PC Mechanic, New Article

What’s The Best Small-Res Friendly Webmail?

Posted: 18 Feb 2011 03:00 AM PST

There are a ton of people out there, maybe yourself included, that use a 1024×768 resolution either via a size-down utility like Sizer or as your native resolution. When using webmail there are certain providers that are better than others. Let’s take a look.

Hotmail

Pros

Left sidebar is easy to navigate
Left sidebar menus can be expanded/collapsed (expanded by default) to get more space
Headers can be expanded/collapsed (collapsed by default for extra reading space)

Cons

Contacts and Calendar links are by default at extreme bottom left unless you collapse all your sidebar menus
Configuration links hidden as gear-style icons unless you hover over "Inbox", "Folders" or "Messenger" on sidebar
If preview pane is enabled, scrolling is involved even for super-short messages

Yahoo! Mail Beta

Pros

Folders, Contacts and Applications collapsible on sidebar
Has in-session tabs – and they work well
Mail functions are actual buttons instead of text links

Cons

Apps are periodically added into the sidebar you didn’t ask for at all, potentially adding scrolling
Ridiculously animated advertisements that take up way too much screen space
Horizontal scrollbar when reading any message under 1280-pixel-wide res; completely hides "Show Details" button at far right when viewing message

Gmail

Pros

Only email where the mail search bar is in the proper place (center top)
Only email where the contacts are in the proper place (top left)
Uses real buttons for most message actions

Cons

Sidebar is not resizable
"Settings" screen has overlapping menu options in the gold area
Least amount of messages display in inbox view is 25, causing scrolling

Project Phoenix (Upcoming AOL Mail)

Pros

Top bar makes composing email possibly the easiest ever, especially considering Send button is right there as well (no need to ‘compose new email’)
Great use of tabs and much cleaner than Yahoo! Mail Beta
Simplified button structure

Cons

Has a tiny bit of horizontal scroll at 1024×768
Contacts link is buried at bottom left
Search mail function slammed to the right

Which is the best for a small resolution?

Gmail is the best, followed very closely by Project Phoenix. Both give you all the mail functions you want within easy reach, but Gmail takes up the least space and you never see horizontal scrolling anywhere in the Gmail interface @ 1024×768.

In fact, Gmail’s UI is so well done concerning screen space that it’s even functional at 800×600 with just a tiny bit of horizontal scrolling:

In this day and age, that’s pretty amazing and a testament to good UI design.

For you super-big monitor users out there, this is actually good to know because you can size down a Gmail browser window a good deal so you can fit more of your other stuff on your desktop.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

What’s The Best Small-Res Friendly Webmail?

How To Play YouTube Playlists With A Keyboard Shortcut

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 09:00 AM PST

Important note before you watch the instructional video below: As I found out after I recorded this video, it is possible to play a playlist directly from a YouTube channel. Click the playlist, then click the first video and once finished, the next video in the list will start – however this is listed absolutely nowhere in YouTube’s help documentation. Believe me, I looked. Thoroughly.

Even though this is the case, the playlist bar at the bottom of the screen is the preferred method for watching a playlist because it’s much easier to use left-to-right instead of up-to-down because the bar interacts similar to a roll of film and makes more sense from a usability point of view.

Consider what you watch below to be the third way of watching a YouTube playlist. The first being from search, the second from channel, the third from keyboard shortcut.

It also should be noted that the keyboard shortcut method of doing it is the easiest to bookmark for later viewing.