Gmail Feedback

[Manish Hatwalne]

Since another gmail thread has almost turned into an email-list, I decided to start separate thread discussing gmail itself. I am pretty impressed with gmail labels and search capabilities. However what I absolutely hate about it, is that you need to have ActiveX enabled to access it. I had ActiveX disabled on my machine and it gae me an error.

I wish I could access gmail w/o using ActiveX!

- Manish
[ September 15, 2004: Message edited by: Manish Hatwalne ]

[Sonny Gill]

Are you sure??
I think it only needs JavaScript to be enabled. You didn't turn off JavaScript by any chance did you?
I use it from Mozilla on a Linux machine, and it works fine.

[Chris Mathews]

Yeah, you definitely don't need ActiveX. Gmail is based entirely on Javascript... at least on the client-side.

[Rashmi Banthia]

Somethings - I would definetly want in Gmail - calendar, event based reminders as in yahoo.

[Manish Hatwalne]

I use IE, and this is the message I get -

Gmail requires ActiveX controls to be enabled

Your browser seems to be Internet Explorer, and ActiveX seems to be disabled. Gmail requires ActiveX to be enabled in order to operate.

To use Gmail, enable ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer. You can do this by going to the Tools menu, selecting Internet Options, Security tab, Internet zone, and either select the Default Level, or selecting Custom Level and scrolling down to "Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins" and selecting Enable.

After enabling ActiveX controls, try again.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

That's pretty weird. Note that Gmail works just great here on my Linux machine (no ActiveX in sight.)

[Gregg Bolinger]

Strange.

It would seem that if you are using IE for GMail, you need ActiveX. But in any other browser you, of course, don't need activeX and they just use Javascript to do whatever fancy stuff ActiveX might have been doing.

I have noticed that adding an attachment works differenlty in IE than it does in Firefox. But I don't see anythin that doesn't work at all.

[Richard Hawkes]

I'm using Avant Browser which is just a plugin for IE. I've disabled ActiveX and can still use Gmail without any of these messages. Even stranger.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Richard Hawkes:
I'm using Avant Browser which is just a plugin for IE. I've disabled ActiveX and can still use Gmail without any of these messages. Even stranger.

I would suspect this is because Avant browser doesn't register as IE with the request. So GMail thinks it's just a non ActiveX powered browser.

[Richard Hawkes]

Yes, I tried the same with the virgin IE and it failed... I wonder what the advantages are of utilising ActiveX for IE when it runs perfectly well on other browsers with just Javascript?
[ September 16, 2004: Message edited by: Richard Hawkes ]

[Bear Bibeault]

Mac OS X and Safari here... definitely no ActiveX.