Oh no!

Gmail iOS app

Google pushes Web apps as hard as Apple pushes native ones and when two world collides, the crossbreed chimera inevitably creates a climax.

The release of Gmail for iPhone and iPad was one of this moments. Tech enthusiasts and casual iOS users were expecting a lot from it. Why? Because of the ‘native’ branding that @parislemon leaked a few days before the actual release. It was a huge reason to get excited. Google might have decided to step up its game on iOS. 

Web apps can be great and I am honestly impressed by some features and UI choices of the Gmail iPhone app:

- The sliding pane à la Twitter on iPad (also recently seen in the Facebook app revamp) makes sense here. 

It allows users to keep context. It feels both re-assuring and quicker (even if the number of tap to navigate from the label/folder screen to the message list remains exactly the same if you compare Mail.app or Gmail for iPhone). The main screen is always there, visible and touchable. You can’t end up with the feeling of being lost in the app because you can ‘grab’ your way back anytime.

- The pane design is great. Grey and blue are really clear and legible. The two level of recess of the pane are also great even if they don’t serve any purpose. It’s playful.

- It’s fast. The refresh feedback is not the best one either but it’s clear and unobtrusive.

- Threads allow to navigate all mails from a conversation within one screen withtout the back and forth you get in Mail.app.

- Undo everywhere is great. I find myself using it a lot.

The Bad:

- The message list is barely legible (which is bad for a mail application)

- Icons: Google is known for its GTD approach vs. Apple’s polished style. That has been a reason for their success but there is not a single icon in the application that you can honestly look at without being confused or embarrassed.

- The compose window: not taking advantage/respecting the default HIG modal views from iOS can lead to real catastrophes. In Mail.app, while composing a message, you can either ‘Send’ or ‘Cancel’. Tapping ‘Cancel’ triggers a 3-option choice: delete draft, save draft or cancel (going back to composing your message). Delete and Save will bring you back to your message list as expected since you’re done with composing.



The Gmail web app tries to create a simpler way to do this that ends up in something that couldn’t be described as anything else than a massive brain fuck.

You open your compose window…and boom! A trash icon. That’s the first thing you see. If you’re lucky enough, you stumble upon the skinny attachment icon before the gigantic disk one. The disk icon obviously means ‘Save’ for everybody over 25Y but a simple ‘save’ label would have suffice. 



What can you do with the trash icon in your compose window?

Before even writing a single word, you can use it as a ‘Back’ button. But it turns out it’s a shortcut to do 3 things at once:

- Delete the current draft

- Close the compose window

- Go back straight to your message list

This is what the trash icon does. 3 things. Even for me, it’s going too fast.

- Threads: threading is great. It’s Gmail’s greatest feature. But it doesn’t work well on the iPhone because you can’t impose scroll-stops at each threads. It would make sense to clearly signify the user that he is switching from one mail to another within a conversation by stopping/slowing down the scroll but this would also ruin the experience. Think about navigating a 100+ thread…

The continuous scrolling makes the reading experience quite intricate because nothing, except for the color-coded sender name, catches the eye and you never really know where you’re at in a conversation if you don’t stop to read a random mail.

In addition, web views in the app still have weird scroll behavior with an inertia that doesn’t feel iOS-like at all.

- Selecting a mail triggers a pop-up at the bottom of the screen that you can close with a little cross. This cross is so equivocal that I asked myself twice if I should press it. I was honestly afraid it could delete the mail.

- Refreshing by clicking on the navigation bar doesn’t make sense. Pull to refresh is already there. Discovering the option is tough but not being rewarded for it is even tougher. Why trigger a refresh instead of another action for power users who took the time to play around?

- One account only

I am convinced that Web apps will take over native in the coming years. That’s the main reason I am respectful of the work done on the Gmail app. They’re ahead of their time and they’re putting up with the initial problems.

In 5 years or so, it will be hard to tell the difference between a web and a native app. Companies like Google, Facebook and Sencha are already pretty close from this stage on some of their products: Facebook for iPhone, Google+ for iPhone and Sencha-made apps are quite impressive. 

This gMail ‘native’ app suffers both from a communication issue with a misuse of the word ‘native’ and a blatant lack of attention to details (as John Gruber puts it).

Mixing a bit of Dylan and MG Siegler, I would say: 

The faith is (not) gone yet but it’s getting there