That's a workaround of sorts, not a solution.

It solves the problem for the most part, which is what's important here. We're not building a rocket.

It 'solves' the problem in the same way that "save frequently keep backups" 'solves' the "my OS crashes every 10 minutes" problem.

This shouldn't BE a problem in the first place... and that's just the problem.

and there shouldn't be corruption in government. Why is that relevant? Problems either exist or they don't.

Yes, problems in the new Gmail are relevant to an article on problems in the new Gmail.

we aren't dealing with the age-old failings of human nature -- it's a simple problem some engineer could fix in a day.

> That's a workaround of sorts, not a solution.

Now that I reread it and some of the responses, I think he's just arguing over the use of the word "solution", not saying he doesn't like the workaround which is what I originally thought. It depends on how you read it.

I believe you only have a short period of time in order to use that. So not really a problem solver.

I don't understand why 15-second "undo send" isn't default behavior.

I think it probably costs Google a little bit to queue up your email for a send action 30 seconds from now instead of sending it off immediately. I bet it would actually cost them money to just enable it for everyone - I'm sure the percentage of users who even explore Labs is very small.

I can't imagine the cost would be significant, relative to the overall cost of running GMail. And it's not like they generally try to run GMail on the cheap.

Perhaps they're concerned that seeing an 'undo' button would confuse people about how e-mail works, and they'd get a lot of requests to 'undo' messages that had really been sent. Or perhaps there are enough cases where people really want the message to go instantly that even 30 seconds delay would annoy them.

This actually started as turning a bug into a feature. The gmail servers delayed sending the email for about 5 seconds normally, all they did was add a cancel button.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/gmail-labs-rolls-out-undo...

Then do it client-side?

you send an email, then immediately close the tab. Does your e-mail get sent?

I think that they deal with this problem. Doesn't a modal dialog popup if an email is being slow to send (and you hit the close button on the tab)?

the answer is yes.

The question is how, if it's client-side?