- Sep 13, 2012
- 29
- 0
- 0
Quite simply, I find the GMail web client utterly horrible, and getting worse with every so-called "improvement." Even my ISP's SquirrelMail, while hardly ideal, has a better, less-cluttered, easier-to-customize web-mail interface than GMail.
And while I can't recall the last time I tried the mail reader apps that came with my Nexus 7, I don't recall being terribly impressed with them.
My problems with GMail's web client:
1. By hiding quoted text, it makes it difficult to avoid excessive quoting.
2. It tries to shove top-posting down your throat. In most of the circles I travel in, top-posting and excessive quoting are both considered exceedingly rude; the norm is to trim quoted material to the barest minimum needed to establish context, and to either bottom-post or inline-post responses.
3. It's hard to tell if you're sending in pure text mode (does it even HAVE a pure text mode, any more?). HTML is for web pages, NOT for email. HTML email is evil: it wastes bandwidth; it has the capability to deploy payloads without the recipient's consent; it has the capability to hide the true destinations of links; for all its disadvantages, it doesn't even make the messages render more consistently (and indeed, frequently makes them render LESS consistently than a properly formed pure text email.
Of course, that's not to say that editing quoted text is exactly easy on a tablet to begin with. But for my ISP email, I can get along reasonably well just using the SquirrelMail web-mail interface, when away from home. Not so good for my personal or work GMail.
And while I can't recall the last time I tried the mail reader apps that came with my Nexus 7, I don't recall being terribly impressed with them.
My problems with GMail's web client:
1. By hiding quoted text, it makes it difficult to avoid excessive quoting.
2. It tries to shove top-posting down your throat. In most of the circles I travel in, top-posting and excessive quoting are both considered exceedingly rude; the norm is to trim quoted material to the barest minimum needed to establish context, and to either bottom-post or inline-post responses.
3. It's hard to tell if you're sending in pure text mode (does it even HAVE a pure text mode, any more?). HTML is for web pages, NOT for email. HTML email is evil: it wastes bandwidth; it has the capability to deploy payloads without the recipient's consent; it has the capability to hide the true destinations of links; for all its disadvantages, it doesn't even make the messages render more consistently (and indeed, frequently makes them render LESS consistently than a properly formed pure text email.
Of course, that's not to say that editing quoted text is exactly easy on a tablet to begin with. But for my ISP email, I can get along reasonably well just using the SquirrelMail web-mail interface, when away from home. Not so good for my personal or work GMail.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram