, you will get 2 options - Plain or Color and Graphics
If you click "Color and Graphics" , you will get the options to change the font, font size, font color, insert emoticons etc.
I have never used it though.
 
R K Singh
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Originally posted by R K Singh:
In Gmail, one can not select recipients, one has to type the names and that sucks when you want to send mail, say more than 4 people.



Got it .. check the "Contacts New" of your Gmail acct.

Now you can select users and compose mail .. let me wait for this feature to forward mails too.
 
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Originally posted by Mani Ram:


Try with IE 5.5 or above. Next to the "Compose" heading, you will get 2 options - Plain or Color and Graphics
If you click "Color and Graphics" , you will get the options to change the font, font size, font color, insert emoticons etc.
I have never used it though.



Oh well, see. There in lies the problem. I don't run IE. And if yahoo wants me to in order to use all thier features..well..that's one more reason not to use Yahoo.
 
Jesse Torres
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I just noticed today that Google�s accompanying ads are no longer displayed on any given email.

Initially when I started using Gmail last Summer, Google scanned every email to determine what corresponding ads it could correlate with any given email. The ads were then vertically placed on the right side. I just noticed today that these ads are no longer present. I am sure that this change probably occurred quite sometime ago. However, I just noticed.
 
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Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
I just noticed today that Google�s accompanying ads are no longer displayed on any given email.


There still are...
:roll:
 
Jesse Torres
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Originally posted by Ellen Zhao:

There still are...
:roll:



Oops I didn�t notice them. You are correct, they are on the lower part of the email body.
 
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Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:

Amen! I hate waiting for crap to load on yahoo and hotmail. Even with broadband. In fact, I wouldn't care if Yahoo's search engine was just as powerful as google. I can't stand to look at their site. If Google ever makes their store font more "unplain", I'll be pissed.



Hotmail and msn are the most hideous sites known to man, breaking just about every user interface good practice there is. Even aside from the horribly slow loading cluttered pages, they have some wonderful ideas to try and make life that little bit slower.... such as replacing all links in emails with a bit of javascript to load the link in a new page. The arrogance of this is amazing - they are just assuming that none of their users know how to use the "open in new window" option, and they are assuming that none of their users want to do tabbed browsing. After that they bung in another bit of great assumption by deciding for the user that they would love to be redirected to an incredibly slow portal page once they've finished checking their emails.
 
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Plus points:

Simple interface
Very fast (partly due to above reason)
Email Address auto-complete feature
Maintaining mails in the form of conversations (or threads)
Powerful search feature
Huuuuuge Mailbox size
Keyboard shortcuts (May become customizable later)

Minus points:

Does not support Opera (Due to usage of ActiveX) (All about that SPEED stuff... )
Adds each and everyone we correspond with to the contact list (No control)
No "Export contacts" (Would be cool to have it )
No Calendar/Task List options

But, at the end of the day..... I LOVE IT!!!
 
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Originally posted by John Todd:

usually, I use firefox for all my web surfing except when I use Yahoo.
it seems to me that Yahoo and Hotmail are using special components in IE in order to provide this functionality.
using FF to use Yahoo, I am unable to use these features.



Hmm, never noticed that I don't see that toolbar in FF, but in IE. Shows that I never use those features anyway, and I turn off HTML e-mails because spammer can put in stuff that gives them information about you opening the email, and other stuff that gets you even more spam.

Mark
 
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