« Future pro bikers | Main | Oh really? »
October 25, 2007
Gmail supports IMAP!
At some point this week, Gmail started supporting the IMAP protocol for remote email retrieval. If you own the iPhone, this is great news. Back when the only supported protocol was POP, there were only two options: Leave a copy of messages on the server (or not), and remove deleted messages from the server (or not). You didn't have access to your labels (aka tags, folders), and all of your email regardless of configured filters, showed up in one big Inbox (thankfully with the exception of the Spam label). This allowed you to read your email, but not really manage it.
IMAP is true synchronization between a client (iPhone) and a server (Gmail). On the iPhone it gives you access to your labels as IMAP folders, and your Inbox contains what's truly in your Inbox. You can effectively label an email by moving it to a folder, but it doesn't seem to be possible to move it to more than one folder so you're limited to one label per message. All labeling, deletions, and sent items are synchronized with your Gmail account in real time. If you want to access your mail from more than one location via IMAP, the synchronization features make this a lot less error prone. I noticed that if you decide to click cancel when composing a message, it asks you if you want to save it. If you do save the message it ends up in an iPhone Drafts folder instead of the Gmail Drafts folder, so it won't be synchronized. I've only used it for a day now, but it's a huge improvement over POP, and makes using my iPhone even cooler.
Update: I found a new label in my list of labels called "[Imap]/Drafts" and in that label was my draft that I had previously saved on my iPhone.
Posted by mark at October 25, 2007 8:45 AM Subscribe (FeedBurner)