Gmail chat: First impressions
By now, you may seen the announcement that Gmail is integrating chat functionality directly into the existing browser-based mail client. It’s a nifty idea, and apparently it came from the suggestion that Google Talk needed a way to save chat histories.
I got a chance to play with this functionality this morning and I was pretty impressed. I’d blogged about and used meebo in the past and I’d say Gmail’s chat is a bit more polished…in fact, I don’t see myself needing to use meebo anymore. Anyway, here’s the review:
The Good
The first thing that struck me about it was that it’s fast. Your text pops up in the chat window after you press Enter just as fast as a desktop IM client. In general, the user interface is darned good and full featured considering it’s running entirely within a browser. It’s also integrated into the rest of the interface fairly well, without feeling bolted on.
An example of this is the saved chat histories, which is a great feature on its own. All your chat transcripts are saved just like your old e-mail messages. Well, not exactly the same…they’ve smartened it up a bit so that the display is better suited for a chat history. But, the chat conversations can be starred, labeled, moved to the Inbox, etc. If you do a ton of chatting, but don’t currently use Gmail, you might think about switching just for the ability to save all your chats and search through them.
Another cool thing about the saved chats is that they’re captured even if you’re accessing the GTalk network from a third-party Jabber client (as opposed to the official Google Talk client or the chat feature inside Gmail). I’m a Mac guy, and unfortunately there’s no Google Talk for Mac (yet). So, I use even though I do most of my chatting with Proteus, all the conversations are still stored in Gmail. Nice.
Speaking of third-party clients, they don’t seem to have the ability to display the “Bob is typing” messages that the regular Google Talk client provides. (The same thing goes for the underscores-yield-italics and asterisks-yield-bold pseudomarkup.) Thankfully, the chat feature within Gmail does support these. This is not a big thing, but it’s still nice.
The Bad
In the minus category, there are no little sounds to alert you that someone wants to chat or has just sent you a message. As a result, you won’t be leaving Gmail open all day like you might a regular IM client. Web sites that make noise are almost always annoying, but in this case having the option to enable or disable alert sounds might be nice.
Also, the nifty new chat features don’t work in Safari. This is a bit of a bummer, because Safari has become my main browser ever since Camino started freaking out during simple file downloads.
The Conclusion
Overall, Gmail’s chat feature is very diggable. It functions as well as any browser-based chat I’ve seen and the way that it saves chat histories is great. I’ll definitely be using it when I’m not at my “regular” computer and don’t have access to my favorite chat client.
And, here’s a little something for those who think Gmail is ugly:
Yes, it’s a slightly updated Gmail logo. Note how it’s a little softer and more 3D than the old logo:
That should silence the critics once and for all. :)
