Web Based Email Today
Do you ever log into web based email and feel like it's 1995? I do every time I log into OWA on Exchange 2000 with Firefox or 1&1's web based email. And even when I log into GMail. Other than that, it's come a long way... Even Hotmail was pure crap until not too long ago... these days I find myself torn between which account to log into. I think that Gmail had everything to do with that... Until Gmail and the 2GB account, I used Outlook w/ POP3... these days Outlook is seldom open because I don't have to worry about that annoying 100MB threshold being crossed. Everyone followed Gmail... Yahoo! and Hotmail are both offering larger email accounts but they are now taking steps beyond Gmail... Will Gmail catch
up?
I'm very interested to see if Gmail will attempt to play catch-up on the interface. It is the one "sore point" I have right now... it's very basic and clumsy... some may enjoy the minimal feel and I do use it as my primary email but after playing with the new Live Hotmail and the new Yahoo!, I feel like I'm missing something with Gmail. Now perhaps I'd grow irritated of all the fanciness and the flash and I'd desire the minimalistic feel of Gmail. Gmail is definitely usable and fast, however I would like to see it become a bit cleaner... With the "Web Two Point Oh-ee-ness" of Yahoo! and Live Hotmail, you can actually right click to delete files and mark as read, which, even if Gmail kept it's look and feel, I'd like to see added...
Will I use my Yahoo! or Live Hotmail accounts over my Gmail account? Not yet... Why? My Live Hotmail account is old, so unfortunately it's plagued with random crap from high school and Yahoo! is even worse. While a relatively new account (3 years or so), the Yahoo! spam filters suck... Yahoo! provides the WORST spam filtering of any email provider I've seen. On top of that, I watched an HTML Injection vulnerability that I reported to them go over two years without being fixed. I just can't trust them as an email provider. The other reason? Google Apps for Domains... I love it... I think it was one of the best things that Google provided and unlike the Live companion... I don't need to provide a credit card just to sign up for an account.
Why did I write this? Since I didn't seem to say anything... basically to get to this point. I was really impressed with this video, Gmail: A Behind the Scenes Video. I'm impressed that Gmail users would put in such great effort... it shows product backing (like there was ever any doubt)... Also to express my desires for changes to Gmail... little changes that are needed at this point to I) keep it in the game and II) bring it to the top again.
The List:
- The ability to right-click to delete, move, and label emails.
- A third-pane to the left of messages with RSS feeds.
- Real folders instead of Labels and the ability for Sub-Folders
- Gmail to finally leave Beta.
- The ability to read gpg encrypted emails within Gmail and to sign / encrypt outgoing emails.
- The ability to open an address book while composing an email
That's about it... I'm not greedy... I just have a few things I want to say... and since I just lifted my head of the keyboard to type this last line, I'll say g'nite and hope this made sense 
i rarely log into any webmail provider… i’d rather use an email client and thankfully with thunderbird + webmail extension i can use all the webmail services you mentioned and more and get most of the functionality you’re looking to see added to gmail…
Except that I can only read my email in once place…
I like the mobility of web based email.. I can even access it on my phone.
well, technically you can access it where ever you have an email client set up but i see your point… in a pinch you still need to use the web interface, i just didn’t think that would be all that often in practice…
webmail on a phone? that’s sort of a different beast entirely – i’ve never even seen the mobile versions of those sites (heck, i don’t even have a cell phone)… i tend to think side by side email and rss on a cellphone screen is just not going to work though…
You’re right… Side by Side email + rss wouldn’t work on a cell phone but gmail actually looks really nice on a cell phone… I’m a big fan and if I’m out for a day I’ll log in two or three times… I actually prefer it over the “Mobile Outlook” which I also use regularly to access my one account that I do receive via POP3.
Since my nice chart I made doesn’t seem to want to display properly I’ll do a rough draft of it here:
Storage
Yahoo! – 2GB
Google – 2.9GB
Live Hotmail – 5GB
Only Yahoo! and Google provide inline chat and only Yahoo! provides inline RSS feeds.
I’d really love to see Gmail leave Beta. The whole “beta” fad needs to die. I’d really like #5 as well. In fact, that one move could put encrypted/PGP email into a more mainstream role, depending on how they manage the public keys. The problem today is even technical people don’t “get” PGP and email encryption without tons of handholding.
I don’t know if I’d want Gmail and RSS to join up too much. We don’t allow web-based mail connections where I work, but I can still at least read RSS feeds through Google Reader. Combining the two would eliminate both from my days.
At home on my main laptop I also use Thunderbird to check mail from various services, especially since they are secure links these days. But I feel ya, I want the bulk of my email accessible to me remotely. One nice thing about Thunderbird + Gmail (not sure about the others) but I could file away all my email on Gmail itself, and Thunderbird manages it’s own store, so I kinda have it in two places if I really wanted it. I’ve been wanting to get a home webmail set up to do all of this for me (SquirrelMail mostl likely).
I also dig that I can send mp3s to other people through Gmail…even if they don’t have a Gmail account. I have a dummy account set up that I can give out the password to, to which I send mp3s from my own gmail account. =)
For all the ways mail has improved over the years, I still just feel that unless we get Gmail, et. al. to adopt widespread PGP, email still just needs to die and give way to something newer, like IM as a communication method.
i rarely log into any webmail provider… i'd rather use an email client and thankfully with thunderbird webmail extension i can use all the webmail services you mentioned and more and get most of the functionality you're looking to see added to gmail…
You're right… Side by Side email rss wouldn't work on a cell phone but gmail actually looks really nice on a cell phone… I'm a big fan and if I'm out for a day I'll log in two or three times… I actually prefer it over the "Mobile Outlook" which I also use regularly to access my one account that I do receive via POP3.
I'd really love to see Gmail leave Beta. The whole "beta" fad needs to die. I'd really like #5 as well. In fact, that one move could put encrypted/PGP email into a more mainstream role, depending on how they manage the public keys. The problem today is even technical people don't "get" PGP and email encryption without tons of handholding.
I don't know if I'd want Gmail and RSS to join up too much. We don't allow web-based mail connections where I work, but I can still at least read RSS feeds through Google Reader. Combining the two would eliminate both from my days.
At home on my main laptop I also use Thunderbird to check mail from various services, especially since they are secure links these days. But I feel ya, I want the bulk of my email accessible to me remotely. One nice thing about Thunderbird Gmail (not sure about the others) but I could file away all my email on Gmail itself, and Thunderbird manages it's own store, so I kinda have it in two places if I really wanted it. I've been wanting to get a home webmail set up to do all of this for me (SquirrelMail mostl likely).
I also dig that I can send mp3s to other people through Gmail…even if they don't have a Gmail account. I have a dummy account set up that I can give out the password to, to which I send mp3s from my own gmail account. =)
For all the ways mail has improved over the years, I still just feel that unless we get Gmail, et. al. to adopt widespread PGP, email still just needs to die and give way to something newer, like IM as a communication method.