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GMail's Not Broken, It's... Selective

I've had a few people complain to me recently that they'd like to use their GMail account, but it's broken. Turns out that GMail is not broken, it's just selective about the browsers you can run it in.

First off, much of GMail's functionality is Javascript-based (as is Google Maps), so if you have Javascript turned off on your browser, you're not going to have a good experience with GMail.

Also, if you're using a browser security tool like GuardWall (formerly Gaurd-IE) you're not going to be able to run many of the features GMail offers. And having cookies turned on is a mandatory.

Further, GMail doesn't work properly in several commonly used browsers, including IE 4.0, Netscape 4.07 (still found in a lot of university computer labs, amazingly) and Opera 6.03+. However, Google does offer a basic HTML view of GMail so that you can still use GMail with these less-supported browsers.

Here's a list of the browsers GMail supports

Incidentally, it also looks like GMail rolled out a new feature recently. At the top of this Picasa tour page you can see that Picasa 2 has been integrated with GMail. What's more, Picasa will automatically compress images you send through GMail so that you don't clog your friend's puny little HotMail accounts.

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