Review: Rediffmail Beta Aseem N wrote this at 1:46 am • Filed under Aseem Reviews, Tech •

Rating: 2.5/5 (Thumbs down)

Having a dynamic page that loads most of your needed content all in the same page is definitely the new hot thing in website development. Ever since AJAX has hit the box, most web services are trying to reface their websites and services with this new technology. With Yahoo India in the Ajax pipeline, how could Rediffmail stay behind? One of India’s premiere mail services, Rediff a few days back launched its beta version based on AJAX and XML.

I am sure this might just be a long old story for the tech geeks, as it’s been in news for quite some time now with all the laurels to its name. But I have not seen any review on net over this change. It’s been accepted happily by Rediff Users, may be with a few complains that have gone unheard and users who are trying to adjust themselves to this change. This post gives an insight to some of the features that rediff left behind in framing its new AJAX based version.

‘Lightning fast web mail service’ is how they identify themselves. The very reason why rediff has always been my favourite mail service. And being a truthful user of its services it hits hard if I am asked to change to any other service. That’s why even with Yahoo, Gmail and many other feature rich free email services in, I still prefer to use Rediffmail. The good thing is that, they keep making small changes here and there. This time, a much welcomed package.

It’s a human tendency to resist change, probably this is what I did like to sketch up here. When I logged into my mailbox, I was happy to see a new look. :) Definitely, a nice tailored look. More of the grey shades than the blues… With all the folders listed on the left, I realized things are definitely going to be quicker to use and load. With a clean and neat look everything looked so fast and smooth to work on.

But soon I could point over a few drawbacks to finally impede my happiness. The mail preview window was too small. If I had to view the whole message I had to open it in a new window. So it was almost the same. The area assigned for loading the message was too less… 25% of my previous rediff mail window, which can be resized upto 50%. :| So it forced me to open a new window to browse my long forwards or emails that contained digicam pics. Also in the bargain of faster loading the graphic attachments were resized to too small in size, though having an interesting slide show option. After opening the email in a new window, I thought it now looked good. After reading the email, I wanted to reply to the sender. I clicked on the button… and spank… one more browser window opens. (6) Suck… how many more windows I thought. Sulked over it for a couple of seconds and moved forward to reply to the sender. Things were a little better with other mailing features incorporated into the write mail window. Like the address book that nicely fitted in, not to leave out the templates and drafts options. Also an upload file as attachment option in the same window. Thank God that I didn’t have to open another window for it! ;) Soon the window showed me that the mail was sent, I closed both of the opened windows and returned to my main rediff inbox window.

I saw a couple of new mails sent by a friend. Sent on the same day I was inquisitive to know of the time they were sent. Bah! The email interface just tells me the date. Dumb! I want to know when he sent each one… morning, evening or night… heck! So then I clicked on show email headers to try and interpret the time from the header information. Ok it was there, but not many would know what to do in such a case. Also whenever I logged into my mailbox or would select a folder to view, the first message in the folder automatically showed up. Now I wouldn’t want that. Anybody would want to be safe enough to check around and see for other people peeking into your monitor screen, before opening any private mail. Ahh, rediff how could u miss out on this one! :(

The select page option was a nice include. Helps a lot when u want to reach to older messages. On realising that I have to move a few emails to another folder, I tried to select them. Now this was a high precision job. As to select them, I had to click exactly on the checkbox. If by any chance I did miss out on a checkbox and clicked at the side of it (even by a pixel!) I would lose all my selections and it would instead load the message in the message preview window. Aah.. that’s real bad. Once done with the selections, it was real easy thought to make the move.Their search mail feature also sucks a lot. I never found the mail I wanted, though it was very much there! Many times it just showed ‘Loading Please Wait’…

I am sure if I decide to play around a little more, I will find a lot more flaws and fallbacks that I really wouldn’t like my RediffMail to have. So I looked up to the top left of my screen and clicked on ‘Take me to the regular Rediffmail’ option. :) Am sure I won’t log in back to this new beta version until Rediff doesn’t announce to release a full fledged one. This version is no beta… to me it looks like an alpha version. I know it’s a lot easy and fast to work in this new beta version of rediff, but its all AJAX that I admire in it, not Rediff. I feel that one loses the comfort level that one shared with its GUI in this new version. I hope they come up with something better soon. As many might have, I too have informed them about all these issues I found, through their feedback option. I wonder if they would ever see and forward it to the concerned persons.

Interestingly, if you sign up now for a rediffmail mail service, you wont see the option to switch to the new rediffmail, contrary to the GUI for the already registered users. I wonder why! 8O

As the end, I feel Rediff has launched this version in too much of a hurry and haste with an aim to beat its counterparts. They should sit back and analyse all the flaws and come up with a more comfortable to use package.

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