I am, officially, the last person to get a Gmail account. Whuffies to Adam, who helped me out in this regard.
Things that are immediately striking to me about the user experience:
- Round-trips to the server are substantially reduced. Eliminated, frankly, for common navigation options. This is a huge win, as server latency is about 50% of the problem with web app interaction (the weak HTML control set accounts for the other half). Update, 10:47: When it has to hit the server, Gmail tries Real Hard to hide it; they make good use of one of my favorite webapp tricks: the image-url-with-side-effects. (“Star” a message and see what happens.)
- Progressive disclosure all over the place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a UI that was so chock-full of drawers and pockets, and I think this underscores Gmail’s focus on streamlined, relevant information (rather than the info-overload which seems to be the stated goal of apps like Outlook).
More thoughts (to add to the steaming heap of Gmail opinion already out there) as I spend more time with the app.
Update, 10:48: One of the aspects that’s really tickling my spider-sense is that Gmail combines the access-anywhere of webmail (and, frankly, of mutt-over-ssh, my current email solution) with just a little bit of the flash and feel of a desktop app. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed using email as much as back when I used Eudora in the mid-nineties, but since I need to get at my email from many different places that’s not as much of an option for me. Gmail sprinkles a bit of Eudora into the webmail mix, and you can taste it.
