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Comment by gdulli | Hacker News Reader

I sincerely miss Outlook now that I'm at a company that uses Google Apps. The gmail web interface just isn't usable the way a real mail client is, and using an IMAP client is never as good an experience as native Outlook/Exchange. And that's just for mail. When you add in calendaring Outlook gets even better in comparison.

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Huh, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. I find the gmail interface much faster and easier to use, plus searching email actually works. Have you enabled the advanced keystrokes in gmail?

As far as calendaring, I never really figured out how to use it that well in Exchange, Google's seems so much easier to me.

Easier in what way? Can you give us an example?

How are "advanced keystrokes" in Gmail going to be easier or better for someone when all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely inconsistent with every other application (web or otherwise)? Here they are - https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en&ctx=ma...

I just can't imagine how anyone could find Gmail to be easier, given that all of the functionality is hidden behind unlabeled, non-obvious buttons that are spread out all over the screen. In Outlook and Thunderbird, the vast majority of action-inputs are very clearly labeled and keyboard access is made obvious by an underlined letter or a tool-tip that shows you the shortcut (unlike Gmail).

How could it be easier, when I can drag three attachments into a new Outlook message and hit send quicker than Gmail can even upload the attachments that I dragged to it?

How could it be easier, when I click "Inbox" and then I can't use the keyboard arrows (or Tab) to move to "Starred", "Important", "Sent Mail", etc? I guess I have to learn some non-obvious keyboard shortcut.

Huh? Have you hit the ? mark? Gmail's key-bindings are set up to be as fast as possible, and are faster to type than a normal desktop app, as you don't have to worry about eating up characters meant for a text box somewhere. I really suggest you give it a fair shot. I like it a lot better than any desktop mail app I've ever used (and that's been quite a few).

For example: To go to "Starred" hit "g" then "s". To go to an arbitrary label, hit "g" "l" and then you have a drop-down list of labels, with autocomplete. Seems nicer than tabbing about. To compose, hit "c".

Yeah, that's great except it's completely non-obvious and totally inconsistent with every other application that I use.

Unless you're a vim user

How about if I'm a typical Office user?

Though there's a lot more to UX consistency than keyboard shortcuts...since we're on the topic...I wonder if these Gmail shortcuts are even consistent within Google's own offerings. Anyone wanna look?

I believe one of the most important design goals of Microsoft Office has always been to make it nearly impossible for someone to migrate away from it.

So, that's why even third-party programs are consistent with things like "Ctrl + N" to start a new document?

Sorry, that's an Windows standard and it didn't even start with Windows.

How do you sign and encrypt emails in the gmail web interface?

There are browser extensions that help with this (especially for chrome).

The Outlook web interface is a joke. It feels like the web from 2002.

Have you tried their latest one? The consumer version is at outlook.com

Why aren't you using Google Apps Sync for Outlook?

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