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

[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.