When I post to this blog, I prefer to do what I can to ensure that what I write here is well-written. So before publishing an entry here, I invest the necessary amounts of time to ensure that what I write here meets the standards that I have set for this blog. Unfortunately, the amount of time that I consider necessary to ensure that what I write here is well-written often exceeds the amount of time it takes for something to happen that necessitates that I make changes to these posts as I write them. I have written about this issue before, and I have found that this may be an issue that I must face when writing what I write about. I have been writing about software that has been frequently updated, and when these updates occur, these updates force me to update what I write as I write these entries. I have recently been writing about Gmail, which has been updated many times lately. So I have needed to get my most recent entries, including this one, published before it would be considered too late.
The updates made to Gmail have been well-documented on Lifehacker. In fact, you can see some of the updates that have been made to Gmail, in reverse chronological order, if you click here. Most recently, a few more keyboard shortcuts have been added to Gmail, as noted here. In fact, a number of updates to keyboard shortcuts have apparently been made after the update was made to add a keyboard shortcut reference guide to Gmail. And something interesting was said by Gina Trapani after that update was made to Gmail’s interface. She said that with this reference guide’s similarity to what was available through a Greasemonkey script, there seemed to be a “development arms race underway” between those who write Greasemonkey scripts and those actually employed at Google. After reading that, I considered writing a post here in which I would have written about what appears to be a race between these two groups of developers. I would have said that I do not think of this as a race. I would have said that, as Ms. Trapani said regarding who would win this race, the Gmail users are the ones who will ultimately be considered the winners. And I would have said that it was ultimately the users of Gmail that will be kept in mind, and these two groups of developers actually complement each other. This will lead to an increase in the number of features that Gmail can have, and it may all happen at a rate faster than I’ll be able to document.
My last blog entry here was published shortly after I found out about updates to Gmail. And I am not sure if I will be giving more immediate responses to what gets mentioned in the blogosphere. However, what I work with and write about has been changing at a rapid pace. And although I do prefer quality to quantity, I am going to need to write more to keep up with these changes. Those responsible for these updates have kept me busy, but in being busy, I’ll keep the end users in mind who will ultimately benefit from the reason I will be kept busy.