Posts Tagged ‘web’

  • 17 Dec

    Posted by
    Heaven


    Category

    The Iterative Web App: Feature-Rich and Fast

    0
    Every mobile engineering team -- including Google's -- struggles to make its applications available to all users on all devices. Even if you scope your work to today's smartphones, you're left with no less than five major operating systems. But we pay this cost because native code is often the only way to build an app that's rich enough and fast enough to meet users' needs. Enter the mobile web.

    A growing number of mobile devices ship with an all-important feature: a modern web browser. And this is significant for two reasons:
    1. As an engineering team, we can build a single app with HTML and JavaScript, and have it "just work" across many mobile operating systems. The cost savings are substantial, not to mention the time you can re-invest in user-requested features.
    2. Having a web application also means we can launch products and features as soon as they're ready. And for users, the latest version of the app is always just a URL and a refresh away.
    Of course: what sounds good in theory doesn't always materialize in practice. So back in April 2009 our team began re-building Gmail for mobile for today's modern browsers. We wanted to know: Could the mobile web support Gmail's basic and advanced features? Could we stuff the app with functionality while still keeping it fast and responsive? Today, and for the first time, we have answers to both questions.

    Over the past 8 months we've pushed the limits of HTML5 to launch a steady string of Gmail features, including:
    So yes, HTML5 and the mobile web are clearly up to the task of building rich and powerful apps. But speed is arguably the most important feature of any application. And we've remained unsatisfied with Gmail's performance on the mobile web. Until now.

    As of today, and thanks to numerous optimizations, I'm happy to report that Gmail for mobile loads 2-3x faster than it did in April (see Figure 1). In fact on newer iPhone and Android devices, the app now loads in under 3 seconds. So yes, the mobile web can deliver really responsive applications.


    Figure 1: Best and Worst Case Gmail for mobile start-up times, April 2009 vs. December 2009. All figures recorded on an iPhone 3G with EDGE data access.

    The Gmail for mobile team isn't done, of course. We've focused primarily on performance over the past few months, but many other features and optimizations are on the way. So keep visiting gmail.com for the latest and greatest version of the app.

    Looking ahead, it's also worth noting that as a worldwide mobile team, we'll continue to build native apps where it makes sense. But we're incredibly optimistic about the future of the mobile web -- both for developers and for the users we serve.

    Posted by Alex Nicolaou, Engineering Manager
  • 24 Nov

    Posted by
    Lawrence Chang


    Category

    The Iterative Web App: A new look for Gmail and Google mobile web apps

    0
    On April 7th, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code which allows us to more rapidly develop and release new features that users have been asking for, as explained in our first post. We'd like to introduce The Iterative Webapp, a series where we will continue to release features for Gmail for mobile. Today: A new look for our buttons and toolbars.

    Some of you noticed and asked us about recent changes we made to Gmail for mobile and a few of our other mobile web apps. If you use the web browser to access Gmail, Latitude, Calendar, or Tasks on your Android-powered device or iPhone, you'll see that we freshened up the look of the buttons and toolbars.

    We never want the buttons and toolbars of Google apps to compete with your content; rather, they should complement them. So the headers and buttons are now darker, to better show the content of your emails and calendar entries.

    We also made the all the buttons a bit larger, for easier button-tapping.

    To try these apps yourself, point your mobile browser to Gmail (gmail.com), Calendar (google.com/calendar), Latitude (google.com/latitude), Tasks (gmail.com/tasks), or just go to google.com from you phone and find all these web apps under the 'more' link.

    Is this an improvement? Let us know what you think.

    by Charles Warren, User Experience Designer, Google Mobile