howton@gmail.com

[ehowton]

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?

[Poll #1449681]

Comments

[melancthe.livejournal.com]

I find Gmail's interface clean and visually pleasing to work with: I love it dearly. In fact, I love Gmail so much that I want to sex it up in unmentionable ways.

Well, only moderately unmentionable.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Its prettier than Yahoo! Mail yes - I could stare at its pretty all day. Unfortunately for me it lacks the functionality of Yahoo! Mail.

[melancthe.livejournal.com]

*squints*

What is that on your Safari screen? You know what I'm like: I'm very nosy!

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

What is that on your Safari screen?
The short answer is "Top Sites" (think Opera Speed Dial). In order from left to right, top to bottom:

You know what I'm like: I'm very nosy!
Delightfully unabashedly so.

*squints*
Here's a larger photo: http://wilddamntexan.com/kids/safari40_top_sites_1024.jpg

[melancthe.livejournal.com]

ARGH

OMG

Why didn't you warn me about the terrifying content in the right corner? Those pics still scar me!

I need some wine. Lucky it's D&D night and I have some. ;)

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Gah! Yeah...about that. With Speed Dial you can "set" the previews (that's the entrance html to my wilddamntexan image server) but I haven't figured out how to do that yet with Top Sites...they sorta just auto-generate. Sorry!

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

Starred emails are emails that you have added stars to. Think of it is marking something as important.

Remember that in Gmail you don't have folders, you have labels and one email can contain multiple labels. Once you set up your labels, then you can use filters to automatically add labels to your email.

Do remember that in Gmail you search for everything. This is actually what makes OS X such a clean OS, a topic I've been meaning to write about for some time.

You'll want to have a look through the Labs section and see if you want any of the cool toys. Canned Emails is one I use for work. The Superstars will give you mulit-colored stars, but unfortunately they all appear under the one Starred label.

The first place I expect you'll see how Conversation View really works is with emails from LJ letting you know that you have more comments. If you send out an email to multiple people and start a conversation like we do for the Huntsville Tea Party, you'll quickly see the power of this feature.

I'm not sure that I agree with your assessment about tabbed email in Gmail. It just doesn't make sense. You can only deal with one email at a time anyway, and emails that share the same subject are in the same conversation, so really, this should just be a matter of adjusting.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that! It appears I have a little exploring to do. I'm excited about the 'toys' (extensions I assume) which may help me more closely squeeze some usage out of it.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

It's like a buffet, you pile your plate, take a bite of everything and consume what you really like.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

While I still prefer the features of Opera, I find myself exclusively using Safari for its speed and lite footprint. The only problem I have with it as I mentioned on yesterday's post is that it wants to consume all my cycles when opening a new tab after being idle which momentarily causes the OS to be unresponsive.

This is, of course on OS X. Do you have the same problem on Windows?

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Hard to say - I've had my XP box doing other, CPU & network intensive tasks since I upgraded to 4.0 so an accurate assessment cannot be made at this point. And since my OSX box is also saddled on the same network, I haven't had an opportunity to differentiate between the two yet as far as performance is concerned.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

Please change the alignment of this post to justify.
kthnxbye

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Done!

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

My FL thanks you.

[xx-adamo-mangie.livejournal.com]

I'm lacking internet and computer knowledge. SO I've been using IE all my life. XD

Sexy, though D:

P.S: 10,000+ messages gives my OCD head a spin. I'd die. I just recently cleaned out my inbox and folders and now I have 6 messages in my inbox with around 20 messages in my other folders combined. D:

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

My wife thinks as you do. Read messages are deleted immediately. I use my email as a collaboration repository of knowledge, and in that vein, were it empty, I'd lose everything. Think of it as Dumbledore's pensieve.

[drax0r.livejournal.com]

Like you, I keep almost everything - it's been amazingly helpful so many times to be able to go search emails that go back years.

[hiro-antagonist.livejournal.com]

if you want tabs, you can simply open another tab and go to gmail and open up whatever email you need to stay open, while you fiddle with the previous emails in the other tab. Works for me, anyway. Most links can be context clicked to 'open in new tab' also.