howton@gmail.com

I've been a Yahoo! Mail user for 10 years, and have been on their purchased Plus! plan for three years now, which I canceled today; work has blocked all but their old "Classic" interface, which just won't do. And even though Gmail closely mimics that archaic, circa 1997 design - which I've come to loath - action needed to be taken. Today, I moved to Gmail as my primary account.



The clumsy interface aside, there was a nice tool for migrating from Yahoo! Mail, which not only sucked over all 10,000+ of my messages, but also automatically recreated and populated my folder hierarchy, as well as all my contacts! I do find my own messages being labeled as "me" awfully childish and off-putting. But I think once I acclimate to its usage (I haven't figured out what "Starred Messages" are yet) I'll be just fine.

Outside of the lack of tabs. First, there were tabbed browsers - something which I rely very heavily upon. Then tabbed notepads (I take great advantage of this with gedit) and then that holy grail of the unix sysadmin - tabbed terminal windows! Without which I would be some normal schmo. Tabs greatly enhance every application in which I use them. Including my webmail. Why are they not included with Gmail?

I hate the 'bundled' or'stacked' messages, but I admit my use of them would be eased if I could open them in their own tab. Maybe. I dislike separate actions to open them - perhaps if they were threaded? I admit, I haven't had a chance to pour through the settings yet and may find something there of use...like when I select "Delete" it automatically brings me to the next unread message rather than taking me back to my Inbox? Or even a "Next Unread" capability. Unnecessary if you utilize Yahoo! Mail's "Preview Pane" but to have neither appears very short-sighted. Seriously - Yahoo! Mail vs. Gmail? There's really no initial comparison, but I understand it may take some time before I'm at a comfortable level so I'm not going to be close-minded about this.

Speaking of...all of this culminated about the time I finally grew weary of Firefox. Firefox took the bull by the horns and was the clear leader of all browsers for many years. But everything has a time, and Firefox's I fear is coming to an end.

Unfortunately at work, using Ubuntu, I have no real choices. As a unix administrator, everything I do is made easier using unix as my base operating system. And while linux has made this a reality, Chrome is not available for linux, and neither is the most fantastic new browser to date, Safari.

For those of you who haven't seen the new Safari 4.0, its a visually stunning work of art (moreso on OSX than Windows).

And not available for linux.

What's your favorite browser?

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