In Gmail when you read a message it doesn't automatically download the attachments. Sometimes when you don't need all the attachments this is nice. The POP protocol gives no "nice" way to do this, but for IMAP, you can request to download only particular message part(s) and query the message parts about what part(s) exist, so in theory a quick preview mode could be done where it delays downloading the attachments until you are ready to view them should be possible
Option 1: only download attachments on request
Option 2: download attachments in the background while reading the message
In Gmail when you read a message it doesn't automatically download the attachments. Sometimes when you don't need all the attachments this is nice. The POP protocol gives no "nice" way to do this, but for IMAP, you can request to download only particular message part(s) and query the message parts about what part(s) exist, so in theory a quick preview mode could be done where it delays downloading the attachments until you are ready to view them should be possible
Option 1: only download attachments on request Option 2: download attachments in the background while reading the message