Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Klaatu barada nikto!"
I said "necktie" and now my computer has daemons.
Hail to the king, baby!
AMP for email is a terrible idea
471–480 of 483 posts
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#472Everybody had a computer that could run any program, but used only their web browser, so they made the web browser pretend to be any program, but then everybody had a web browser that could run any program, but used only webmail, so they made webmail pretend to be any program? Where does that end? Or are these ”engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences.” more limited than the current web applications? I…
> Also, I guess all clicks in those experiences will go through Google’s servers.
They already do, when I click a link in my GMail (Android) app, and it opens in Firefox (Android), I can sometimes quickly see a Google redirection URL flit by before loading the actual page. They basically did a similar shitty trick to what they did to the Search result pages, pretending to be direct links but inserting a tracking redirect at the onbeforeunclick event or such.
Hey, btw anyone know of a nice Firefox Add-on or something that rewrites/stops the Google Search result links from redirecting at the last moment? I've been meaning to code up something like that myself, but I bet it already exists (and I'm mostly using DDG these days any way).
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes! This "over-engineering" is happening all over Google products. Chrome is another example. It is not all bad, however, some Google Apps really needed attention, like the new Calendar is a step up (IMO).
> This "over-engineering" is happening all over Google products This is absolutely a thing at Google IMHO. Remember the last major version of Google Maps, ran silky smooth on low end hardware, searches went where you expected, in and out no problem. Then someone decided to try for glory and improve on perfection by re-engineering the entire thing. Now it sets the fans off in my macbook within a few seconds of appeari…
The Google Maps app isn't even "capable" of remembering your recent search queries if you don't allow Google to track your Location History.
Says enough about their priorities, IMHO.
I remember one of the earliest software features that was widespread and called "intelligent" was basically the fact that a search form would remember your previous queries and present them incrementally as you were typing your new search.
That a company that prides itself on its AI efforts simply refuses to do this, again, says enough about their priorities.
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#474AMP is, to begin with, Google exerting its market power to extend its control over others’ content. Facebook is doing it, so Google has to. As a consumer, I actually love AMP. Everytime I click a news link on mobile and am taken to AMP, I'm relieved to be free from the extremely distracting original websites. Google has done a lot of exciting work on open standards like JSON-LD [0] and Microdata [1] to bring a better…
We have the exact opposite opinion then. I moved to DuckDuckGo on iOS because I thought the AMP formatted Google search results were so user-hostile. Maybe they’ve fixed the bizarre scrolling and overly sensitive links by now, but I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
Honestly if AMP is such a nice format, how hard can it be to just format the content in plain HTML+CSS and let the browser do the scrolling and UI bits?
Only if that doesn't work pleasantly, then you get to complain about the browser not doing its job properly. (this remark aimed at some other replies in this subthread)
It's probably not hard at all, it's just that Google's priorities are currently at "fuck you" especially if you try to avoid being tracked.
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly what I thought about new Youtube web interface. It's slow to load and consumes more CPU. Previous design worked great everywhere. There was no need for the UI change. But, people can't just do nothing and get paid. So, they will create the need. And now spend months to make it, fix it, get busy again.
The interface might be perfect but if it doesn't change users will eventually think it's "too old", some users like you and me will happily use the "too old" interface because it's fast and works well, but the normal people want something "fresh". Design is like fashion, some design patters stay, but the look is constantly changing.
While you're not wrong about trends in design / UI design, if you think about it for a moment, your argument is no more than a mere footnote (if any) in Google's reasons for pushing AMP to email.
It's mostly about tracking and a form of "embrace, extend, extinguish". We're at the last end of the second phase now. Make no mistake, Google has followed through on the "extinguish" part enough in the past. See: Google Reader, and what they did to Usenet and the Deja archives.
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This thread here is obviously the wrong place to roll out the systemd discussion again.
Real happy with the "fold subthread" buttons on HN :)
(if only they would auto-fold after a fixed number of children, like Reddit, I might script that for myself one day)
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
Email “works” but it’s ass for consistently displaying anything more than text. Marketers want to make money, and right now stuffing emails with images in favor of proper layout is the only easy way to do it. Of course google also wants all of your email googling its way through their servers.
The "active email" demo on the original article is a great example. I want to ensure that my primary inbox is a place where others can never ever send something like that. It's an exaggerated version of the image-heavy email newsletters - these are obviously nice for the marketer, but the messages that I want to receive are not like that, they don't need this feature, it's only useful for those who want to steal my a…
Oh now that's an idea!
Somehow I expect that GMail's search box will get a "usesAMP:yes" or "content:AMP" filter or something. It has a lot of filter keywords like this[0], undoubtedly they'll add it.
You can easily add a filter rule to automatically mark all messages matching a filter as "spam".
If enough people do that, they might get the message. (and probably just remove the search filter option, sigh)
[0] come to think of it, GMail's search is a delight exactly because almost still kind of works like how Google Web Search used to work back when it was still good, a mere decade ago ...
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#478For everyone who feels AMP makes the web usable: A few points for thought. Web is quite usable with or without AMP as long as you use some ad blockers. As far as I understand, on Android, Google predominantly shows AMP pages on Chrome and not on Firefox (have not used other browsers to comment on. Will be great if someone chimes in on this). This results in a good user experience for users of Chrome on Android. But A…
Oh wow, I've been using Firefox Android (with uBlock) since ages. I never considered that. But yeah whenever some app renders a page in some embedded widget (probably Chrome) it's just .. .blegh.
So that is what AMP is for? No wonder I've never seen the use.
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see AMP as a stepping stone towards building a walled garden for the web. There's a lot of benefits, but definitely a loss of control and leverage for marketers in some ways. My concern is that as Gmail diverges away from the rest of the email world, if a significant percentage of a business's users still use Gmail, they lose direct ownership of that relationship. The tabs were just the first step. I see AMP as pot…
> I see AMP as a stepping stone towards building a walled garden for the web. In what way? AMP is merely a subset of HTML that any mail client can implement. > definitely a loss of control and leverage for marketers in some ways. You still have to explain yourself on this point. It adds one more option for marketers in addition to the MIME types already supported. How does this cause marketers to lose control?
I think there will be very legitimate advantages to AMP for email. However as more and more marketers embrace it, that gives away leverage. It is a very gradual thing.
However much like the ad ecosystem, if Google can control the entire email experience from inbox to landing page, and marketers become dependent on it, then that allows Google to exert pressure in other areas that benefit it. My bet is that this eventually takes the form of an auction model for ensuring your messages reach the inbox of the users. But this is a very long-term thing, which is why I see AMP as merely a stepping stone (and not necessarily a direct one). Hope that clarifies a bit.
Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notes is/was typically used in corporate setups. I'm not sure any non-business user would have ended up trying to use it.
I would have thought the same of Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express), but those calls were fairly common. Perhaps Microsoft Office was just more commonly encountered outside a corporate environment.
Outlook has always been fairly accessible to the home user, through home use programs or various versions of Office. It even comes with home editions these days.