In my experience, they're usually far more customizable. Clients I've used include KMail on Linux, The Bat! on Windows and Mozilla's Thunderbird, all of which offer myriad options to customize the appearance and behavior of message list, message pane and folder lists, though the first two apps much more so than Thunderbird. You also get to modify things like toolbars much more freely, and OS/toolkit theming usually also beats the GMail theming system.
You could argue that GMail has a higher customization potential given the fact that you can muck around with the document client-side (though Thunderbird extensions are similar, and if you really go down that road: I can also change the source code of KMail and recompile it), but we're talking in-app options here.
And so I find the notion that "GMail has impressive configurability because it has the options described in the article" amusing. Somehow the world has forgotten just how sophisticated an experience a regular old desktop app running in the context of a regular old desktop environment can be.
I'd also argue that regular old desktop toolkits and libraries still require a lot less investment of effort to achieve such levels of sophistication than the web development environment does at the moment. Like I said, thought-provoking.
Also worth noting is that Thunderbird's layout can be thoroughly customized with a bit of JavaScript hacking via its extensions interface, just as Firefox can. While TB may not have tons of visual options by default, it can still get them via third-party extension.
You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out. But I join the chuckling at the notion that "this demonstrates gmail's flexibility". If it was really flexible and customizable, I would still have the old theme.
> You can do this with Gmail just fine since it supports both pop3 and imap out.
Gmail's IMAP works, though it's had a number of minor-but-irritating bugs for years (these bugs even affect the official applications too). I wish they'd fix them - I get that it's not in their interest to support nonstandard clients for which they receive no ad revenue, but that's no excuse here, because they still cause some of the same problems on the Android and Blackberry apps.
This article, dated February 2008 (four years ago!) is just as relevant today as it was then. The duplication of messages with broken synchronization is what bothers me the most, as I use offlineimap to handle my mail: http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-...
You're missing out on a ton of great Gmail features if you are using a desktop mail client. Integrated hangout/voice /text chat, phone, conversation view, the social pane with contextual information..the list goes on.
Those features also only promote you to stay logged in on your gmail account at all times, and there have been numerous security issues with that approach.
I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail. Every time I see someone use gmail I cringe at how primitive and slow the workflow is.
>I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would chose gmail over any native application for mail
I can't speak for the 350M other people using Gmail. But here's why I use Gmail(some of these aren't exclusively Gmail):
- Conversation View
- Calendar Integration
- Very good Labelling/Grouping system
- Online Storage
- Browser access
- Very Powerful and effecient Search
- Great filter system
- Autosaves unfinished emails
- Integration with multiple third party tools including Attachments.me, dropbox, google docs, taskforce
I used to use Thunderbird, and it was great. But I had big 3 problems with it: 1) I never got comfortable with searching emails. 2)I couldn't access my email from other devices/computers etc 3)My emails starting chewing up a lot of HDD space.
I'm not arguing that gmail isn't good at what it does. But it is at an inherent (huge) disadvantage of being executed in the browser.
Just some comments. Thunderbird became dramatically better at searching a couple of years(?) ago. I frequently feel limited by search in gmail, I've assumed that there are advanced features lurking around somwhere but the UX is so bad I just don't.
I don't see how storage can be a problem. With gmail you hit the limit at <8 GB, that can hardly be a problem on a workstation. If anything it's an argument against gmail.
But, perhaps the most important one, I don't get why everyone seems to believe it's native or web, never both. Of course you have both... The question is why you'd want such a blunt tool for something as important as mail on your workstation. Yes, browser access is still awesome - that's why you have both.
And when you consider security it's borderline to irresponsible being logged in constantly in the browser and since I value instant notification that alone is a dealbreaker on my WS.
And if you're on a laptop with a bad connection relying on gmail or something similar is a sure way to get a heart attack.
if you are limited by search in gmail, you are doing it wrong. you are saying gmail is inferior to thunderbird for search? over google? c'mon. you also take issue with apps running in the browser, which is counter-culture. you are refusing to accept that there are specific advantages to the additional functionality we have gained in the browser, while claiming your machine is more secure than Google's data centers. sorry but you're not making a sound argument.
Read in what context I said that gmail search is inferior to thunderbird for search. But yes, how do you, without googling it up, search for a message in gmail from address x, sometime in the year of 2010, where the subject began with y and the content contained z.
Counter-culture? Few would argue that native apps doesn't have advantages over browser apps. The best you could say about a browser app is that it is "good enough". But obviously they suffer greatly from being in the browser just because all workstation operating systems are centered around native apps and not apps within the browser.
Which means that I can click on my mail-application in the taskbar/whatever but whereas in a browser I have to navigate through all my browser windows to find the one with mail in it, which doesn't even have to be in it's own window but hidden somewhere with lots of other tabs.
Again, I never said that my machine is more secure than googles data center servers. But any native application has security advantages over something run in the browser (and potentially drawbacks as well, but the inherent issue with being logged in on a web app doesn't exist in a native application).
Outlook has conversation view as well, and Microsoft Lync (formerly Office Communicator) integrates the rest of the feature set (yes you're vendor-locked, but you are with GMail too). In my opinion GMail executes better on most of these features, but they're not the only ones to offer them.
Not a fan, but Lync even allows XMPP access (if so configured), so all your GTalk buddies can message you from GMail (at least that should work - didn't try).
That made me chuckle, using a desktop email app. Funny/curious/thought-provoking how different standards apply to web apps still.