What I would like to see in my email client?

Today the web email world is split into 4 groups - Y!Mail, Gmail, MSN Hotmail and all the others. I have been an ardent user of all the 3 email clients. I started out with a Hotmail ID and at that time it was still Sabeer Batia's baby. Just before coming over to the US, I created a Yahoo ID. And of course when Google Mail was born I got an invite and created a GMail ID. So its almost 11 years of web email experience use. I would like to use this blog to talk a little bit about what I would like to see in my version of an email client and why not one email client can outbeat the other. They all have their features and flaws. Lets talk about the global version around the web today and not the new ones that Yahoo and Hotmail have made available as Betas.

What I don't like of Hotmail:
[1] Interface of Hotmail is buggy and static. Why buggy - If I delete some emails and go back to my inbox, I still see the emails. It suddenly vanishes after some time
[2] There is only 250 MB of email space
[3] Lousy junk mail filter. I get about 200 junk emails everyday in my inbox and about 100 in my Junk mail folder. Wow, what a wonderful junk mail filter!
[4] Lot of browser space is wasted on ADs - invariably when I open an email I have to scroll down a lot to even start to read it
[5] When multiple pictures are sent in as attachment, the receiving person has to click on each picture and save it manually
[6] Add attachments takes you a different page and you have to click on too many buttons to do a simple task
[7] "Find" feature sucks - It can search only From, To and Subject fields
[8] Picture attachments are either shown completely loaded or as links - there is no thumbnail feature, what a bore!
[9] No confirmation to discard message when I suddenly click elsewhere during composing a new mail
[10] I have to click on the Subject field only to open a message

What I like about Hotmail:
[1] "New" pulldown menu - It is much like outlook.
[2] "New Mail" compose interface is good with the favorites contacts on the right - one click on the contact gets their email address in the To/CC/BCC field. That's intuitive. I like that.

What I dislike about Y!Mail:
[1] Interface is too blocky, old and static
[2] The Rich text editor is buggy - when I try to backspace erase some characters, they do not get erased until I hit another character. The rich text editor is very slow and not a selling point for Yahoo Mail
[3] Hate the confirmation after each action - send a new mail, it confirms that it is sent, cancel a mail message it confirms I cancelled it, Aurghhhhh!
[4] Lot of browser space is wasted in ADs and also there are mails with ads as footers (those who send email with attachments from yahoo id)
[5] There are only 15 filters available for use. How dumb - When Yahoo owns Yahoogroups, how can they expect people to live with 15 filters. I'm a part of probably 15 to 20 yahoogroups. Why, Why Why Why why why why why...
[6] When I send email to myself it is not always instantaneous - what the hell dudes?
[7] Many times pictures go in as plain text/zip files. The receiving party's email client will choke with all the funky cntrl characters in the email as plain text.
[8] Add attachments takes you to a different page and you have to click on too many buttons to do a simple task
[9] Cannot send a message without the TO field - I have to enter the TO field
[10] Have to download multiple attachments by clicking on each of them
[11] Download an attachment will take you to another page and there you have to click on save attachment. This is really annoying if I have to download like 10 attachments in an email
[12] When I login, it does not take me directly to my inbox, instead it displays a summary and then I have to click on the inbox to see my emails in my inbox
[13] I have to click on the Subject field only to open a message

What do I like about Y!Mail:
[1] It is robust - I know I can get my emails correctly. In short I trust it
[2] There is something called "folders" and I can move my mails around folders easily for clarity of inbox and maintenance
[3] The new search feature is good
[4] I like the spam filter of Yahoo. It has almost so far has correctly delivered the mails to their respective places
[5] It shows thumbnails of pictures so people can have an idea of what they are seeing before downloading the picture
[6] Autocomplete of addresses

What I don't about GMail:
[1] There is no concept of folders. Everything is labels. Its a little annoying as everything sits in the inbox
[2] Chat through email is a little buggy - its a new feature, so lets wait and see how well that one goes

What I like about GMail:
[1] Interface is dynamic, quick and very intuitive with keyboard shortcuts
[2] Searching is amazing - you get the same QoR as in Google Search for the web
[3] E-mails are maintained as conversation. You open a conversation and you can find all related messages to it. You don't have to scrum through your inbox to search what reply was sent for this email. And you open an email you have replied, you can see your reply at the end of the mail. How intuitive!
[4] Add attachments is dynamic in the same page and no navigation to any other page and then clicking on Continue to Message...
[5] Total space is over 2 GB and growing every instant
[6] Autocomplete of addresses
[7] Multiple attachments can be downloaded as a single zip file and no more than one click to save the file
[8] Pretty good spam filter
[9] The timestamp for a conversation (it automatically offsets the timestamp based on current time). We will know exactly how many minutes/hours/days ago the mail was sent
[10] Conversations have preview texts next to them making it easy to know the few words of the conversation before opening
[11] Take your mouse cursor over the attachment icon of a conversation, it will tell you what those attachments are rather than "View details of attachments"
[12] No wastage of browser space by displaying blocky disgusting ADs on top and bottom
[13] A tiny bar of dynamic information such as news, quotes etc., that refreshes itself
[14] Quick contacts on the left make it easy to do one click email to friends
[15] Since it uses JavaScript a lot, it can remember my updates when I navigate from one page to another - If I have certain mails checked and I click on another email and come back to the inbox, I can see my original checked items still checked
[16] When I login, it takes me directly to my inbox
[17] When I send mails to myself - the mail is sitting in my inbox instantaneously
[18] I can click anywhere in the message header and it opens up the message, not forcing me to click on the subject only
[19] I can send mails using BCC only and I don't need to type in the TO field as required by Yahoo
[20] Conserves lot of space by automatically hiding what ever doesn't need to be seen so often like email headers
[21] Unlimited # of filters can be created

I can go on and on, but lets come back to the original discussion of this blog entry - If I were to design an email client what would its recipe be?

[1] All the features of GMail
[2] Spam filter and folders from Yahoo
[3] Hotmail's New Message compose that shows the contacts on the right (make it floating and not docked)
[4] Of course give the entire thing an outlook like interface that will not be too blocky or a killer on the client side

Wasn't that recipe easy? Maybe you can say I'm a fan of GMail and I'm kind of loosing interest in the blocky Y!Mail (they have a waiting list for their Beta mail, who cares now) and I have stopped using Hotmail almost for all practical purposes.

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and my personal choice. So all the Yahoo and Hotmail fans please don't flare up, chill out dudes and pour in your comments about the 3 giant web email services.