Look what's missing
by Volker Weber
Comments
no drop shadow for "Mail"?
Seems the BETA is finally gone ...
Can you actually call a product "released" or "final" (or your preferred term for a feature-complete release) that claims to be an enterprise e-mail product but doesn't support S/MIME signatures, not to ask for encrpytion?
I can see how encryption would spoil Google's business model to some extent, but not even signatures? Come on...
If you miss the Beta logo, they've included a 'Back to Beta' option under the Labs section. Nice.
Ragnar, it's true that GMail doesn't support S/MIME (or PGP/GnuPG, for that matter) signatures and encryption - but it doesn't prevent both from being implemented, either. Firefox extensions are available for S/MIME and for GnuPG and fit nicely into the GMail interface. Obviously, you need to use Firefox in the first place...
And, of course, there's always the option of using a desktop client with GMail, although I don't see the point of leaving GMail's native interface.
I really don't get what's so special about gmail. It's reasonably fast, but so many shortcomings. Try forwarding 3 emails at the sametime from your inbox.... This has nothing to do with my professional affiliation (I work for IBM), but most of the enterprise email systems I know (my employer, and the other vendor from the pacific northwest) provide a much richer, usable user interface.
Joel, this is how you get feature creep. Forward three conversations (not mails!) in one message? What would I need that for?
I routinely forward more than 1 email to provide better context to the email receipent. (Plan review, requests etc).
How would one accomplish that in gmail in one click?
I am a fan of gmail myself but there are shortcomings. Although simple, it is not a mature enterprise solution yet. For consumer needs, its a totally different equation.
Yesterday, I booked a Hotel, and a flight for someone. Within Minutes I received an eTicket receipt, Flight itinerary, Hotel reservations. So 3 emails 3 conversations, and was not able to do the obvious. Ctrl Click on the 3 mail Items, and select Forward. I think cc:Mail (and in all fairness, MS Mail) did that back in the early 90's, call me old fashion, but I don't think it's feature creep.
And I think it is. For a fast and lean webmail interface. There will always be somebody who NEEDS this and that feature. Why else would have you have five ways to reply to a message in a mature "enterprise" mail package.
Use IMAP to access GMail and you can have anything you ever want.
@Joel: You defintely a a real IBMer. The telltale is the spelling of "at the sametime.." ;-)
Hmm, it never occurred to me that one could forward emails the way Joel describes; I forward my emails sequentially, not parallel. Ah yes, the Swiss are said to be slow... ;-)
BTW, at work I have to use Outlook and it's definitely not rich, it's bothersome.
Moritz, good observation. :-)
IMAP on Gmail.. ohhh.. that's a nightmare.
There is so much stuff they don't tell you about right away and you have to dig for it. Like that they don't properly implement IMAP protocol, that deleting messages from your inbox doesn't remove them from the mailbox unless you have your settings correct, and IMAP will pull all folders which means the Inbox and All Mail folder which will double your mailbox size on the client side.
Then try deleting over 70 000 messages that were tagged by the spam filter and deleted from the inbox but only had the label removed and exist in your "All Mail" by using the web interface. Not fun.
The way notes does multiple message forwarding can result on some interesting mail. More than few times I've been sent the result of:
-full text search
-highlight desired message
-click forward
-type message without looking at what is being forwarded
-click send, not realising that every mail matching the search is being forwarded
Doh!
Shhhhh. I had some very enlightening moments through that. ;-)
Full text searching is much more fun in the admin client:
- open the people view in the admin client
- full text search
- highlight the person you want to delete
- click delete
- never mind on the question if you really want to delete all those accounts....
.
.
- some time later after having pasted back the person docs, discover how adminp works....
Have seen that more than once.
