Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Why Gmail doesn't want me to be efficient

I have long complained that Gmail seems to want me to be inefficient.  E.g. instead of giving me a scrollable list of, say, 500 emails in response to a search, they insist on showing me screenfulls at a time.   Plus, they don't easily adjust to my current screen size - they always give me circa 20 items at a time.   Even when I am on large screen that can support 120 such.

Now, there may settings, like showing 100 conversations per page.  But (1) those don't apply to everything, e.g. not the searches - and if there is a setting that does, I have not found it. (2) They have not provided easy to adjust controls, such as dragging to enlarge the numbers shown.

I used to imagine that this was due to web HTML / Javascript limitations.

But now I suspect another reason:  if they help me be more efficient, I look at fewer ads.