HN Explorer

Ask HN: What does gmail do when showing the “Loading” screen?

10 points by daxfohl ↗ HN
I'm curious if anybody has investigated this. It seems like (a) it should be unnecessary to have a loading screen at all for a mostly static page, (b) even for a lazy-loaded dynamic page there shouldn't be all that much involved in loading your last 100 emails, and (c) it's the antithesis of google to make things unnecessarily slow (okay debatable, but most of the time speed seems like a primary concern for google).

4 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 23.1 ms ] thread
imaginenore
Gmail is anything but static. Once it loads all the scripts and your email data, it doesn't reload the page, it's almost a one-page app. You can do all kinds of things - search, compose, send, label, chat, receive video calls, make phone calls, etc.

I will agree with one thing though - they could make the initial inbox loading faster, much faster, but you would be limited to just that.

nathancahill
Yeah. If you want to see what that feels like, turn on the Basic HTML version. It loads instantly, then has to reload as you click around the app.
afarrell
I wish there was a chrome plugin that kept all of the scripts and data for your gmail/gcal accounts stored and, when you actually went to that url, would intercept that request.
lsiebert
I wish they would profile users based on the most commonly used features and data segments and load those first, and the rest asynchronously.