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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#171

Post by pjmlp »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #141

Because they didn't internalize the feedback from Wave well enough I guess. /s I agree with the article, email is email. But it points out something which is fundamentally a problem for the industry. Some software is done as in doesn't need to change any more. That is a scary place since all those Gmail engineers need to do something so if it isn't adding new things to Gmail what will they do? Interesting parallel in…

Which is why, in a way, consultancy is a better place to be.

90% of the industry isn't directly about software, rather other products that are helped by having some software around, and when it is done, it is done. Time to move along to other customer.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#172

Post by pjmlp »

kbenson wrote: post #67
ShroudedNight wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain that Lotus Notes is deserving of at least as much scorn for its mail rendering as Outlook.

Considering I did ISP tech support, including mail client setup, for a few years in the late 90's and early 2000's and never once encountered Lotus Notes, I think it may be like in kind, but nowhere near like in quantity.

Lucky you, I see it every single day.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#173

Post by lern_too_spel »

davepeck wrote: post #168
lern_too_spel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not blame Apple for building a buggy browser that you have no choice but to use? Stop buying buggy user-hostile phones. AMP pages work perfectly fine in Firefox for Android.

Let’s say you’re an engineer about to roll out a feature to (literally) a billion users. Through testing, you know your feature is busted for the ~14.5% of your users who use Safari. But it’s not your fault! Apple should fix it. Quick quiz: do you release a feature that is broken for 145M users, which brokenness they might plausibly encounter multiple times a day? In a typical organization, the answer would probably…

You could turn that around and ask why Apple didn't bother to fix something that was causing pain for some of their users and continued not to fix it after it was causing pain for most of their users. Google made a bad engineering decision, but I would place most of the blame on Apple.

It's the same for IE and web applications that didn't work in that browser. Luckily, people (for the most part) stopped using IE. We can only hope that iOS Safari will share that fate.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#174

Post by pjmlp »

gukov wrote: post #169

One thing I have a hard time understanding: Microsoft got in trouble for including IE with Windows. Why is Google given a free pass to basically shape internet however they like?

Because according to the law, Windows was a monopoly regarding desktop operating systems, but Google services aren't.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#175

Post by Fins »

guessmyname wrote: post #4

Devin Coldewey against a bunch of Google employees, who will win? (sarcasm) On a more serious note, if the idea of AMP is so bad as many people attest. How is that the "bad idea" passed over so many people at a company that praises itself of hiring some of the most smartest people in the field? Hyperbole, the author of this article is just generalizing. Maybe AMP for email works for some people, making it a good idea…

"a company that praises itself of hiring some of the most smartest people in the field?"

Maybe because they are oblivious to the big difference between being a good developer, being generally smart, and being a decent person? These really are entirely different things, and selecting for the former would not necessarily give you the latter. And I very much doubt that they were selecting for the last one at all lately. If ever.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#176

Post by bdhess »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #164
bdhess wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard that before. It’s still fair to blame Google for the whole fiasco. Especially since the non-AMP versions had always worked fine.

Why not blame Apple for building a buggy browser that you have no choice but to use? Stop buying buggy user-hostile phones. AMP pages work perfectly fine in Firefox for Android.

I’m not going to switch my browser or my hardware platform over some trivial bug that only surfaces on one website. I’m just not going to visit that website.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#177

Post by dannyw »

We should start a boycott campaign against AMP for email. You know those browser banners for people who are using old versions of IE?

Use AMP HTML in every email to display a message about how AMP is toxic to the open web. Only AMP clients will see it.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#178

Post by verifex »

I can't believe I read through this article and most all of the comments here with no mention of what the hell AMP actually is, so I did a bit of Googling so that someone somewhere won't have to.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages ): They are a competing technology with Facebook's Instant Articles that restricts the page from doing practically anything that isn't performance-minded up-front. That means very little loading, and all data calls are async. That means no document.write or other blocking calls that would prevent the page from loading. As culled from the wiki article and the amp project site, pages in AMP load in a second or less and consume very little data, making them optimal for mobile devices.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#179

Post by lern_too_spel »

bdhess wrote: post #176
lern_too_spel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not blame Apple for building a buggy browser that you have no choice but to use? Stop buying buggy user-hostile phones. AMP pages work perfectly fine in Firefox for Android.

I’m not going to switch my browser or my hardware platform over some trivial bug that only surfaces on one website. I’m just not going to visit that website.

> I’m not going to switch my browser

Don't blame anybody else for your poor choices. If you choose to use IE 6 or iOS, don't cry if the world doesn't bend over to support your buggy platform. Work within the shrinking confinements of your platform.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#180

Post by ComputerGuru »

kuschku wrote: post #154
ChuckMcM wrote: post #141

Because they didn't internalize the feedback from Wave well enough I guess. /s I agree with the article, email is email. But it points out something which is fundamentally a problem for the industry. Some software is done as in doesn't need to change any more. That is a scary place since all those Gmail engineers need to do something so if it isn't adding new things to Gmail what will they do? Interesting parallel in…

I have to disagree on the topic of systemd. A lot of what it does definitely needed changing — although systemd implements that change suboptimally. Take the logind concept: In the past, Linux screensavers were simply a fullscreen window in front of everything else. They crashed? Your system unlocked. With logind, you have one tiny separate daemon that spawns your original X session, and the screensaver. As long as t…

That’s just bad design to begin with, replaced by a ln inefficient kitchen sink of a solution. Why should the screensaver be part of this megalith?

Edit: to be clear, it’s not about the binary used to run the screensaver, it’s about the fact that it does not need to be a question of “all or nothing” and that a solution for this particular problem could have been adopted without replacing virtually every other component of the system services simultaneously.

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