Brainless developers

[altivo]

I've been using Gmail on and off for a couple of years. Last fall I decided to migrate most of my email activity to it because their interface is quite good and it keeps my received mail accessible as I move around from one computer to another (something I do far too much, between work and home, but it's unavoidable.

Now Gmail has gone too far with "enhancements" to their interface. They are making Firefox crash constantly. In order to log in from home, where I have only a 38Kbit connection, I have to wait forever for all of their Java or whatever scripting they are using to load, *every single time*. They put a complaint on my screen that "This is taking too long" as if it were MY fault. Eventually the screen goes blank and says "Done" in the status bar, but all I have is a title line telling me how many new messages there are, and a tiny one inch square frame with scroll bars that don't scroll. The rest of the screen is white. The next step is to click Refresh, which crashes Firefox completely and makes me restart it. The second try takes just as long but does connect successfully and bring up my mailbox. Now it works fine as long as I don't try to navigate away from it. Any attempt to choose a different bookmark, type in a URL, or even just Log Out by clicking Gmail's own link, will crash Firefox again, taking down all windows and tabs completely.

From work, I can log in without the Refresh/Crash/Reconnect, but it still crashes if I try to navigate away from it. I have to keep Gmail open in a tab or window and avoid closing it until I'm ready to close Firefox.

Then there is the "Oops 102" error that apparently is affecting so many users that they have a special help screen for it. The special help screen essentially tells you that they don't know what it is and they're working on it. I'm not impressed. When you have a bug this bad, you back down the changes until it's gone, and then figure out what you did wrong, rather than making people suffer with it for weeks.

Of course I've fought my way through Google's long-winded error reporting process, and told them three times exactly what hardware, software versions, etc. I am using, but that doesn't seem to have produced any results. Likewise, I've reported the problems to the Firefox developers dozens of times, thanks to their little pop-up that asks you to report the error when Firefox crashes, but so far nothing from that quarter either, not even a "We're looking into it."

Admittedly, both Gmail and Firefox are free products, but they have huge installed user bases now. I can't be the only one seeing these problems, and it has been going on for at least three weeks. You'd think they could at least acknowledge that there IS a problem, wouldn't you?

Comments

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Thinking? Hmm... somehow that doesn't seem likely :P Glad I'm not much of a Gmail user, though :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the "Works fine for me" mentality. The programmer, who is too young to know better, sits at his quad-core 3 GHz/2 GB machine on a T3 line and says "Looks fine to me, must be your fault." He's using Internet Explorer on Windows Vista probably, has never seen Linux at all and is only vaguely aware of Firefox as "something that's out there."

Google's own user forums show that Macintosh users were first to report this, back in December, but of course no one pays attention to Mac users, not even Apple.

[deffox]

On a slightly related note I'm highly annoyed at the announcement of Microsoft buying Yahoo. I find Gmail annoying to use, and Hotmail deletes sent messages over 30 days old; so that left Yahoo as my free email client. I sure hope Microsoft doesn't ruin Yahoo mail by starting to delete old messages.

I have a lot of archiving to do just in case.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I never liked Hotmail or Yahoo mail at all. I'm still convinced that Yahoo deliberately encourages spammers to plaster their users with junk.

In any case, if Microsoft really buys Yahoo, you'd best look for somewhere else to be. It won't just be deleting old messages that's an issue, I'm sure.

[bonnie-tiler.livejournal.com]

I've never used Gmail but I take it's a web based email thingie? I know I've asked you before but it still seems a bit "scary" for me to go Linux just yet.
BUT!
I use Opera for the Internet. Very good for everything but my bank, the are optimized for IE , blah!
And I now use Thunderbird for my home email(Operamail for webbased) chucked Outlook out yesterday actually..
When I bought my first laptop just 6 weeks ago, it had Vista business pre-installed, rats!
It also had a office 2007 package which they (Microsoft) wanted me to pay near enough 400$ to get full use of, chucked that out immidiately!
I am now a proud user of open office..
The first day I had the laptop I got rid of Norton Internet Security, instead i opted for AVG
I wish I knew more, I would like to decide for myself what programs to be installed on my own Machinery, bought with hard earned money.

Liked your post, rock on 'tivo

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep, Gmail is web-based, though you can also use it with a client like Thunderbird.

I tried Opera a couple of years ago and really didn't care for it then. Haven't looked at it recently.

OpenOffice is good, though it has grown just as bloated as Microsoft's own as it tries to duplicate everything Microsoft does.

I agree with dumping Norton, they drive me crazy and frankly, don't work anyway. Thunderbird is much better and less virus-prone than Outlook.

They couldn't pay me enough to get me to run Vista. I can tolerate XP if I must, but Microsoft has completely alienated me over the years and I have no desire to give them any of my hard-earned money. The way to ease yourself into Linux is to find an older used machine that no one wants any more. People think a computer that is more than two years old is worthless because it's "so slow" or "too small" but they're just being silly. Get a used machine cheap, wipe the hard disk clean, and install one of the so-called easy distributions that are designed for people who are used to Windows, like Kubuntu or something. Then just play with it until you see that there's nothing to be afraid of. :)

I don't really like the *Ubuntu distributions myself, but lots of people swear by them. If you're willing to face something that looks a little more unfamiliar, then you could try Debian or Mandrake perhaps. Those are closer to real Linux and aren't trying to look like Windows so much.

[scruff.livejournal.com]

Hotmail deletes sent messages over 30 days old

It does? I have ones in my Sent folder from last September, and that's just because that was the last time I cleared it out myself!

[scruff.livejournal.com]

I use Gmail through the IMAP server - you'll need to enable access through Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP -> Enable IMAP on a machine where you can get to your account, then follow the instructions at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77662 to configure Thunderbird.

It's not exactly the most portable of solutions, as you'll have to do that for every machine you want to get to your mail on (but hopefully on other machines you'll actually be able to access it via the web interface!), but at least you'll be able to get to your messages!

EDIT: oop, just spotted your comment above, you already know this! :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I can get to the mail now, and it's relatively easy on machines with a broadband connection. At home I've started using their plain html interface, which loads right up but lacks all the nice features that attracted me to Gmail in the first place and that worked just fine until they broke it in December.

The real problem is that you can't get out of Gmail without Firefox crashing. People have been reporting this since December, yet nothing seems to have been done about it.

To use IMAP, you need a client, no? I don't want to install clients on all these different machines, or leave copies of any of my e-mail or replies hanging around on their hard disks.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Good luck getting it all sorted out Tivo. Personally I am not a big fan of Gmail but it doesn't seem to be too bad of a product. It does have a few neat features but not enough to make me switch. Currently I am using a bastardized version of Yahoo for my mail, it is the service provided by ATT so while I have a .sbcglobal.net address it is in fact a yahoo address as well I think....or at least it uses a Yahoo interface along with the ability to interface into teh evil Outlook. ;)

I am a big fan of Firefox though and use it whenever possible, a few exceptions are the interface to Oracle at work and a few bill paying sites that just won't accept Firefox.

I did hear the news about Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo and that all makes me a little skittish and think that nothing good can come from this.

Ya'll have a great weekend and stay warm. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Warm is no problem. Our heat is fixed, plus it's getting warmer here. Monday we are supposed to get rain, possibly thunderstorms. No one can convince me now that the weather hasn't gone crazy.

Point of information

[typographer.livejournal.com]

Microsoft has announced that's it's offer having been rejected, it is moving forward to attempt a hostile takeover of Yahoo. Hardly the sames as "is buying." They may very well succeed, but...

Re: Point of information

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Typical Microsoft. They can't build anything good on their own these days, they just buy or steal someone else's work it seems. Even MS-DOS itself wasn't their own invention.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* Well said. If there was a God, he/she/it certainly is/would be cruel to Mac users :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I'm rather strongly inclined to agree with that opinion... but then it seems like everything in this world has ads plastered on it these days >_>

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Including my LJ, alas. I really need to get my photos out of the LJ scrapbook so I can drop this "plus" account. I have AdblockPlus installed in Firefox, so I never see the ads, but I know other people are getting them at least part of the time.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*nods* Likewise with mine. I made that choice myself, though. Actually, LJ's ads seem the least offensive to me... the ones on Myspace are ten times worse.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*holds up a silver crucifix*

I won't go near myspace, but it's not just the ads that are offensive.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*hisses and backs away* Actually, I couldn't agree more. it's unfortunate I found out... too late >_>

[deffox]

They started it suddenly somewhere around 2002. They instantly and permanently lost me then. I found out I had to back everything up within a week from news sites, because Microsoft never told me themselves.

Googling the issue I see conflicting reports as to whether they still do it. From your comment it seems they stopped doing it.

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Disable Java?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

I don't think Gmail could survive if I did that. Or it would be about as brain dead as the HTML interface, which is the alternative I'm using now anyway.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

I don't use gmail but I've heard of this Firefox vs Gmail thing
going on.

Hotmail? Yahoomail?

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Me, I love GMail.

Wanna try something really minimal and fast? Use the mobile interface at http://www.google.com/m/products?source=m2. Then click GMail and log in.

Not as full-featured as the normal web app, but it should be faster on a slow line.

[animist.livejournal.com]

AH... Google Mobile; Clever!

Re: Point of information

[animist.livejournal.com]

At DOS's heart is CPM; the original version was a 16-bit port of the old 8-bit operating system that Microsoft bought from another company. The original Microsoft product was Tiny Basic programmed in assemblers on a microchip ROM for the old Intel 8080 so computers could boot in to Basic without a DOS.

Re: Point of information

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes and no. There was a genuine 16 bit version of CP/M. I used it, it was called CP/M-86 and retained the same disk structure and command structures that were found in the 8 bit original.

MS-DOS was in fact a product of another tiny company, neither Microsoft nor Digital Research, but Seattle Computer. It wasn't called "MS" then, of course, but 86 DOS since it was written for the 8086 CPU. Microsoft first licensed the product with some restrictions and then adapted it slightly to the more limited and cheap 8088 processor that IBM selected for the first PCs. There are lawsuits and counterclaims wrapped around all that, but I remember the original advertising and the original products.

Seattle Computer had some cross-pollination with Gary Kildall's CP/M, but 86 DOS wasn't really a CP/M derivative. They had completely different disk file structures, and a different command syntax. The BIOS interface was also quite different.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I already use Gmail from my cell phone. Since the phone is a cheap one and the provider is Virgin Mobile, it's very limited but it does work and is surprisingly quick. Odd that they can do that and yet keep loading down their primary interface until it becomes unusable. Their problem with Firefox is real. Apparently thousands of people have been complaining about it, yet neither Firefox nor Google are quite willing to admit to it. It doesn't affect everyone, so it must be related to what's in the actual account or some combination of options.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hotmail? Yahoomail?

And be spammed out of existence? No thanks. Hotmail is already owned by Microsloth, and now they're trying to take over Yahoo as well.

Re: Point of information

[animist.livejournal.com]

Thanks for setting straight my aging memory! I didn't mean it explicitly as I stated it; I merely oversummarized. What I meant was not that it was CPM, but it was of the same genre and was meant to be seen as a replacement for 8-bit CPM in competition with the official product. Although I was mistaken; I thought it was more like CPM than not. Thanks for pointing out the differences.

Re: Point of information

[animist.livejournal.com]

BTW, We still have DR Dos (by Digital Research) on my old '286. It's at my parents house, although no one has used it since my dad died. That's a reason I thought DOS was derivative of CPM.

Re: Point of information

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ah, DR-DOS. Now that came later and was indeed a clone of MS/PC-DOS in that it kept the user interface and disk format the same as the one used by Microsoft then. And what fun when Microsoft started twiddling each version of Windows just to keep it from running over DR-DOS. Really, the behavior of so many of these technology companies has been abominably similar to that of two year olds. I've watched too much of SCO and Microsoft and Apple sueing and countersueing each other. That's why I'm committed to open source now.

Re: Point of information

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the user interface of PC-DOS is very different from that of CP/M, and probably much more user friendly (at least in 1983 terms.) Those of us who already knew CP/M though really found PC-DOS to be brain-dead. The trouble was, CP/M-86 was expensive. If you bought an 8088 PC, it generally came with MS-DOS or PC-DOS included. If you wanted CP/M-86 you had to buy that separately and it cost a couple hundred extra. Digital Research made a bad mistake there. If they had offered a cheaper licensing rate to Microsoft and IBM, their vision might have prevailed instead of the more limited one inherited from Seattle Computer.

I agree with those who say IBM/Intel/Microsoft set the microcomputing industry back at least a decade when they introduced the IBM PC. Their marketing clout guaranteed that they'd grab all the market share. The inferiority of their products stifled innovation and competition and forced the whole industry to waste more than a decade figuring out how to deal with segmented addressing, the 640K limitation, and so forth. None of that needed to happen, and it was all the result of corporate greed and lack of vision. IBM really believed that the personal computer was a dead end and doomed to be forgotten within a few years, so they didn't want to invest any real effort into it. Now microcomputers have really changed the face of business and the world, and IBM continues to lose market share and image because of their inability to adapt. I think Microsoft is clearly headed down the same path now.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The thing that gets me is that it's really obvious that the Gmail folks are not following the same model as the Google (search engine) folks: Keep it lean and simple. I recall when Google was this radically different search engine that was NOT trying to be a stupid "Portal" with everything under the sun loading the page down. Instead it was a search little more than a title, an entry field, and a couple buttons. And that was a huge selling point to me. If only the Gmail folks had the same minimalist UI mindset: make it do just what it needs to do, and no more.

"This is taking too long"

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I have DSL and get this idiotic message (using Opera, fwiw) as well. What it says is, as you know, not what it means. It means, "We're running a crap script that gets in the way of useful things."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've thought for a long time that Google is obviously an experimental think tank, perhaps even doing research on public or user responses in some way, and possibly selling those statistics to marketeers of various sorts. While their advertising business is probably getting to be quite lucrative, much of what they do is clearly not producing a profit for the most part. (Such as giving away email accounts with huge amounts or storage, or free web server space, or image storage, or shared document editing which is quite good by the way.)

I would have no trouble believing that sometimes they are testing just how much grief users will tolerate before abandoning a product or service such as Gmail. They certainly don't leave much in the way of avenues for feedback, and can get away with it largely because they are giving a service away at no charge so if you don't like it you can just forget it.

Re: "This is taking too long"

[altivo.livejournal.com]

For a more basic or even minimalist Gmail, try the html-only interface. No scripts, much faster to load and respond even over dialup.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

That one does not crash Firefox nor does it make it your fault when they are too slow at their end. And I haven't seen "Oops 102" or "Oops 100" messages their either.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Just a quick note - Gmail allows POP access and I *think* IMAP too. Perhaps you could install something like Portable Tbird on a USB stick?

(Sorry, I'd no time to make sure PortableApps work on Linux too. I hope so. I'm giving serious thought to migrating to Xubuntu on my new computer.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I use Thunderbird for my work e-mail but I'm not real fond of it. I've been using my internet provider's web-based e-mail for years because it keeps my mail folders available from wherever and whatever machine I'm using at the moment. I thought Gmail would let me do the same, plus it will pop the mail off several different addresses for me and keep it all together. Turns out I can use their html only interface just fine. It's something about the way they are abusing Java that causes all these crashes. The problem isn't universal, but seems to affect certain accounts. No one knows why. Turns out that my account will crash Firefox, any version, on any platform if I use their newest full featured interface.

What on earth are you doing awake at this hour anyway? ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I prefer Yahoo mail, I've had my account since 1997 :) They allowed me to use their new updated interface of the "classic" I still keep the classic because I don't want all the other P'lava that comes with the "new one"

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I found early on that Yahoo was very sneaky about distributing addresses to commercial spammers. They kept adding options to allow spam, and turning them on by default. For a while you had to constantly search through their preferences and keep turning those things off. I got quite disgusted with them and deleted my account.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Really? Perhaps get a Yahoo Australia Account instead, it seems pretty much spam free :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This was several years ago and I'm sure they got enough angry reactions to it. I just saw no need to keep using them after that.