Gmail: Faster, better
It was a couple of days ago when I noticed something strange in my RSS reader: Dan Pupius had posted a blog entry. The entry was a simple sentence that pointed to his post on the Gmail blog about code changes that were being rolled out. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dan way back when I interviewed with Google. I was impressed then, as he’s a really bright guy, and am even more impressed now.
Dan doesn’t blog very often, but when he does, it’s usually something important and/or extremely useful. This case is no different. The changes to Gmail are quite impressive; it feels to me that the app is moving about three times faster than before. The clicks are ultra-responsive now, as opposed to the familiar interaction delays I grew used to. Congratulations to Dan and the whole Gmail team, performance improvements like this don’t occur without a lot of work and attention to detail.
Disclaimer: Any viewpoints and opinions expressed in this article are those of Nicholas C. Zakas and do not, in any way, reflect those of my employer, my colleagues, Wrox Publishing, O'Reilly Publishing, or anyone else. I speak only for myself, not for them.
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2 Comments
While some actions (i.e. opening an actual mail) are much more responsive now, the initial loading time seems to be taking a little longer. There’s also a slight delay when scrolling viewport (I wonder if it’s because of the heavy document structure and all those prefetched data or some intensive callbacks bound to window’s scroll event). I also noticed few glitches with elements positioning, not to mention constant freezes in Firefox and few obvious bugs. I admire the entire gmail team for what they’re doing but why not test the new version thoroughly before releasing it? That’s what I don’t understand.
kangax on November 4th, 2007 at 3:02 am
I think you’re being a little bit harsh on the Gmail team. I’m sure that they tested the app before releasing it, but there are always tradeoffs to be made. It’s not easy to create a robust web application that works on every browser and every system, so I think they’ve done an admirable job. There are bugs in every application, so of course you’ll find some in Gmail as you will with anything else that’s out there.
Nicholas C. Zakas on November 5th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
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