Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gmail Launches Add-ons

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 238 posts

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#111

Post by dalemyers »

hkmurakami wrote: post #98
guelo wrote: post #71

Gmail on Android is such a shitty locked-down experience. Want to create an appointment from an email? Nope. Want to set a reminder about an email? Nope. Want to link to an email from a notes or other app? Nope. OK, well now maybe. If you become a "business partner" with them and shove your product into whatever grand strategery they're cooking up this quarter. It's sad to think how Android was envisioned as this ope…

Does Outlook on mobile provide these? Iirc desktop outlook could create events/reminders/tasks linked to emails in your inbox.

Yes! (I'm the dev who implemented them in Outlook Mobile). I think you are thinking of COM add-ins though, which were significantly more powerful, but a security risk. The new JS based approach, which has been in place for a few years, can't do quite as much, but is much much safer.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#112

Post by Myrmornis »

jypepin wrote: post #25

So, I started using inbox a while ago when it was announced and I love it. Really. What's the state of development of it? Doesn't seems to be moving much and a lot of features from gmail are still missing, and I continue to see dev happening on gmail and not on inbox. Should I be moving back to inbox?

Came to post this question also. I switched to Inbox when it came out and never looked back. The automated linking of travel emails into a cluster pertaining to the same trip, for example, is extremely useful, and after pinning anything that needs attention, clearing your inbox with the sweep button is amazing. Some clarity from google on the future of these two products would be nice.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#113

Post by eradicatethots »

Mz wrote: post #99
oliwarner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said exactly how it should work. These add-ons should exist and operate within Google/gmail and nowhere else. They shouldn't be able to send your data anywhere else. Instantly curtails the unwashed from having their identities stolen. As for the rhetoric, I'm sorry you feel picked upon. I was speaking generally, not directly at you ... but if that still doesn't reflect your experience of the idiots bumping their wa…

Re "idiots." Everyone is ignorant about something. Take brilliant IT professionals. For many of them, manners and social skills are one of their weak areas.

I think this is a harmful stereotype

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#114

Post by Mz »

eradicatethots wrote: post #113
Mz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re "idiots." Everyone is ignorant about something. Take brilliant IT professionals. For many of them, manners and social skills are one of their weak areas.

I think this is a harmful stereotype

I think you are missing my point. Which, you know, maybe doesn't belong on HN at all. But neither does name calling to begin with. The guidelines say so, more or less.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#115

Post by overint »

jypepin wrote: post #25

So, I started using inbox a while ago when it was announced and I love it. Really. What's the state of development of it? Doesn't seems to be moving much and a lot of features from gmail are still missing, and I continue to see dev happening on gmail and not on inbox. Should I be moving back to inbox?

I completely agree, I found inbox a little while ago and it's amazing. It's cut my time spent on emails by a factor of 10, and I love the inbuilt reminder system. There are a few minor annoyances but the massive time savings are well worth dealing with them.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#116

Post by guelo »

azernik wrote: post #107
guelo wrote: post #71

Gmail on Android is such a shitty locked-down experience. Want to create an appointment from an email? Nope. Want to set a reminder about an email? Nope. Want to link to an email from a notes or other app? Nope. OK, well now maybe. If you become a "business partner" with them and shove your product into whatever grand strategery they're cooking up this quarter. It's sad to think how Android was envisioned as this ope…

Those actions are on the e-mail sender to implement; GMail has an open specification for an e-mail to provide a structured representation of data it contains. https://gsuite-developers.googleblog.com/2013/05/introducing...

Right, a corporate spammer can tell google that an email is a calendar event (valuable data!). But the receiving user can't do it themselves using some other calendar app.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#117

Post by michaelmior »

guelo wrote: post #71

Gmail on Android is such a shitty locked-down experience. Want to create an appointment from an email? Nope. Want to set a reminder about an email? Nope. Want to link to an email from a notes or other app? Nope. OK, well now maybe. If you become a "business partner" with them and shove your product into whatever grand strategery they're cooking up this quarter. It's sad to think how Android was envisioned as this ope…

I'm not sure what how Gmail is particularly locked-down compared to any other app. I'm not an Android developer, but it seems like there's not really a great way to add functionality to an app as a third party. If you want an app that does those things, you can still connect it with a Gmail account. In fact, there are many apps designed to connect with Gmail and add new features.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#119

Post by ageofwant »

forgotmypw wrote: post #23

Sounds a lot like Gmail Labs, which was discontinued. I've learned to expect most Google products to be killed off, so I don't even bother starting to use them anymore.

Indeed. Found myself scraping Alphabet products of a list the other day - just can't risk spending months of effort on something that has a good change of disappearing overnight.

Google went from 'I need a good reason why we are not picking Google' to 'Avoid if at all able'.

For a company built on selling, Alphabet has become extraordinarily good at not selling itself.

Re: Gmail Launches Add-ons

#120

Post by guelo »

michaelmior wrote: post #117
guelo wrote: post #71

Gmail on Android is such a shitty locked-down experience. Want to create an appointment from an email? Nope. Want to set a reminder about an email? Nope. Want to link to an email from a notes or other app? Nope. OK, well now maybe. If you become a "business partner" with them and shove your product into whatever grand strategery they're cooking up this quarter. It's sad to think how Android was envisioned as this ope…

I'm not sure what how Gmail is particularly locked-down compared to any other app. I'm not an Android developer, but it seems like there's not really a great way to add functionality to an app as a third party. If you want an app that does those things, you can still connect it with a Gmail account. In fact, there are many apps designed to connect with Gmail and add new features.

Android is designed from the ground up to enable this kind of thing. It has a powerful cross-app Intent system that could allow sharing of emails, deeplinking into gmail, broadcasting email changes, allow other apps to change email status, etc.
Post reply on HN