It's a web view and it's an amazing hack to make a web view almost "feel" native but it fails. It doesn't fail nearly as hard as the Netflix app, but it's still not the greatest experience. If it wasn't for the fact I get push notifications I would probably uninstall it.
When will people learn that using UIWebView's and faking the experience of native is only a 90% solution? Sure if gets you there quickly but it will cost you trying to hack around the bugs and edge cases to have an almost barely acceptable user experience (and most of those issues are often solved for you for free in the native toolkit).
It's just generally a bad idea to write apps like this.
Now when it comes to pure web apps, I hold out hope that we can have great experiences everywhere. I don't believe anything and everything needs an app (content, books, business websites, etc). That is were the mobile web fits in. But please don't try to use these kinds of frameworks wrapped in a UIWebView and try to ship it as a cough native cough app.
This quote fits so well for these kinds of apps:
“ The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. ” - Tom Cargill
Is it just me, or do the notifications only work when the device is not locked? If I lock my device and I get an email, it doesn't vibrate and show me the notification. Either that or notifications aren't consistently sent.
I think that there are times when HTML5 apps wrapped in UIWebViews make a lot of sense.
To me, I would rather spend a small amount of time getting a HTML5 app out on BOTH iOS and Android to test an idea or concept. If the app on either platform looks like it has some traction, then I'll take the time to write a native app for that platform.
This line of thought definitely does not apply to this Gmail app. I also wouldn't recommend it for anything remotely resource intensive, but the vast majority of apps are not.
The new version of Sencha Touch (version 2) is very well done. It has a steep learning curve, but I think its worth it to be able to quickly throw together an app that works on both iOS and Android to test a product idea.
Since gmail is just email and already available over IMAP. I don't think they should be forcing consumers to use their gmail app just to get push. Even yahoo mail supported push on the first iphone via the built in mail app.
So far the gmail app isn't really offering anything compelling over the built in mail client. E.g. I don't think labels are a compelling reason to use a whole other application, that's a poor user experience, both options should be available, either as a separate app for those that don't use the built in mail app, or enabling push on their existing service so users aren't forced to tap around to another app just for another inbox.
If we're going to go about ransoming push notifications for a whole separate app, then I'd just scrap all of those separate apps and install Prowl (which interfaces with growl, so when growl receives a notification, it's pushed to your iOS device.) Prowl is a small price to pay to side-step this business strategy b/s.
I'm disappointed Google didn't take advantage of their opportunity to go back to the drawing board on this one. The user experience of a web wrapper can't compare to a native app.
Right now, using the built-in mail app on iOS I get email, calendar, and address book synchronization. The new Gmail app offers only email, right? Why should I use it instead then? Could someone explain that? Thanks!
Search is the only reason to keep it around. It's a great way to search through your Gmail. The built-in mail app doesn't search that well, especially stuff on the server.
Beyond that, I find the built-in mail app to be lightyears better than the Gmail app. I'll be using the built-in app as my main app, with the Gmail app on the side for certain searches.
When Sparrow finally comes to iOS, I may switch to that. They get how to make a good Gmail app, unlike the people who make Gmail.
Server-side search doesn't work at all with my GMail, set up as an Exchange account on my iPhone. It's the main reason I need to use the web app today.
I followed Gmail's tutorial (which I cannot find right now) but I remember it was using Gmail and not Exchange. I believe my problem is related to the two steps authentication but there were so many other cases there and from the kind of people who would not now about 2 steps authentication.
"Priority Inbox and one-click starring of messages. Other possibilities include some of the stuff Google is about to roll out for Gmail proper: like contact icons, better threading, and deep searching functionality. Maybe there will even be some Google+ integration, which Google is also hard at work on for Gmail." -- MG Sigler
I'm in the minority, however I actually like it. It's not perfect, but I don't seem to find the fact that they're using UIWebView nearly as "unusable" as everyone else does.
My only complaint is that the push notifications don't let you show a banner, and they don't seem to be showing up in the Notifications Center or Lock Screen. All that happens is I get a sound and a badge.
Is there anything preventing some random developer from releasing a native iOS GMail app? I basically just want an "Archive" button and for it to always be in-sync with the cloud. Does anything like this exist?
If you configure as Exchange the emails are pushed to you instead of pulled. Use m.google.com as the Exchange server. Also, the trash icon doesn't actually delete anything. It sends the message to your archive. This is the preferred way because it is push and also syncs the contact list with Google.
Alternatively, if you configure the included client as Gmail it will use an archive icon instead of the trash can, but it is not push enabled. You will have to pull every 15 minutes. You wouldn't get the contact syncing.
You may need to recreate your email account to get the behavior you want if you you made it as IMAP before Exchange and Gmail were options.
Since iOS 4 (I think), if you use Apple's Gmail preset in configuring email on your iPhone, it automatically changes the delete button to an archive button.
You can also manually setup your Gmail as an IMAP account and configure the delete button to send messages to Gmail's archive folder (this is useful if you have added custom email addresses to send from in Gmail)
I find the standard Mail app painfully slow over 3G for checking for mail. So far, the gmail app seems much, much faster. The UI will take some getting used to though.
Wow, I heard it was so bad that they pulled it, it must have really stank before cause its still terrible now. Horrid black colour scheme (aka 90's teenage webpage scheme), slow, unresponsive, menus flow past the edge of the screen.
This doesn't really sell me if they're trying to show me what I'm missing by not using android.
Wow. Two weeks later and they STILL messed this up? I'm only getting sound / vibration notifications. Impressively bad. How many people are working on this project? Follow up question: how many people are working on testing this project?
I get a blank loading screen for about 5 min, then some random sound on my phone. A lot of connection issues :( - sticking with the default mail app for now.
It's a web view and it's an amazing hack to make a web view almost "feel" native but it fails. It doesn't fail nearly as hard as the Netflix app, but it's still not the greatest experience. If it wasn't for the fact I get push notifications I would probably uninstall it.
When will people learn that using UIWebView's and faking the experience of native is only a 90% solution? Sure if gets you there quickly but it will cost you trying to hack around the bugs and edge cases to have an almost barely acceptable user experience (and most of those issues are often solved for you for free in the native toolkit).
It's just generally a bad idea to write apps like this.
Now when it comes to pure web apps, I hold out hope that we can have great experiences everywhere. I don't believe anything and everything needs an app (content, books, business websites, etc). That is were the mobile web fits in. But please don't try to use these kinds of frameworks wrapped in a UIWebView and try to ship it as a cough native cough app.
This quote fits so well for these kinds of apps:
“ The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. ” - Tom Cargill