<story><title>The Web Doesn&apos;t Suck. Browsers are Innovating.</title><url>http://yehudakatz.com/2010/04/30/the-web-doesnt-suck-browsers-are-innovating/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btmorex</author><text>&quot;You couldn&apos;t pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail.&quot;&lt;p&gt;So, I understand having your email everywhere. That &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; a killer feature. But you can also provide that feature by simply having a web gateway to your IMAP mail.&lt;p&gt;What exactly is the killer feature of gmail? The tagging is nice, but other programs have similar features. Teh spam filtering is nice, but actually there are better spam filters. The only thing I can think of is the integration with google docs and I actually hate that feature. I don&apos;t know how they managed it, but opening a pdf with google docs is about 5x slower than downloading the pdf and opening with evince. So, it&apos;s pretty much a non-feature unless you can&apos;t be bothered installing a pdf reader.&lt;p&gt;I guess I find gmail useful, but I&apos;d still rather use a normal email client if for no other reason than interruptions in my network connection don&apos;t affect working really.</text></item><item><author>blehn</author><text>As mentioned by others in previous threads -- even with the web&apos;s shortcomings vs. desktop (or native OS) applications, the web still has &lt;i&gt;major&lt;/i&gt; advantages for both the developer and the consumer.&lt;p&gt;for the developer:&lt;p&gt;- distribution is easy. buy a domain name.&lt;p&gt;- agile, iterative development is possible. you can ship a MVP, and push updates frequently and easily.&lt;p&gt;- greater reach. developing one web app (possibly with a mobile web version) is more efficient than creating a windows, mac, linux, iphone, ipad, android, etc&lt;p&gt;for the consumer:&lt;p&gt;- no installation necessary.&lt;p&gt;- updates are invisible. I&apos;m pretty good at keeping my software up to date, but I just looked at my iPhone and I have 22(!) app updates waiting for me. It&apos;s a chore to keep up with that.&lt;p&gt;- accessible from any computer.&lt;p&gt;As new browser technologies (HTML5) allow developers to utilize more of the computer&apos;s powerful hardware (local storage, GPU acceleration, etc), I think native desktop/mobile applications will become even less necessary. You couldn&apos;t pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail.&lt;p&gt;While some applications will be slow to move to the web for obvious reasons (intensive audio and video production), I don&apos;t see any reason why ChromeOS (or the browser-based OS) won&apos;t be a huge success.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rufo</author><text>As far as I know, the way Gmail handles conversations and archiving is unreplicated by any desktop client, and single-handedly the most powerful thing about Gmail. I now have a regular habit of archiving any message that doesn&apos;t have an actionable item, decluttering my inbox. If another message should arrive in a thread, I have the entire conversation history right there. A good desktop app could replicate it, but I could see this behavior being difficult to map on top of a standard IMAP server.&lt;p&gt;In addition, there are a ton of innovative small features (especially in Labs - Don&apos;t forget Bob!/Got the wrong Bob? have saved my ass multiple times with new clients) that I just don&apos;t see other e-mail clients implementing, and they&apos;re constantly rolling out new ones. The fact I can get the exact same functionality on any computer I happen to be on is just icing on the cake.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately: it feels like desktop clients have largely stagnated, while Gmail has an incredibly effective way of thinking about e-mail.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Web Doesn&apos;t Suck. Browsers are Innovating.</title><url>http://yehudakatz.com/2010/04/30/the-web-doesnt-suck-browsers-are-innovating/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btmorex</author><text>&quot;You couldn&apos;t pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail.&quot;&lt;p&gt;So, I understand having your email everywhere. That &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; a killer feature. But you can also provide that feature by simply having a web gateway to your IMAP mail.&lt;p&gt;What exactly is the killer feature of gmail? The tagging is nice, but other programs have similar features. Teh spam filtering is nice, but actually there are better spam filters. The only thing I can think of is the integration with google docs and I actually hate that feature. I don&apos;t know how they managed it, but opening a pdf with google docs is about 5x slower than downloading the pdf and opening with evince. So, it&apos;s pretty much a non-feature unless you can&apos;t be bothered installing a pdf reader.&lt;p&gt;I guess I find gmail useful, but I&apos;d still rather use a normal email client if for no other reason than interruptions in my network connection don&apos;t affect working really.</text></item><item><author>blehn</author><text>As mentioned by others in previous threads -- even with the web&apos;s shortcomings vs. desktop (or native OS) applications, the web still has &lt;i&gt;major&lt;/i&gt; advantages for both the developer and the consumer.&lt;p&gt;for the developer:&lt;p&gt;- distribution is easy. buy a domain name.&lt;p&gt;- agile, iterative development is possible. you can ship a MVP, and push updates frequently and easily.&lt;p&gt;- greater reach. developing one web app (possibly with a mobile web version) is more efficient than creating a windows, mac, linux, iphone, ipad, android, etc&lt;p&gt;for the consumer:&lt;p&gt;- no installation necessary.&lt;p&gt;- updates are invisible. I&apos;m pretty good at keeping my software up to date, but I just looked at my iPhone and I have 22(!) app updates waiting for me. It&apos;s a chore to keep up with that.&lt;p&gt;- accessible from any computer.&lt;p&gt;As new browser technologies (HTML5) allow developers to utilize more of the computer&apos;s powerful hardware (local storage, GPU acceleration, etc), I think native desktop/mobile applications will become even less necessary. You couldn&apos;t pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail.&lt;p&gt;While some applications will be slow to move to the web for obvious reasons (intensive audio and video production), I don&apos;t see any reason why ChromeOS (or the browser-based OS) won&apos;t be a huge success.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tjogin</author><text>You couldn&apos;t pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail, either.&lt;p&gt;Other than reasons you already iterated, the killer feature for me, the one I truly cannot be without, is the threaded conversation view. I know some desktop clients have threaded views, but unlike Gmail&apos;s implementation, they suck.</text></comment>