Day in, day out…

I noticed today that Google has started rolling out support for IMAP on Gmail accounts. This is something I was waiting for since a long time. Gmail’s POP access is too inadequate when it came to accessing Gmail from multiple desktop email clients.

I was lucky enough to have one of my accounts enabled for IMAP. First thing I did was start playing around with it.

My first impression - I hope I grow out if it - is that Google’s mapping of Gmail features to IMAP features is very disappointing. It’s workable, but may be I was expecting something smarter from folks at Google. After using Gmail IMAP for a few hours, I’ve started to think that the POP option suits me better for access with desktop email clients (whooda thunk!). Web Gmail is still my favorite flavor - but it does not make messages available for off-line use (Say what? Gears?).

So what is it that I don’t like about the new IMAP access?

• I like the concepts of labels or tags when it comes to organizing files, email messages, things - as against folders. Tags are much easier to search, manage. If a message belongs in two different categories, you can add two (or more) tags. You don’t have to waste time deciding which folder to file it in. Labels and Folders are two completely orthogonal concepts - they can coexist, but they cannot be mapped. I was hoping that Google kept them that way. As it turns out, Google has tried to map Labels to folders. As one would expect, this causes multiple copies of messages on the desktop.
• It may be just my lack of knowledge about IMAP, but I had thought that information about labels, stars etc. would be carried in custom message headers, so that desktop applications can use the labels as they are on Gmail web. There would just be one big All Mail folder
• From what I have read though, there are a lot of Gmail users who hate (or don’t understand) labels and dearly miss the concept of folders. Rejoice suckers!
• I configured Thunderbird 3.0 (pre-release) and Apple Mail to use IMAP access to Gmail. Things look pretty OK on Thunderbird. Notice this, all Gmail folders are created under an account tree (account name obscured).
  

  Gmail IMAP folders on
  Thunderbird on Ubuntu Gutsy

  On Apple Mail though, Gmail folders are created at the top level.

  

  Gmail IMAP folders on Apple Mail

  If one wants to configure multiple Gmail accounts, I can see it work in Thunderbird with the [Gmail] folders under each account tree. On Apple Mail will the [Gmail] for different accounts stomp on each other? I am not even going to try that before I hear from someone else who has done that without problems.

• This label-folder mapping also causes funky things to happen to Web Gmail when you move messages on the desktop client. Not something I found very impressive.

So there… Like I said, I hope this changes, but for now, I am not a big fan of Gmail IMAP.