Comments on: Google Suggest and GMail are a step backwards

by: JavaScriptFan

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 20:08:11 +0000

You suck dude!!!

by: bob

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 08:34:59 +0000

No one gives a shit about Netscrap and OutCrook. Get over it, you zealot!

by: Simple Thoughts

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 06:11:55 +0000

What’s so great about Google Search?
Keith posted an interesting article countering the hype generated by Google Suggest & GMail - Google Suggest and GMail are a step backwards

I think there are two things which makes Google Suggest interesting.

People now realize there is a way to…

by: Nick Krut

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 19:20:55 +0000

Wow. I couldn’t disagree with you any more. Google is making huge advances. First of all I’m sorry that you might still be stuck with dialup but in the wave of the future everyone has broadband. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. Why not connect? Sure you can download an application to your computer…but what happens when your computer crashes? All your e-mails are gone. I agree it’s nice to work offline but it’s also nice to not put all your eggs in one basket. I think google’s advances are in the right direction and I think to say any different is living in the past.

by: Dov Wasserman

Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:52:05 +0000

I think the complaints about Google Suggest miss the point about what most people (not developers) think is cool about it. The contents of the drop-down list are the most popular correlated clusters of topics that start with the current input string. The novelty lies in instantly finding out what sub-topics of your topic millions of other people have been interested in. That’s not (simply) a matter of new or cooler UI: its the meaningful information presented to the user, done in a (essentially) instantaneous manner, so the user does not have to do any more work, and often much less, by simply selecting a suggested topic without having to type the whole phrase in.

I have used it to quickly see which sets of related keywords were more popular. For a cute example I heard from one of Google’s top engineer’s, try entering “rolling hash” into Google Suggest. If you were looking for information about the class of algorithms by that name, you can quickly tell that you are in the minority for those keywords. ;-)

Regards,

-Dov Wasserman

by: Charlie Hayes

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:48:49 +0000

VNC Server has a built in HTTPD that serves a page with a JAVA viewer, which would not need a client to be installed. Yes it requires more bandwidth, but I’d be willing to bet its runnable on more systems than gmail.

Try running gmail with netscape 4 or an older version of IE or maybe even opera. Gmail just says you cant use it, even though those browsers run javascript and could most definitly run the latest version of the Flash plugin. As it was stated, all browsers use a different implementation for JS, which google has to specificly program for. So “just requires javascript” isn’t true.

Yes, you are right, the actual language isn’t as bad as it’s lack of basicly everything (standards, tools, etc, not to mentsion documentation).

Many people underestimate flash, and I think macromedia is doing a horable job at marketing and improving it. The last few versions have gotten worse in many ways. Plus all these run-off programs like breeze and flex and central and remoting and server and robohelp (or whatever they call it now) all make it really confusing, not to mension most of those products suck or produce crappy output. Aside from these problems, Flash is a really excellent rich application platform. Antialiased compressed vector art and animation coupled with excellent scripting abilities and small, fast, and easy to install plugings make it quite a nice choice, way better than SVG or javascript, IMO. Java has quite a bit of bloat and is much harder to get all that nice animation, but its much easier to prorgam in than actionscript.

by: Jonathan Aquino

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:36:18 +0000

Just noticed something cool in GMail that Thunderbird may not have yet: Undo Discard.

When you are in the middle of composing an email, suppose you decide to discard it. Then suppose you change your mind and want to continue writing. The email is not lost; you just click Undo Discard.

Another great example of how webapps are continually updated with new features - no installation required.

by: Ali

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:54:28 +0000

1+2 is so obvious and uncontested, that nobody else deemed it important enough to mention. The fact that Web-Apps are a lot worse than Desktop-Apps in terms of UI is an evident fact, why are you implying that this could in any way be news to anyone?

You seem to be missing something: The Fact that webbased applications are popular with many developers as well as with many users _despite_ their worse UI. So the improvements to this bad UI are (even by your own logic) not a step backwards, they are a step forward - however webapplications have had a starting point that was “behind” - something which nobody ever denied. ;)

Most smart people would probably agree, that there are applications that are a lot better written as a desktop-app, and that others are better as webbased-apps. However suggesting that everybody should stop using and developing webapps in general and “should go back to desktop-apps period” would itself IMHO be a actually a “step backward”.

by: Jonathan Aquino

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:08:28 +0000

Because GMail is a web app, enhancements and bug fixes simply appear. No need for the user to continually download new updates.

That’s the advantage of web apps over thick clients: deployment to thousands of machines is a lot easier.

by: Ron

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:33:24 +0000

google suggest is pretty cool. so is gmail. check and mate