7 ms·

There is a pure HTML Gmail, and it still works

131 points by amaks 13y ago

alirazaq 13y ago
I agree with Paul. A website that does not function without JS is a poor design choice. I have JS disabled by default and only whitelist specific domains. If your website content doesn't load up, there's a good chance I'm not sticking around unless it's imperative.
- drstewart 13y ago
  I don't think this is really a logical stance to take anymore than saying "an application that doesn't function without Java/C++/etc. is a poor design choice. If your application doesn't load up without needing an embedded runtime environment, I'm not bothering with it."
  - alirazaq 13y ago
    That's a terrible comparison. Java applications requires the JRE which is a massive resource hog by default. An application written in C++ can be compiled to run optimally on the host OS.
- nemasu 13y ago
  Curious, why do you disable JS? Security? Preference?
  - hnha 13y ago
    I am not OP but my reasons are security, ad/tracking breaking and general peace of mind. With the latter I mean for example popups, unnecessary animations, you might also like, CPU overload and other modern webdesign features.
  - luos 13y ago
    I think it is because performance. Visit techcrunch (23) or huffingtonpost(30+) for example with an extension like ghostery which shows how many external js lib gets loaded. I don't block js but I block flash and it is for the same reason. My record is around 40+. I don't know why do they need that many. See reddit, loads 2 I think.
  - josteink 13y ago
    Lots of pages, news-sites in particular, use JS to load more bloat, animated slide-decks and lots of things causing slower loads, including "beacons", and lots of fancy/noisy UI-elements distracting from what you actually came for: the nice, static HTML content that was the news. You will be shocked to see most pages on the internet load almost instantly the second you disable JS instead of spending several seconds loading all sorts of non-content. The performance gain of disabling JS is immense.
  - alirazaq 13y ago
    I feel the web runs a lot smoother for me without JS. I don't get pop-ups, bulky advertisements, or other resource hogs that detract from content. I also don't like that Google or Facebook are tracking my movement across websites.
  - lsh 13y ago
    speed improvements, privacy and the sense that the web should work without javascript, damnit. that said, js enabled+ghostery works well enough in Opera for me that I've started browsing with it on by default again.
- gfodor 13y ago
  Good engineers don't make judgements like this in a vacuum. Design choices are about tradeoffs and are not inherently good or bad. For a system like gmail where you have tens (hundreds?) of millions of daily active users, coming from countless different types of clients, a mode that eliminates JS dependency seems critical. Most sites are not gmail, they're not even close. Decoupling JS, particularly if it's done just to ensure the tiny fraction of people who disable it can use the site, can rightfully be very low on the priority list if it is a non-trivial engineering cost.
  - camus2 13y ago
    rightfully be very low on the priority list if it is a non-trivial engineering cost. yeah like writing basic html is so hard and more expensive than maintaining piles of js code.
    - jonnydark 13y ago
      But it's not just HTML and CSS - you need to create a completely new user journey because you can't make asynchronous requests to the server. In some instances you may even need to manage server requests completely differently. UI elements may have to be changed as well as you can no longer rely on Javascript to animate them. You're essentially maintaining a second UI that is divorced from your main UI. There's significant cost in that. It's the same reason most sites don't support IE6 anymore.
  - curiouscats 13y ago
    While there is sense in what you are saying you don't have to create the problem for yourself. Don't create situations where you rely on javascript in the first place. Granted there are some cases where it is an acceptable decision to get yourself into the problem (because the advantages you gain by doing so are worth the costs). But often companies just create the problem for themselves for no good reason - they could have avoided becoming dependent on javascript to do stuff they didn't need to do in a way that broke (degraded un-gracefully) if javascript wasn't available.
  - alirazaq 13y ago
- sehr 13y ago
  > A website that does not function without JS is a poor design choice. I wonder if this will be our equivalent to the CSS aversion of yesteryear
- Kiro 13y ago
  Why not block CSS while you're at it?
  - userbinator 13y ago
    CSS is not a Turing-complete language on which the bulk of security vulnerabilities relies. The majority of CSS used on webpages is truly beneficial to the user. (That said, I will turn off CSS on a page that abuses it; the majority of them don't, it's not a security risk, and it makes the page look better most of the time, so no problems with having it on by default.)
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-complete http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-com...
      - userbinator 13y ago
        > it's Turing-complete so long as you consider an appropriate accompanying HTML file and user interactions In other words, CSS won't just sit there and consume CPU cycles unless you actively interact with the page, unlike JS. The highest-voted comment on the first answer there says that a bit more explicitly.
        CJefferson 13y ago
        CSS animations will certainly consume CPU cycles
    - aestra 13y ago
      stupid question - what do you consider an abuse of CSS? Do people abuse javascript? Absolutely! However, I think JS can make the page look much better. Ajax loads are quicker than page refreshes, autocomplete is very useful, reply boxes that are loaded inline on demand, Hiding of parts of the page if the user wants to, (long comment threads...) table headers that scroll with the table, etc, etc. The really crummy thing about JS is it has gotten so much negative attention because of the abuses and that's what people focus on. I really don't like the move to JS dialogs myself though. I don't think that they are beneficial to the user in many cases. Especially when a video or picture is displayed in a JS dialog.
- userbinator 13y ago
  Another long-time default-JS-off user here. The majority of exploits rely on JS to work, and by turning it off I've eliminated a huge attack area. I got hit with drive-by malware a long time ago, turned off JS not long after that, and have been malware-free ever since; and I visit some of the more shady parts of the Internet often. A lot of others keep telling me "but you're missing out on tons of cool stuff", to which I reply "most of what JS is used for, I do not find 'cool'."
  - Spiritus 13y ago
    How about tons of useful stuff then?
    - blueskin_ 13y ago
      I've yet to see one that's genuinely useful, and no, replying to a forum thread etc without a pageload doesn't count.
      - Spiritus 13y ago
        Since this post is about Gmail, I'll just stick to that an can still name a couple of useful things from the top of my head: - autocomplete of e-mail addresses - collapsing/expanding nested e-mail conversations - search suggestions - navigating your inbox while simultaneously composing a new e-mail
        klibertp 13y ago
        Points 2 and 4 are doable with CSS. The rest is possible to approximate with some combination of forms, iframes and continuation-based backend. No "onkeyup" of course, but enter key can work nicely. Actually, I agree with both sides of a debate here: progressive enhancement is a really great idea and moreover it's completely insane to require JS and lots of potentially buggy and maybe even harmful JS libraries just to see what the page is about. On the other hand, non-JS and JS-based designs and implementations are just too different to be developed together - I know, I tried, multiple times - and what you really get is a blatant violation of DRY principle and twice as high cost. In short, until we have a set of non-JS components (HTML5 new input types are an example), which are common and make it possible to translate JS-based design to non-JS one without whole page redesign, we're going to see people over-relying on JS and not providing alternatives. Which sucks.
- leovander 13y ago
  Close, but it is not poor design choice. It is actually an issue with accessibility. http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Nothing on that checklist precludes javascript-only applications. In fact, the checklist specifically points out that "noscript" content does not constitute a suitable alternative to inaccessible scripting - the solution is to ensure the scripted solution is accessible (e.g. no mouse-only functionality for example).
- vidarh 13y ago
  Frankly, the concern for users who turn off JS on purpose would be pretty much bottom of my list of considerations unless I'd be making something for a very specific niche demographic.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Disabling Javascript is a security precaution, it makes plenty of sense and will continue to make sense long into the future. You might as well say that the concern of users who run a firewall is at the bottom of your priority list.
    - Spiritus 13y ago
      Strawman much? That's certainly not a fair comparison.
    - toxicityj 13y ago
      That's great and all, but like they said, unless you're running a niche website with super tech-savvy users (this site, for example) you're not going to have to worry about the JS-disabled folks. When the % of users with JS disabled viewing your site is super low, it's not really a concern to cater to them.
  - username223 13y ago
    That makes a cynical kind of sense. It's easier to extract money from more ignorant users.
benwoodward 13y ago
This Chrome extension toggles between standard view and basic html — https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-email-toggle/oocjbicmfkpndkahldljaebmjaimehkk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-email-t...
supercoder 13y ago
I wonder if Gmail was being written from scratch today whether they'd have the same aversion to the reliance on JS ?
- enneff 13y ago
  What aversion? Gmail had used JS since launch. This is the basic HTML version.
nemasu 13y ago
Actually, the link for the HTML only version is at the bottom of the page while it's loading.
Argorak 13y ago
When in Africa, on a very slow connection, GMail actively suggested using this version, when the initial load took too long.
- lmm 13y ago
  On a kindle you have to quickly click the HTML version link, because if it loads up the full version it freezes.
  - 72deluxe 13y ago
    Quality! Does it just run out of RAM and the system not clean up?
kisielk 13y ago
I am glad this still exists, it's helped me out a lot while living and working in Africa for the past month. Sometimes I don't have access to a fast connection. That being said, a lot of other Google products are awful across slow links, for no particularly good reason. Google+ doesn't work at all. Even clicking the little bell in the top right of another Google page never loads. I get the feeling Google needs to do more testing of their products over low speed and high latency links.
- curiouscats 13y ago
  Very true. I can't understand how bad some of their stuff is over non-super fast links (probably super low latency is my guess). It isn't just very slow links, I have problems with their stuff frequently when no other sites I use have issues (and if the connection is bad enough to cause others problems, Googles site will almost surely not even load - other than search which does load). I get the feeling they don't bother testing on anything but super low latency, of if they do they don't care about a horrible user experience. For me the super bad user experiences in this area have been greatly less, for me. Maybe they actually did something to address the problems (they are still far worse than any other sites I used, but still much better than they were for the last couple years).
  - danieldk 13y ago
    Just a suggestion: using 'super' as an adjective four times is a bit distracting. But maybe I am the only one who is annoyed be the recent trend of Jobs-ification of noun phrases ;).
  - sigmaml 13y ago
    My experience is rather different. I travel to rural areas in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh every month. The connection quality is as poor as its availability is flaky. I find that GMail, Google Drive and the Google search page always load. Business correspondence and collaborative editing have not been problems at all. I have not tried Google+, though. I shall try it the next time. On the other hand, my biggest problems have been with GitHub. Not once in the last 18 months have the GitHub Web pages loaded. That makes reviewing and merging pull requests very painful. I reported this to GitHub long ago, but have not seen any improvement yet.
eik3_de 13y ago
...and one day google will just switch it off b/c "focus", "little user base", whatever..
- weixiyen 13y ago
  Or we can thank them for keeping it there for 10 years and counting.
- kayoone 13y ago
  yeah, how about all those fancy startups that never even think about building a html only version ? At least give google some credit for actually providing this alternative for a decade.
  - CalRobert 13y ago
    Not just HTML only, how about "not an app" version? It is really annoying that things which could be accomplished perfectly well in a browser are now apps because apparently the web is terribly unfashionable these days.
ajkjk 13y ago
I prefer this so much.
gmays 13y ago
Oh yes, I'm well aware of this version of Gmail. I left the military in October of last year and this is the version of Gmail I was forced to use on our piece of shit government computers running IE6 or whatever they had.
tiedemann 13y ago
Enabled it for my father-in-law just the other day since he has both a slow laptop and likes to scroll the entire window with the arrow keys.
BonoboBoner 13y ago
You tell me I could have had the old gmail back again all this time?
kleiba 13y ago
Well, of course it does. What else are you using?
DigitalSea 13y ago
Having redundancy in a web app like Gmail is just good practice in my opinion. Any Javascript reliant application should still work without Javascript, I haven't tested it, but I seriously doubt something like Asana would work with Javascript disabled nor really any other JS heavy application. Some people often forget that not everybody has access to a fast Internet connection, as pointed out Africa is one of those nations, but even here in Australia there are people out in regional areas still on dial-up because satellite is too expensive and DSL is not an option because of the distances. Then you have countries like Libya, Iran and even parts of India too. I do wonder if Gmail didn't build a HTML version out of necessity, if Gmail were built in 2014 or even back in 2009, would it have had a fully functional HTML version to boot or would it have been only partially functional?
- kibibu 13y ago
  > Africa is one of those nations Presumably you meant "regions", but even then, it's only some parts of Africa
  - davb 13y ago
    > it's only some parts of Africa I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Africa is connectivity/bandwidth starved. Even in a (very) affluent South African neighbourhood, I struggled to get one of our remote workers a connection faster than 512kbps. And even that cost significantly more than our local (UK) connections which are comparatively overpriced. (This was about 18 months ago, the landscape could have obviously changed). Many of my African contacts rely on low-bandwidth comms such as GPRS or SMS. I guess that's why mobile banking (often via SIM Application Toolkit) is so popular. Same goes for WhatsApp.
    - Nitramp 13y ago
      Don't forget about North Africa, i.e. all non-sub-saharan Africa. That probably has much better connectivity across the board.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
basicallydan 13y ago
This is awesome. Not only really professional of them for doing this but it works so well. It's quite disturbing how many labels I have, though.
qwerta 13y ago
I found POP3 access much better for poor connectivity.
- blueskin_ 13y ago
  Maybe I should have tried that when I was working at a company that used gmail, as their IMAP is so slow it can only be described as glacial.
bluthru 13y ago
Users can actually find the "Contacts" button in this version.
- pcurve 13y ago
  Not to mention it still has pagination. In the new Gmail, I bet half the users wouldn't even be able to find one.
conradfr 13y ago
IIRC Gmail even give you the option to use it when your connection is slow and loading of the regular UI does not complete.
- Trufa 13y ago
  I does, in the loading screen (every time), down right, it offers a link to the html version.
72deluxe 13y ago
What an awkward URL. What does /u/0/h/ mean? Pretty useful nonetheless.
- regecks 13y ago
  The 0 refers to which Google Apps/Gmail user session you want to open. For example, 0 gives me my personal Google account, 1 gives me my work account. I guess h stands for html. I find this interface to be slower/all-round worse than the JavaScript one. Maybe it's because I don't live in the US and notice the 500-700ms+ page render times more when the whole page reloads.
  - 72deluxe 13y ago
    Thanks!
mxfh 13y ago
Since they switched the the non-Android mobile view to this unusable joke (especially if you rely on tags/folders): https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile I'm glad I can force my mobile Browser to use the HTML version instead, which lists all tags at once. https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html Also you can force[1] your browser to display the normal version no matter what: http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser Force non-feature complete touch-enabled iPhone view[2]: http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/ http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/ [Edit] current iPhone view https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/ https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/ [1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en [2] http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-modes.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-modes.html
- mahouse 13y ago
  The iPhone view doesn't work well. The Compose button doesn't work, the Menu doesn't work either...
  - mxfh 13y ago
    added the current URL I found via chrome's emulator features: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/ https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/ OR https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/ https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/ Here's another one for tablets[1]: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca [1] http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-force-gmail-website-us-ipad-view.html#post3129899 http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-fo...
    - mahouse 13y ago
      403 from my Lumia phone. Interesting.
      - mxfh 13y ago
tdsamardzhiev 13y ago
I like it better that the standard gmail site.
drunkenfly 13y ago
I wish Yahoo would have the same option for Yahoo Mail...
adamors 13y ago
If only this allowed sending email from an alias, I would switch in a heartbeat.
pjmlp 13y ago
How the web was supposed to be.
blueskin_ 13y ago
This would be amazing if I hadn't ditched gmail completely for privacy reasons.
jamesgeck0 13y ago
When Gmail first came out, I remember having to use Firefox or IE6, both of which were much slower on my 100MHz desktop than Opera was. The basic HTML version was super nice.

131 points by amaks 13y ago

I agree with Paul. A website that does not function without JS is a poor design choice. I have JS disabled by default and only whitelist specific domains. If your website content doesn't load up, there's a good chance I'm not sticking around unless it's imperative.

drstewart 13y ago
I don't think this is really a logical stance to take anymore than saying "an application that doesn't function without Java/C++/etc. is a poor design choice. If your application doesn't load up without needing an embedded runtime environment, I'm not bothering with it."
- alirazaq 13y ago
  That's a terrible comparison. Java applications requires the JRE which is a massive resource hog by default. An application written in C++ can be compiled to run optimally on the host OS.
nemasu 13y ago
Curious, why do you disable JS? Security? Preference?
- hnha 13y ago
  I am not OP but my reasons are security, ad/tracking breaking and general peace of mind. With the latter I mean for example popups, unnecessary animations, you might also like, CPU overload and other modern webdesign features.
- luos 13y ago
  I think it is because performance. Visit techcrunch (23) or huffingtonpost(30+) for example with an extension like ghostery which shows how many external js lib gets loaded. I don't block js but I block flash and it is for the same reason. My record is around 40+. I don't know why do they need that many. See reddit, loads 2 I think.
- josteink 13y ago
  Lots of pages, news-sites in particular, use JS to load more bloat, animated slide-decks and lots of things causing slower loads, including "beacons", and lots of fancy/noisy UI-elements distracting from what you actually came for: the nice, static HTML content that was the news. You will be shocked to see most pages on the internet load almost instantly the second you disable JS instead of spending several seconds loading all sorts of non-content. The performance gain of disabling JS is immense.
- alirazaq 13y ago
  I feel the web runs a lot smoother for me without JS. I don't get pop-ups, bulky advertisements, or other resource hogs that detract from content. I also don't like that Google or Facebook are tracking my movement across websites.
- lsh 13y ago
  speed improvements, privacy and the sense that the web should work without javascript, damnit. that said, js enabled+ghostery works well enough in Opera for me that I've started browsing with it on by default again.
gfodor 13y ago
Good engineers don't make judgements like this in a vacuum. Design choices are about tradeoffs and are not inherently good or bad. For a system like gmail where you have tens (hundreds?) of millions of daily active users, coming from countless different types of clients, a mode that eliminates JS dependency seems critical. Most sites are not gmail, they're not even close. Decoupling JS, particularly if it's done just to ensure the tiny fraction of people who disable it can use the site, can rightfully be very low on the priority list if it is a non-trivial engineering cost.
- camus2 13y ago
  rightfully be very low on the priority list if it is a non-trivial engineering cost. yeah like writing basic html is so hard and more expensive than maintaining piles of js code.
  - jonnydark 13y ago
    But it's not just HTML and CSS - you need to create a completely new user journey because you can't make asynchronous requests to the server. In some instances you may even need to manage server requests completely differently. UI elements may have to be changed as well as you can no longer rely on Javascript to animate them. You're essentially maintaining a second UI that is divorced from your main UI. There's significant cost in that. It's the same reason most sites don't support IE6 anymore.
- curiouscats 13y ago
  While there is sense in what you are saying you don't have to create the problem for yourself. Don't create situations where you rely on javascript in the first place. Granted there are some cases where it is an acceptable decision to get yourself into the problem (because the advantages you gain by doing so are worth the costs). But often companies just create the problem for themselves for no good reason - they could have avoided becoming dependent on javascript to do stuff they didn't need to do in a way that broke (degraded un-gracefully) if javascript wasn't available.
- alirazaq 13y ago
sehr 13y ago
> A website that does not function without JS is a poor design choice. I wonder if this will be our equivalent to the CSS aversion of yesteryear
Kiro 13y ago
Why not block CSS while you're at it?
- userbinator 13y ago
  CSS is not a Turing-complete language on which the bulk of security vulnerabilities relies. The majority of CSS used on webpages is truly beneficial to the user. (That said, I will turn off CSS on a page that abuses it; the majority of them don't, it's not a security risk, and it makes the page look better most of the time, so no problems with having it on by default.)
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-complete http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-com...
    - userbinator 13y ago
      > it's Turing-complete so long as you consider an appropriate accompanying HTML file and user interactions In other words, CSS won't just sit there and consume CPU cycles unless you actively interact with the page, unlike JS. The highest-voted comment on the first answer there says that a bit more explicitly.
      - CJefferson 13y ago
        CSS animations will certainly consume CPU cycles
  - aestra 13y ago
    stupid question - what do you consider an abuse of CSS? Do people abuse javascript? Absolutely! However, I think JS can make the page look much better. Ajax loads are quicker than page refreshes, autocomplete is very useful, reply boxes that are loaded inline on demand, Hiding of parts of the page if the user wants to, (long comment threads...) table headers that scroll with the table, etc, etc. The really crummy thing about JS is it has gotten so much negative attention because of the abuses and that's what people focus on. I really don't like the move to JS dialogs myself though. I don't think that they are beneficial to the user in many cases. Especially when a video or picture is displayed in a JS dialog.
userbinator 13y ago
Another long-time default-JS-off user here. The majority of exploits rely on JS to work, and by turning it off I've eliminated a huge attack area. I got hit with drive-by malware a long time ago, turned off JS not long after that, and have been malware-free ever since; and I visit some of the more shady parts of the Internet often. A lot of others keep telling me "but you're missing out on tons of cool stuff", to which I reply "most of what JS is used for, I do not find 'cool'."
- Spiritus 13y ago
  How about tons of useful stuff then?
  - blueskin_ 13y ago
    I've yet to see one that's genuinely useful, and no, replying to a forum thread etc without a pageload doesn't count.
    - Spiritus 13y ago
      Since this post is about Gmail, I'll just stick to that an can still name a couple of useful things from the top of my head: - autocomplete of e-mail addresses - collapsing/expanding nested e-mail conversations - search suggestions - navigating your inbox while simultaneously composing a new e-mail
      - klibertp 13y ago
        Points 2 and 4 are doable with CSS. The rest is possible to approximate with some combination of forms, iframes and continuation-based backend. No "onkeyup" of course, but enter key can work nicely. Actually, I agree with both sides of a debate here: progressive enhancement is a really great idea and moreover it's completely insane to require JS and lots of potentially buggy and maybe even harmful JS libraries just to see what the page is about. On the other hand, non-JS and JS-based designs and implementations are just too different to be developed together - I know, I tried, multiple times - and what you really get is a blatant violation of DRY principle and twice as high cost. In short, until we have a set of non-JS components (HTML5 new input types are an example), which are common and make it possible to translate JS-based design to non-JS one without whole page redesign, we're going to see people over-relying on JS and not providing alternatives. Which sucks.
leovander 13y ago
Close, but it is not poor design choice. It is actually an issue with accessibility. http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist
- vidarh 13y ago
  Nothing on that checklist precludes javascript-only applications. In fact, the checklist specifically points out that "noscript" content does not constitute a suitable alternative to inaccessible scripting - the solution is to ensure the scripted solution is accessible (e.g. no mouse-only functionality for example).
vidarh 13y ago
Frankly, the concern for users who turn off JS on purpose would be pretty much bottom of my list of considerations unless I'd be making something for a very specific niche demographic.
- betterunix 13y ago
  Disabling Javascript is a security precaution, it makes plenty of sense and will continue to make sense long into the future. You might as well say that the concern of users who run a firewall is at the bottom of your priority list.
  - Spiritus 13y ago
    Strawman much? That's certainly not a fair comparison.
  - toxicityj 13y ago
    That's great and all, but like they said, unless you're running a niche website with super tech-savvy users (this site, for example) you're not going to have to worry about the JS-disabled folks. When the % of users with JS disabled viewing your site is super low, it's not really a concern to cater to them.
- username223 13y ago
  That makes a cynical kind of sense. It's easier to extract money from more ignorant users.

benwoodward 13y ago

This Chrome extension toggles between standard view and basic html — https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-email-toggle/oocjbicmfkpndkahldljaebmjaimehkk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-email-t...

supercoder 13y ago

I wonder if Gmail was being written from scratch today whether they'd have the same aversion to the reliance on JS ?

enneff 13y ago
What aversion? Gmail had used JS since launch. This is the basic HTML version.

nemasu 13y ago

Actually, the link for the HTML only version is at the bottom of the page while it's loading.

Argorak 13y ago

When in Africa, on a very slow connection, GMail actively suggested using this version, when the initial load took too long.

lmm 13y ago
On a kindle you have to quickly click the HTML version link, because if it loads up the full version it freezes.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  Quality! Does it just run out of RAM and the system not clean up?

kisielk 13y ago

I am glad this still exists, it's helped me out a lot while living and working in Africa for the past month. Sometimes I don't have access to a fast connection. That being said, a lot of other Google products are awful across slow links, for no particularly good reason. Google+ doesn't work at all. Even clicking the little bell in the top right of another Google page never loads. I get the feeling Google needs to do more testing of their products over low speed and high latency links.

curiouscats 13y ago
Very true. I can't understand how bad some of their stuff is over non-super fast links (probably super low latency is my guess). It isn't just very slow links, I have problems with their stuff frequently when no other sites I use have issues (and if the connection is bad enough to cause others problems, Googles site will almost surely not even load - other than search which does load). I get the feeling they don't bother testing on anything but super low latency, of if they do they don't care about a horrible user experience. For me the super bad user experiences in this area have been greatly less, for me. Maybe they actually did something to address the problems (they are still far worse than any other sites I used, but still much better than they were for the last couple years).
- danieldk 13y ago
  Just a suggestion: using 'super' as an adjective four times is a bit distracting. But maybe I am the only one who is annoyed be the recent trend of Jobs-ification of noun phrases ;).
- sigmaml 13y ago
  My experience is rather different. I travel to rural areas in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh every month. The connection quality is as poor as its availability is flaky. I find that GMail, Google Drive and the Google search page always load. Business correspondence and collaborative editing have not been problems at all. I have not tried Google+, though. I shall try it the next time. On the other hand, my biggest problems have been with GitHub. Not once in the last 18 months have the GitHub Web pages loaded. That makes reviewing and merging pull requests very painful. I reported this to GitHub long ago, but have not seen any improvement yet.

eik3_de 13y ago

...and one day google will just switch it off b/c "focus", "little user base", whatever..

weixiyen 13y ago
Or we can thank them for keeping it there for 10 years and counting.
kayoone 13y ago
yeah, how about all those fancy startups that never even think about building a html only version ? At least give google some credit for actually providing this alternative for a decade.
- CalRobert 13y ago
  Not just HTML only, how about "not an app" version? It is really annoying that things which could be accomplished perfectly well in a browser are now apps because apparently the web is terribly unfashionable these days.

ajkjk 13y ago

I prefer this so much.

gmays 13y ago

Oh yes, I'm well aware of this version of Gmail. I left the military in October of last year and this is the version of Gmail I was forced to use on our piece of shit government computers running IE6 or whatever they had.

tiedemann 13y ago

Enabled it for my father-in-law just the other day since he has both a slow laptop and likes to scroll the entire window with the arrow keys.

BonoboBoner 13y ago

You tell me I could have had the old gmail back again all this time?

kleiba 13y ago

Well, of course it does. What else are you using?

DigitalSea 13y ago

Having redundancy in a web app like Gmail is just good practice in my opinion. Any Javascript reliant application should still work without Javascript, I haven't tested it, but I seriously doubt something like Asana would work with Javascript disabled nor really any other JS heavy application. Some people often forget that not everybody has access to a fast Internet connection, as pointed out Africa is one of those nations, but even here in Australia there are people out in regional areas still on dial-up because satellite is too expensive and DSL is not an option because of the distances. Then you have countries like Libya, Iran and even parts of India too. I do wonder if Gmail didn't build a HTML version out of necessity, if Gmail were built in 2014 or even back in 2009, would it have had a fully functional HTML version to boot or would it have been only partially functional?

kibibu 13y ago
> Africa is one of those nations Presumably you meant "regions", but even then, it's only some parts of Africa
- davb 13y ago
  > it's only some parts of Africa I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Africa is connectivity/bandwidth starved. Even in a (very) affluent South African neighbourhood, I struggled to get one of our remote workers a connection faster than 512kbps. And even that cost significantly more than our local (UK) connections which are comparatively overpriced. (This was about 18 months ago, the landscape could have obviously changed). Many of my African contacts rely on low-bandwidth comms such as GPRS or SMS. I guess that's why mobile banking (often via SIM Application Toolkit) is so popular. Same goes for WhatsApp.
  - Nitramp 13y ago
    Don't forget about North Africa, i.e. all non-sub-saharan Africa. That probably has much better connectivity across the board.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

basicallydan 13y ago

This is awesome. Not only really professional of them for doing this but it works so well. It's quite disturbing how many labels I have, though.

qwerta 13y ago

I found POP3 access much better for poor connectivity.

blueskin_ 13y ago
Maybe I should have tried that when I was working at a company that used gmail, as their IMAP is so slow it can only be described as glacial.

bluthru 13y ago

Users can actually find the "Contacts" button in this version.

pcurve 13y ago
Not to mention it still has pagination. In the new Gmail, I bet half the users wouldn't even be able to find one.

conradfr 13y ago

IIRC Gmail even give you the option to use it when your connection is slow and loading of the regular UI does not complete.

Trufa 13y ago
I does, in the loading screen (every time), down right, it offers a link to the html version.

72deluxe 13y ago

What an awkward URL. What does /u/0/h/ mean? Pretty useful nonetheless.

regecks 13y ago
The 0 refers to which Google Apps/Gmail user session you want to open. For example, 0 gives me my personal Google account, 1 gives me my work account. I guess h stands for html. I find this interface to be slower/all-round worse than the JavaScript one. Maybe it's because I don't live in the US and notice the 500-700ms+ page render times more when the whole page reloads.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  Thanks!

mxfh 13y ago

Since they switched the the non-Android mobile view to this unusable joke (especially if you rely on tags/folders): https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile I'm glad I can force my mobile Browser to use the HTML version instead, which lists all tags at once. https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html Also you can force[1] your browser to display the normal version no matter what: http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser Force non-feature complete touch-enabled iPhone view[2]: http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/ http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/ [Edit] current iPhone view https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/ https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/ [1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en [2] http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-modes.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-modes.html

mahouse 13y ago
The iPhone view doesn't work well. The Compose button doesn't work, the Menu doesn't work either...
- mxfh 13y ago
  added the current URL I found via chrome's emulator features: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/ https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/ OR https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/ https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/ Here's another one for tablets[1]: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca [1] http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-force-gmail-website-us-ipad-view.html#post3129899 http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-fo...
  - mahouse 13y ago
    403 from my Lumia phone. Interesting.
    - mxfh 13y ago

tdsamardzhiev 13y ago

I like it better that the standard gmail site.

drunkenfly 13y ago

I wish Yahoo would have the same option for Yahoo Mail...

adamors 13y ago

If only this allowed sending email from an alias, I would switch in a heartbeat.

pjmlp 13y ago

How the web was supposed to be.

blueskin_ 13y ago

This would be amazing if I hadn't ditched gmail completely for privacy reasons.

jamesgeck0 13y ago

When Gmail first came out, I remember having to use Firefox or IE6, both of which were much slower on my 100MHz desktop than Opera was. The basic HTML version was super nice.