The Verge reports that Google will remove Gmail's Basic HTML view effective January 2024.
Though the vast majority of people use the Standard view on their PCs without question, the HTML version of Gmail has its perks. The stripped-down Gmail experience loads quickly, and users can access it even on older machines or with much slower connections.
The change appears to have been announced around September 19th in a Google support article, and users of the Basic HTML view were shown warnings that it will be discontinued, after which time they will be switched to the current standard view.
The removal of Gmail's basic HTML view is the latest in a long line of products, features, services, and more to be admitted to the Google graveyard. The company has also recently buried its Pixel Pass phone upgrade program, Google Currents, and Nest Secure.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday November 15 2023, @09:48AM (3 children)
I use gmail occasionally as a throw-away address, but have never seen any viewing options. What I see is obviously an HTML view but maybe it is not "basic", and I have just had a look for other options and don't see any. Where do I find this Basic HTML View?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday November 15 2023, @10:29AM
You can use this link to switch into it:
https://mail.google.com/?ui=html [google.com]
Source [google.com].
It used to be accessible as a link from IIRC the bottom of the inbox, but I think all references to the option are purged now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by SomeGuy on Wednesday November 15 2023, @01:00PM
It had been that while starting up "normal" Gmail (The page with the M with the status bar loading a zillion scripts) that it would display an option for basic HTML in the lower right. If it loaded quickly for you, you might not have seen it. For some of us, loading normal Gmail goes very slowly or even intermittently fails to load due to network crap. In those cases Basic HTML helped ensure one could still get to their e-mail anyway. Now the link just sends you to their useless help pages.
(Score: 5, Informative) by aebonyne on Wednesday November 15 2023, @04:58PM
Basic HTML view does not use Javascript, just HTML, so it's usable in browsers with Javascript disabled or that don't support Javascript like Lynx [wikipedia.org]. I've used the Basic HTML view via Lynx, although not in a long time.
Centralization breaks the internet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Wednesday November 15 2023, @10:22AM
I don't know, but guess that a basic HTML view is (or could be, or could have been) very useful to people who need to use screen readers [wikipedia.org] (like Freedom Scientific's JAWS, NVDA, and others [wikipedia.org]). Life is difficult enough for blind and partially-sighted people without forcing them to use javascript and CSS-heavy websites that are nightmare to navigate.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday November 15 2023, @01:58PM (6 children)
I am starting to feel like it might be time to set up my own MTA. Is running your own mail server still hell? The last time I did this I used postfix, Cyrus?, and Dovecot. What's an easy stack now?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @03:52PM
IIS.
:)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 15 2023, @03:55PM
The GMail html interface looks almost exactly like the "webmail" interface my ISP provides for those SMTP accounts I never use anymore.
Not that I wouldn't like to use my SMTP/POP3 system, it's a good system, but the world puts "roll your own" e-mail onto too many blacklists to make it a practical means of global communication anymore.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tekk on Wednesday November 15 2023, @04:23PM (1 child)
Yes. Specifically dealing with Microsoft who will shadowban you and tell you you're not blocked.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 16 2023, @01:46AM
Not to mention the ISP may block the port, for your safety of course. And pretend they aren't doing any such thing. I have not been able to run a webserver on my residential ISP's service for over 10 years now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ncc74656 on Wednesday November 15 2023, @08:25PM
I've run my own for over 20 years...first at home over a business-grade cable-modem connection, then for the past 15 or so years on a succession of VPSes (currently at Linode). I'm running Postfix and Dovecot on Gentoo Linux, but I've been considering using some sort of containerized mail server, such as docker-mailserver or mailu. The only trouble I've run into with mail delivery was when Microsoft started blocking traffic [lasvegashhh.com] from my server to their servers a while back, but I got Linode involved and got my mail unblocked fairly quickly.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday November 16 2023, @08:57AM
Why so complicated? You can (and should) use POP3 (or LDAP) to access your email anyway. Then, you can register a domain, usually you get free email along with it (only limited storage). ISPs as mentioned also tend to offer free email. Finally, there are many free alternatives for email out there (not sure about plain html though).
Setting up your own server has become more complicated nowadays. You have to mess with DNS to set up signatures that prevent spoofing of emails, still your emails might be rejected as your server might not be trusted.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:00PM
Javascript affords much finer-grained privacy invasion.
And of course, accessibility be damned. I hope Google runs afoul of the ADA and gets sued.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:00PM (1 child)
I've got Thunderbird configured to download my email from gmail via imap. Been doing that for some 20 years now.
Bad decisions, great stories
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 16 2023, @03:58AM
Wait, what settings do you use? Because POP3 stopped working in SeaMonkey some while back. I only use the nasty thing for other nasty things, like logging into other Google products, but geez it would be nice if it would just work.
My connection is so slow, I have all day to use the "Basic HTML" link... and it takes all day to load the main view.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @04:29PM (3 children)
At least when it comes to email, I gave up on free. I pay something like $80 for 3 years of email from a service that also provides storage and a web site if I ever care to use it. No ads. No BS. There's always the possibility of stuff like this; but it's less likely since you're the customer not the product. They might actually listen to our complaints.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday November 15 2023, @05:38PM (1 child)
＜AOL＞ Me too. ＜/AOL＞
My email provider claims to scan only for malware and junk, and only if I enable that scanning. Which is nice. IMAP works, and the webmail works. I pay for service, I get the service I pay for, no more, no less. It's good.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday November 15 2023, @07:36PM
Oops. I've just realised that someone might misconstrue my "＜AOL＞ Me too. ＜/AOL＞" meme.
Nothing to do with the hashtag #MeToo
I'm showing my age here.
Long ago, when the Internet was young, and so was I, AOL was a separate dial-up online service (Originally, America Online [wikipedia.org]). The Internet took off, and AOL pivoted and made available access to Usenet to all the dial-up users*. They had their own culture, and if someone wrote about their experiences, or posted a bug report, many people posting from the AOL part of the world would simply reply 'Me Too'. The behaviour was endemic and cluttered up threads that had contained more substantive content, so it became a meme: writing "Me too." became a badge of naïve cluelessness and not respecting existing group behaviours. Hence ＜AOL＞ Me too. ＜/AOL＞.
Absolutely nothing to do with the more recent #MeToo movement.
*Eternal September:
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Thursday November 16 2023, @12:52AM
"There's always the possibility of stuff like this; but it's less likely since you're the customer not the product. They might actually listen to our complaints."
Good to see such naïvety still exists in the world, the parasite corporations like leopards never change their spots when it suits their purpose they will get around to doing it. Customer paying for the service or not will matter little to them in their decision to do it. Me I never see that garbage html mail it is disabled and always has been in my email client, only plain text there, the only time I see it is when I log into my webmail spam catcher accounts. And that is not often usually when adding a new login for some site that needs confirmation.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen