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> Use the right technology for what you're trying to build. Yep .. so if you want a rich responsive user experience, DON'T use any web technologies. GMail (AN

by WDCDev 7y ago

> Use the right technology for what you're trying to build. Yep .. so if you want a rich responsive user experience, DON'T use any web technologies. GMail (AND Gsuite) is a perfect example of how a relatively simple concept like email can be turned into a slow, unresponsive piece of garbage.

karatestomp 7y ago
I'm about 99% sure the store on the PS3 was webtech. That beast of a machine could barely run its own store. They lost a lot of money from me as a result of the store being super-slow, input laggy, and crashy (OOM I assume), and I can't be the only one. PS4 feels like they've taken webtech all over the OS interface. Its store's snappier than the 3 but the rest of the interface performs way worse. Usable, but far less pleasant. [EDIT] store should be snappier than the 3, mind, since it's way more powerful hardware—it's still kinda slow, considering.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago
  All sorts of devices with some kind of UI are using a browser in some kind of kiosk/headless mode. STBs, Smart TVs, IFE systems are or were web based.
  - zitterbewegung 7y ago
    To be honest as time goes on the Smart piece of your device starts to get slower and slower. One of the main drivers for getting a amazon fire stick is that it is much more responsive than the Smart TV itself.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      I thought that but the Youtube app on both my smart tv and Apple TV are broken in exactly the same way and unusable without a regular reboot.
zitterbewegung 7y ago
Previous versions of GMail had a good experience but was significantly faster than the current version of gmail. Loading basic HTML mode can get you a previous version of it.
balfirevic 7y ago
> DON'T use any web technologies. How do you think that would have worked for Gmail's success?
manigandham 7y ago
Extreme statements aren't useful. GMail is a poorly built app, that's all. There are plenty of great examples. Both Outlook and Fastmail have fast and feature-rich email clients. Gmail was good back in the day and got carried away by project managers and feature creep. Meanwhile Google Docs continues to be a pinnacle of what you can achieve on the web.
- userbinator 7y ago
  My experience with the Outlook web app (not the "basic HTML" mode, which is perfectly usable in contrast) is the exact opposite --- it's extremely slow and consumes a ridiculous amount of memory for what it does (I've seen it take over 2GB of RAM, and this is with an account where all the emails with their attachments total less than 100MB.) When composing a message it lags so much that it will delay each keystroke by several seconds and drop keys intermittently, and I have resorted to writing in a real (native) text editor and copy-pasting. In contrast, the native client has memory usage in the dozens of MB and is far more responsive --- I've never experienced it being sluggish to that extent.
  - mycall 7y ago
    > I've seen it take over 2GB Probably because that RAM wasn't doing anything else. Why not use it as cache to speed things up. I'm sure it can work fine in much smaller RAM sizes.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      It's very rare that a program intelligently adjusts its cache size based on the amount of memory available. And that doesn't explain how the "cache" is twenty times bigger than the source data. I bet with less RAM available it would start thrashing.
    - userbinator 7y ago
      The fact that my machine was swapping heavily whenever I tried to switch to the Outlook tab or do anything with it says otherwise.
hesarenu 7y ago
When did gmail become slow. It pretty fast for me. If speed is slow then yeah.
winrid 7y ago
Well, I'm all for SSR for most use cases, but Gmail is that way not because it's an SPA. For example, Fastmail lives up to its name and it's an SPA.
x3haloed 7y ago
I want to emphasize that I was talking about the first beta releases of Gmail, which is where XHR was born. Or so I read.

by WDCDev 7y ago

karatestomp 7y ago

I'm about 99% sure the store on the PS3 was webtech. That beast of a machine could barely run its own store. They lost a lot of money from me as a result of the store being super-slow, input laggy, and crashy (OOM I assume), and I can't be the only one. PS4 feels like they've taken webtech all over the OS interface. Its store's snappier than the 3 but the rest of the interface performs way worse. Usable, but far less pleasant. [EDIT] store should be snappier than the 3, mind, since it's way more powerful hardware—it's still kinda slow, considering.

paranoidrobot 7y ago
All sorts of devices with some kind of UI are using a browser in some kind of kiosk/headless mode. STBs, Smart TVs, IFE systems are or were web based.
- zitterbewegung 7y ago
  To be honest as time goes on the Smart piece of your device starts to get slower and slower. One of the main drivers for getting a amazon fire stick is that it is much more responsive than the Smart TV itself.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    I thought that but the Youtube app on both my smart tv and Apple TV are broken in exactly the same way and unusable without a regular reboot.

zitterbewegung 7y ago

Previous versions of GMail had a good experience but was significantly faster than the current version of gmail. Loading basic HTML mode can get you a previous version of it.

balfirevic 7y ago

> DON'T use any web technologies. How do you think that would have worked for Gmail's success?

manigandham 7y ago

Extreme statements aren't useful. GMail is a poorly built app, that's all. There are plenty of great examples. Both Outlook and Fastmail have fast and feature-rich email clients. Gmail was good back in the day and got carried away by project managers and feature creep. Meanwhile Google Docs continues to be a pinnacle of what you can achieve on the web.

userbinator 7y ago
My experience with the Outlook web app (not the "basic HTML" mode, which is perfectly usable in contrast) is the exact opposite --- it's extremely slow and consumes a ridiculous amount of memory for what it does (I've seen it take over 2GB of RAM, and this is with an account where all the emails with their attachments total less than 100MB.) When composing a message it lags so much that it will delay each keystroke by several seconds and drop keys intermittently, and I have resorted to writing in a real (native) text editor and copy-pasting. In contrast, the native client has memory usage in the dozens of MB and is far more responsive --- I've never experienced it being sluggish to that extent.
- mycall 7y ago
  > I've seen it take over 2GB Probably because that RAM wasn't doing anything else. Why not use it as cache to speed things up. I'm sure it can work fine in much smaller RAM sizes.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    It's very rare that a program intelligently adjusts its cache size based on the amount of memory available. And that doesn't explain how the "cache" is twenty times bigger than the source data. I bet with less RAM available it would start thrashing.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    The fact that my machine was swapping heavily whenever I tried to switch to the Outlook tab or do anything with it says otherwise.

hesarenu 7y ago

When did gmail become slow. It pretty fast for me. If speed is slow then yeah.

winrid 7y ago

Well, I'm all for SSR for most use cases, but Gmail is that way not because it's an SPA. For example, Fastmail lives up to its name and it's an SPA.

x3haloed 7y ago

I want to emphasize that I was talking about the first beta releases of Gmail, which is where XHR was born. Or so I read.