THE DREAM IN ACTION

Gmail, hands down the best internet based email provider, is stepping it up yet another notch.  They will be adding an easy to use contact manager, more keyboard short-cuts and a quicker way to search for and pull messages which will speed up the performance of the tool. Phenomenal.

On the Gmail blog they state:

“Even on a fast Internet connection, it can take a second to request and render a new web page, and when you read a lot of mail, these seconds can accumulate to hours waiting for email to load. We’ve spent a lot of time profiling all parts of the application, shaving milliseconds off wherever we can.

Some of the most common actions should be faster now. For instance, we prefetch messages in the current view, so when you open an email your browser doesn’t have to talk to Google’s server; it just displays the message. These techniques really shine on newer browsers and computers. Using an alpha version of Safari 3 on a MacBook, we’re seeing sub-200ms times when opening messages–pretty quick.”

As a very happy Gmail user I’m pleased to see that Google is not only dominating in developing new technologies and free web based products (Gmaps, Gdocs, Gcal) but they are also focussed on improving what already exists. They pay attention to the small things too! Well done Google.