Hacker News Reader

I've asked this in previous threads about mail applications, but what is an email preview window/pane for? How is it any different from actually opening the email? GMail (and apps) definitely has room for improvement, but lack of preview is such an oft cited "problem" yet I don't even understand the complaint. (I use GMail for all my email)

View on HN

Simple:

(time taken to close window ) x (amount of messages per day)

Compare 'Alt-F4, up arrow' with 'up arrow'.

Making the text width narrower also increases your reading speed, around 6-12 words per column is apparently the ideal width and is the basis for all newspapers, and since suck.com started it in the late 90s, the majority of websites.

Thanks for the explanation!

I'd also like to take the time to point out that you can get similar functionality using the vim-style keyboard hotkeys in gmail: j/k to move to the next/previous conversation.

No prob. Keyboard shortcuts are useful when they work (j and k don't in Chrome 5 on my laptop, OS X 10.6), but a lot of users use the preview bar to skip messages too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com