[LINK] Gmail anyone?

[Rick Welykochy]

Linkers,

I've been given a pre-release Gmail account. Quibbling aside regarding
privacy issues and such, I am truly amazed with the latest offering
from Google.

What I've done is subscribe my Gmail account to several mailing
lists, and then let Gmail organise the lot. I also have added filters
to assign a label to each message which indicates which mailing list
the message belongs to.

With about 100 message in Gmail, the organisation is apparent:
I can search for a message, and view the related thread (or "conversation"
as they call it). I can look at all the conversations related to
a given label. I can instantly pick one conversation, and view
any part of it "accordian style", by collapsing or expanding any
message in thge thread. All done with Javascript magic. (This is
one of the very few times I've actaully been impressed with JS!)

Gmail makes extensive use of Javascript to accomplish some truly
amazing and eye-catching things:

(*) when composing a message, you can type the initial part of a recipient's
     name (e.g. "Rick W") an it will AUTO COMPLETE if you hit the TAB key

(*) the targeted ad feature is MORE than just advertising (see sample
     below); it is unobstrusive (shown at the extreme RHS) and not a
     bother in the least; related links are shown as well

(*) heaps of short cut keys, e.g. type 'c' to bring up the Compose window
     (I've never seen this JS feature used before)

(*) all messages automatically threaded (quite reliably too!) .. a thread
     is show as a stack of message panes, and any pane can be instantly
     opened or closed sans a round trip to the server (this is JS hide/expose
     technology)

(*) ubiquitous use is made of "hide this thing" dynamic HTML links: click on
     it and this thing is immediately hidden and link now says "show this thing";
     this is a very powerful UI feature making it easy to display very large
     amounts of useful information in a small space

Here is an example of the "related links" and "sponsored links" (ads)
or a Link email "The Illegal PC" submitted by Richard C:

    Sponsored Links

    PDF Protection Manager
       Utility for append/modify/remove security for your PDF documents
    Encrypt Your Email & Data
       Encrypted email, encrypted chat online storage, document sharing.
    PDF Writer & PDF2Word
       Create PDFs from any application. Convert to Text, TIFF and others.



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The related links are corelated with the content of the email. Quite handy
for launching into a bit of research-related web surfing based on the email.

I could go on and on, but the features of Gmail are too numerous to
expound in this short space :)

Quite an impressive system, and way way beyond Hotmail / Yahoo / other freemail
systems. My plan is to keep my personal and business email exchanges
on my own PC, and let Gmail handle all the other stuff like mailing
lists and public information. The mix provides me with the personal security
I want, and the message-management I need.

cheers
rickw


-- 
_________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
      --Mark Twain