On 06/29/10 19:48, Richard D. Moores wrote: > On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 01:06, Alan Gauld <alan.ga...@btinternet.com> wrote: >> "Richard D. Moores" <rdmoo...@gmail.com> wrote >> >>>> You log into Gmail and your browser downloads the Gmail page; >>> >>> Yes, of course. But I'm always logged into Gmail. >> >> But it is still continually downloading. The same applies to a >> desktop client, if you leave it running it can continually poll the >> server, just like gmail. > > Well, as I said, I found having Eudora do that was quite annoying (I'm > afraid I've forgotten the particulars). Gmail is not. In any event, > There are many, many reasons to choose to use Gmail over Eudora or OE > and their ilk.
What makes you think what Eudora did and what rich web clients (e.g. gmail's web interface) did is any different? Gmail's rich AJAX-ful web client is almost the same as a full-fledged desktop client, except that it runs on Javascript in a browser instead of running as native code in the OS. BOTH do polls in intervals (or in case of IMAP with idle extension, wait for a push event), BOTH do download headers only or header+body only when requested, BOTH do client-side caching. Except that a rich webmail client, due to limitation by browser security, is inherently unable to do permanent caching; is much less configurable for its downloading preference; and is totally unconfigurable on polling interval. The advantages of desktop client is configurability and its caching mechanism is not constrained by browser security. The advantage of a rich webmail client is tighter coupling to the backend system and universal accessibility. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
