Google will discontinue the basic HTML version of Gmail starting January 2024. The information comes from the company’s support page, with the tech giant saying Gmail will automatically change to ‘Standard View’.
However, there is no date on when Google announced the change. The page also states that Gmail features like Chat, spell checker, keyboard shortcuts, rich formatting, adding or importing contacts and custom ‘from’ addresses are not available in basic HTML mode.
According to a recent report by The Register, which asked the tech giant about when and why the decision was made, a Google spokesperson said,
“The Gmail Basic HTML views are previous versions of Gmail that were replaced by their modern successors 10+ years ago and do not include full Gmail feature functionality.”
The report also suggests that it took around 1200 milliseconds to fully load the HTML version of Gmail using Chrome Inspect’s Network tool, while the standard view loaded in 700 milliseconds, but web elements continued to load for almost a minute.
Designed for legacy browsers and those on a slow connection, the basic HTML version of Gmail lacks several features compared to its modern-looking counterpart but is really handy if you want to check emails in an area with poor internet connectivity.
It looks like some visually impaired people also use the basic HTML version of Gmail since it is easier to read and easier for screen readers to understand.