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Google ending Basic HTML support for Gmail in 2024
- londons_explore 3y agoHopefully someone else will make a replacement for basic HTML mode.
- niutech 3y agoThere are many webmail clients which you can host yourself and connect to GMail by IMAP/POP3: https://itsfoss.com/open-source-web-based-email-clients/ https://itsfoss.com/open-source-web-based-email-clients/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paxys 3y agoThere are a million email clients out there. There is zero reason for people to use Gmail (the app) at all if they want this kind of functionality.
- dheera 3y agoI often use basic HTML because it loads 5X faster and there's no stupid progress bar or spinning icon. I want to see e-mail, not a progress bar or splash screen. Splash screens were things of the 90s. Computers should be 100X faster now, and apps and websites should load imperceptibly fast. Basic HTML delivers on that. I use Gmail because it intergrates with Google Calendar.
- palata 3y ago> Computers should be 100X faster now, and apps and websites should load imperceptibly fast. That's unfortunately not how it works. Computers being 100X faster just allows apps to be 100X slower. Which in turns enables companies to add crap to be more profitable (like tracking, ads) or to make their devs more productive (by using frameworks that make them quicker at developing slower apps). > I use Gmail because it intergrates with Google Calendar. And by doing that, you support the model above. If you want a fast and minimal email service, you should use one. Not wish that GMail becomes one. On that note, I use CalDAV to synchronize my Google Calendar, and it works quite well.
- dheera 3y ago> Computers being 100X faster just allows apps to be 100X slower. Or you can just use basic HTML with a custom stylesheet that makes it look more 21st century and you have a lightning-fast, sleek experience.
- palata 3y agoI'm with you there: I wish the software industry wrote good, fast software. I am just observing that it is not how it works. Make faster hardware, and companies will build slower software. The goal of companies is just to produce as much software as possible, it doesn't have to be good (software is mostly pretty bad nowadays). And that's good for hardware companies, because it forces users to buy newer hardware. It is some kind of systemic programmed obsolescence. It's just bad for the consumers, because they haven't gained much in 20 years, other than an obligation to buy new hardware regularly if they want their experience to stay bearable.
- trustingtrust 3y agoOut of those million email clients, probably less than 50 are regularly maintained with good support. And I am probably exaggerating the number 50. Could be single digits.
- paxys 3y agoYou don't need 50 you need just one. Thunderbird itself checks all the boxes.
- pvg 3y agoDiscussed a few days ago, 90 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37558372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37558372
- userbinator 3y agoThey know that anything simple and widely compatible is against their goals. Their excuse is "web standards are open" --- the same highly complex standards they control and churn so frequently that implementations beyond their own are basically discouraged and can't keep up. Their hostilities have ramped up most recently with things like WEI, but this is their next step. It was never really about making things better for the users. It was always about complete control: taking over the Internet and forcing users to a run a "supported" software and hardware stack, one that they both fully control and will deprecate or "EOL" on their schedule to force users into the next stage of their control. Basic HTML, like any other simple and easily understood systems that anyone can implement without much effort, are essentially a threat to their agenda. To paraphrase an old saying: "Gmail ain't done 'til Firefox won't run."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoBasic HTML Gmail can very easily just not be worth the effort given there surely can’t be that many people like you that would actually use it. Indeed Gmail pioneered HTML-driven interactive web applications to a large extent. It’s easy to kick and scream about acts of malice but it’s a lot harder to look inwards and realise that the vast vast vast majority of people just don’t care for this particular techno-puritan hill that you seem willing to die on.
- pvg 3y agoIndeed Gmail pioneered HTML-driven interactive web applications to a large extent. I think you're misremembering this. Web Outlook's needs are what drove the enabling technology, a few years before GMail appeared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History GMail had its own early selling points early on, one of them being much more storage than competitors.
- bawolff 3y ago
- not_your_vase 3y agoI was always horrified (and still am) about the sheer size of crap the GMail frontend pulls in. 40MB of garbage, out of which 25 MB is minified Javascript (with using uBlock original and PiHole. Not sure what's the amount without filters). And soon it will be mandatory to use in browsers. "Funnily", Thunderbird deb file is 53MB.
- tjoff 3y agoThere is no reason to use gmail. Preferably pay for some other service. And if you haven't already, buy your own domain. Being tied to one service is never good, even if it isn't by google.
- blowski 3y agoIf your employer uses Gmail, there is a reason to use it.
- tjoff 3y agoMaybe, but at least don't do mail in the browser.
- layer8 3y agoIt's also a good reason to choose a different employer.
- JBiserkov 3y agoYeah. That's the first thing I ask during an interview - "What email provider do you use?". If they say"GMail" I just close the Google Meet tab in my Google Chrome mid-sentence. I can tolerate a lot from an employer, but not GMail. /s
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 3y ago
- zeroCalories 3y agoPM probably wants to push some new features and is sick accommodating a mode used by less than 0.01% of users. Sad but not surprising.
- gostsamo 3y agoI'm one of the users of it. it means that I'm going full tb mode there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mrweasel 3y agoThat's probably the reality of the situation. The number of people using the basic HTML mode might be vanishingly small, even if the user base is very vocal. Also when you have as many users as gmail, even 0.01 percent is going to be millions of users. There may be a business case for someone to make a gmail client, or a competitor for those relying on the basic HTML mode. What is a rounding error for Google could be a pretty compelling business for a much smaller company.
- dicytea 3y ago> even 0.01 percent is going to be millions of users. This would mean that Gmail have >10 billion users, so obviously not.
- zeroCalories 3y agoHonestly I think 0.01% would be optimistic. Most people that don't like Gmail's fancy features just use third party clients. Unless Google decides to start blocking third party clients, which I could imagine them doing.
- kweingar 3y agoWhy not use a lightweight native client instead? If you don’t like the standard Gmail web view, there are dozens of options out there, on every platform imaginable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nottorp 3y agoThis is the tenfourfox blog. Tenfourfox is a browser that is still built for old power pc macs. I doubt any modern “lightweight” client is built for those or would even be lightweight enough to run on them. On the other hand, for those platforms imap should still be available. Edit: forgot to mention that said power pcs wouldn’t be fast enough to run googles full web ui either.
- smirya0 3y agoVery unfortunate. I know many blind people who use screen readers and basic HTML is important to them.
- louwhopley 3y agoCurious, would Gmail’s standard interface not be top-class when it comes to accessibility compatibility?
- forgotmypw17 3y agoIt's certainly not top class for a slower connection or an older device.
- jtokoph 3y agoWouldn’t the native email clients on devices be better anyway?
- wildrhythms 3y agoWhat happens when these users are relegated to using a Chromebook on the job or in school?
- CTOSian 3y agoThere is `Mutt` console email, linux mainly , on windows under cygwin, alas does not deal well with HTML emails, it can be connected to Gmail anyway.
- layer8 3y agoReading HTML email is fine under mutt with w3m. What's difficult is replying to HTML emails without losing the HTML for the quoted message.
- ericpruitt 3y agoI use Mutt almost exclusively, but I still use the Gmail web interface to write emails from time to time for this very reason. If you want to send emails verbatim, you can use Mutt's bounce feature, but that can confuse the recipient since bouncing leaves the original headers in-tact, including the "Date" header which means the email might not appear at the top of the user's inbox.
- doctor_radium 3y agoIt was once a thing for webmail services to have an option to integrate your various email accounts. Might there be any with a lightweight interface, that still offers this feature, and can log into Gmail? That could be another possibility if you're used to webmail.
- niutech 3y agoSure, there are many open source webmail systems which can connect to Gmail using IMAP: https://itsfoss.com/open-source-web-based-email-clients/ https://itsfoss.com/open-source-web-based-email-clients/
- quicklime 3y agoI remember when Gmail came out, it used JavaScript and XHR to create an experience that was a lot faster than having to go back to the server and re-render a full page. But these days it’s actually the basic HTML mode that feels super fast. I’m not sure if this is because network and compute have improved at different speeds, or just that the js framework is super bloated. Either way, if you haven’t tried it I’d recommend giving it a shot.
- pests 3y agoBack then network speeds were less and latency higher. Sending a runtime to the client and reducing the network traffic thereafter was a big win back then. Over time the network has improved, removing the benefit of the reduced network traffic. We still pay the runtime performance impact though. Its morphed into what modern frameworks are today and the original benefit was forgotten. Execution times have only gone up. So with faster network speeds and increased execution time - its been flipped. It's not that it feels super fast. It's that it is super fast. Not to mention the web is almost unoptimized. Lots of very low hanging fruit. Early this year someone wrote a series of articles[1] demonstrating how much he could imnprove just by simply looking. [1] https://marvinh.dev/blog/speeding-up-javascript-ecosystem/ https://marvinh.dev/blog/speeding-up-javascript-ecosystem/
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]