I’ve re-subscribed to the Gunroom after
a long hiatus, and I’m using gmail instead
of gnus this time. So far, I’m pleasantly surprised by the
experience. Google have done a lot of work making the user interface
easy to use, even with high volumes of mail.
Things I like about it:
-
Keyboard shortcuts makes it easy to navigate. Extra points for being
vi-like. -
Intelligent threading. Older mails are “stacked” in a pile, making it easy to see where in the conversation you are.
-
Quoting is handled very well. Quoted text is folded so you don’t see it all the time.
-
Good handling of contacts, with autocompletion of names.
-
Drafts are saved in the position from where they would have been sent if they weren’t drafts.
Things that could be better:
-
I’d like to be able to choose whether to place my text underneath the text of the email I’m replying to. -
The default display and composition font (Arial) sucks. I prefer monospaced fonts for email. Maybe you can handle this with Greasemonkey
Update 2008-01-11: the above issues have been fixed! See this post for details. Still no monospaced font for composition though…
All in all, I’m impressed with gmail. Web-based interfaces are just getting better and better, with gmail, Flickr and Bloglines leading the mail.