We're going to be reviewing GMail in:
Editor's note: Updated June 21, 2004 to add more browser notes
Windows:
Firefox support is excellent.
IE 6 is well supported
Opera is not, we're dissapointed to report, supported at all.
Netscape 4 doesn't work at all.
Mac:
Firefox support is excellent.
Netscape 7 -login reports that it is not supported, but you click the "sign in anyway" link, sign in, and it all works fine. The drop down for the To: box was a little patchy for clicking on the name hint.
Chimera (0.7) Works, seemed smooher than NS7
MacIE 5.2 doesn't work at all!
Linux (Fedora Core 1):
Firefox support is excellent.
Epiphany 1.0.4 is supported with a few minor errors.
Konqueror 3.1.4-6 displays the "this browser is not supported / sign in anyway" error, however, when I clicked "sign in anyway," the sign in form never appeared.
Opera is not supported at all.
Spell Checking
(Screen shot 63KB) When you click "Check Spelling," your email message is checked for spelling very quickly. Any unrecognized words are coloured red (and underlined as hyperlinks). You can click on any of the red words for alternatives, which appear in a drop-down/pop-up, and you can simply click on the alternative that is what you want, and it then is coloured green. If it is a typo, but the correct word you want is not listed, you can click "Edit" to allow you to change the spelling. Of course, you can just leave it spelt that way too. It recognizes US and British spellings of words like "color" and "colour," and insists on capitalizing names like Jesus. When done checking, you can resume typing the email.
One bad thing that we've noticed is that you cannot add words to your own custom dictionary. It would be helpful for your relative who spells her name Synthia rather than Cynthia!
Contacts Assistance
When you start typing in "To:" box, a pop-up div appears listing all the matching names/email addresses from your contacts list, and you can then just click on the one you want - saves typing and memory and helps prevent typos.
Labels
In a word: many-to-many! Instead of using folders, gmail uses labels to categorize email conversations. So, if you have a number of email conversations that are about PHP programming, then you can give them all a label of "PHP". A couple of them may also be about working with a MySQL database, so you can also label those two "MySQL". Yes - one conversation can be given multiple labels. So you don't need to worry about which folder you put your emails in - you can give it both labels! This makes it really easy to find your emails. And yes, you could find those with both "PHP" and "MySQL" labels.
User-friendly
Gmail brims with thoughtfulness. The people at Google should be commended for making this such a user-friendly web mail system. When composing an email, clicking on any of the links on the page will prompt a warning that you have not yet sent the email, and by you continuing, you'll discard the email. Very nice - I have lost emails before this way using other web mails.
One of the most amazing features of GMail is its speed. Google has very cleverly used JavaScript to really speed things up. The implementation of this JavaScript is noticeable -- even on high speed. For dialup users, GMail will offer a welcome change as things happen as you click!
Here are two screen shots of the 'conversations': collapsed (70KB) and expanded (74KB).
Keyboard shortcuts
This feature takes a little while to take advantage of, since the web is such a mouse-driven environment, but there are several nice keyboard shortcuts for quickly navigating to different areas of Gmail. Below are some of the more commonly used ones:
"gi" - Go to your Inbox
"ga" - Go to your "All Mail" box
"c" - Compose a new message
"o" - Open an email message/conversation
"r" - Reply
"f" - Forward
note: this article was spell checked with gmail! woooo!
Paul Davey and LW Wertz
http://www.christian-web-mas... Davey is the webmaster of Witford Church in Western Australia. In addition to being an administrator at the CWM Forums, Paul enjoys playing basketball and studying physics.
LW Wertz is the Content Manager of CWM and an administrator on the CWM Forums. When he's not lurking around here, he's usually out riding (anything with wheels), at the beach or playing his guitar.