Report on Gmail's Basic-HTML View

(click the above screenshots for larger version)

I had reported earlier about people getting Gmail accounts with a option in them to switch to a basic HTML-only view. A HTML-only view is good for using Gmail on computers that do not have the right browser for the job or for using Gmail with dial-up connections! Google even let it be known there is a HTML-only view. I have just logged into one of my accounts and found that now I have a HTML-only view option myself! Here is my report of this exiting new thing from Google:

First off I managed to capture the HTML of the HTML-only view that my Gmail account was in, here it is. That HTML file will display exactly what my Gmail account looked like in HTML-only view for those whose Gmail accounts do not have HTML-only views, yet. Here is the URL to the HTML-only view feature of my Gmail account, unfornately (and unlike a lot of other Gmail features) you can only use HTML-view if your account displays the option to go into it (you can't just click the link I gave you). The HTML-only view does not have many of the features of the JavaScript version of Gmail: there are no pop-down tabs, no buttons to display or hide different emails in a discussion, no fancy things at all. You can not access you Gmail account settings in HTML-only view either.

The basic design of the HTML-only view is almost the same as the JavaScript version. The only real difference is the way things are linked: in the JavaScript version you could click anywhere on a email to open it, in the HTML-only version you can only click the hyper-linked text.

I logged into my Gmail account with IE5 on Mac (that browser is not compatible with the JavaScript version of Gmail) and it automatically brought me to the HTML-only view and told me I should get a better browser.

This Gmail HTML-only view is sure cool. Gmail-Lite is in some ways better, though, because it uses NO graphics and it is better optimized for mobiles devices. I hope Google gives all Gmail accounts this HTML feature soon.