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Basic 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 pio

Basic 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 ago
Indeed 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
  I disagree. Gmail is what popularized single page app ajaxy webmail client. If i remember, xmlhttprequest was originally for the desktop outlook client not the website. Gmail was special because it was a website not desktop app. Edit: seems like i'm wrong. I'd still argue that gmail is what brought it to popular attention for the masses.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Desktop Outlook had no need for XHR --- it was a native application. As the parent comment's link and this link therein says, XHR was used for the web client: https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexho...
  - JBiserkov 3y ago
    In my memories it was Google Maps that brought AJAX to the masses.
- wahern 3y ago
  You could do interactive web apps before XMLHttpRequest by using frames--plain frames, then later iframes. Circa 2001 I wrote an employee clock-in and reporting web application this way, which made it much more responsive, especially over a modem. It used frames to push and pull data (i.e. JavaScript variables) dynamically, and Layers on Netscape and nascent innerHTML on IE to rebuild tables with new data. The latter techniques I had learned from a truly pioneering developer publishing demos in what was called DHTML (dynamic HTML), an early name for JavaScript-driven, client-side page generation and manipulation that went beyond basic img src swapping. Among other things, that developer had written an amazing Asteroids clone. I forgot their site name; it was Dyn-something. Unfortunately, IIRC IE was rather leaky and the app started to crawl if you used it too much without refreshing the entire page. (I left that job before the app went live, so I don't know if they deployed it as-is or reverted to full server-side mode.) IMO, what really made interactive web apps more practical was both Netscape and IE--but especially IE--getting their act together and writing a browser that didn't leak memory life a sieve when you made heavy use of their new APIs for manipulating the document dynamically. EDIT: Dan Steinman and DynAPI: https://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/ https://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/
  - pvg 3y ago
    yeah DHTML which interestingly enough was another Microsoft-promoted thing. They were trying to tie up the open Web with their own tech but as a vision of the Web as an app platform, it was really quite forward-looking/prescient.

pvg 3y ago

Indeed 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
I disagree. Gmail is what popularized single page app ajaxy webmail client. If i remember, xmlhttprequest was originally for the desktop outlook client not the website. Gmail was special because it was a website not desktop app. Edit: seems like i'm wrong. I'd still argue that gmail is what brought it to popular attention for the masses.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Desktop Outlook had no need for XHR --- it was a native application. As the parent comment's link and this link therein says, XHR was used for the web client: https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexho...
- JBiserkov 3y ago
  In my memories it was Google Maps that brought AJAX to the masses.
wahern 3y ago
You could do interactive web apps before XMLHttpRequest by using frames--plain frames, then later iframes. Circa 2001 I wrote an employee clock-in and reporting web application this way, which made it much more responsive, especially over a modem. It used frames to push and pull data (i.e. JavaScript variables) dynamically, and Layers on Netscape and nascent innerHTML on IE to rebuild tables with new data. The latter techniques I had learned from a truly pioneering developer publishing demos in what was called DHTML (dynamic HTML), an early name for JavaScript-driven, client-side page generation and manipulation that went beyond basic img src swapping. Among other things, that developer had written an amazing Asteroids clone. I forgot their site name; it was Dyn-something. Unfortunately, IIRC IE was rather leaky and the app started to crawl if you used it too much without refreshing the entire page. (I left that job before the app went live, so I don't know if they deployed it as-is or reverted to full server-side mode.) IMO, what really made interactive web apps more practical was both Netscape and IE--but especially IE--getting their act together and writing a browser that didn't leak memory life a sieve when you made heavy use of their new APIs for manipulating the document dynamically. EDIT: Dan Steinman and DynAPI: https://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/ https://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/
- pvg 3y ago
  yeah DHTML which interestingly enough was another Microsoft-promoted thing. They were trying to tie up the open Web with their own tech but as a vision of the Web as an app platform, it was really quite forward-looking/prescient.