Just a heads up:
I think I spoke to soon. The change seems to badly effect the onclick action that is based in the core javascipt file.
Sorry about that. I'll be more careful in the future.
Best, Eliot
On 10/9/05, Eliot Kristan eliot.k@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
I just discovered RoundCube and jumped on the list last night. What a great job with the ideas and the code!
I was thinking the same thing that Mark had about drop targets. I added a mouseover / mouseout sequence to program -> steps -> mail -> funcs.incbeginning at line 214 when the <li>'s for the individual mail folders begins. Mouseover gives the <li> a new class called 'rollover' which I defined in skins -> default -> mail.css at line 255 with the other mailboxlist styles.
With this the individual mailbox will take on a highlighted background color (could be other styles too, of course) when you roll a dragged item over it. The only thing with this is that the inbox and trash png's dissapear during the rollover. You could of course do individual rollover classes for the inbox and trash <li>'s.
Attached is a bitty text file of these changes.
It's great to be here!
Best, Eliot
- Drag-and-drop targets: I noticed Zimbra changed the dragged item to
green
when over a valid drop-target. A helpful UI clue to assist users if easy
to
implement.
On 10/9/05, Thomas Bruederli roundcube@gmail.com wrote:
2005/10/8, Mark Mackay - Orcon mark@orcon.net.nz:
Hi guys -
Hello Mark. Thanks for your long list of good ideas!
I'm new to the list as I only stumbled across Roundcube the other day,
and
can't find any mailing list archives (are there any?); so forgive me
if I
repeat any feedback/questions. First off - awesome webmail client.
Been
waiting for a good open source Ajax webmail, and was certainly not disappointed. Found Zimbra at around the same time, and definitely
very
cool. but obviously on the heavy side.
This latest version seems to address some of the previous version
issues
that I spotted, however there's a few things I'll note here which are wishlists/feedback:
HIERARCHICAL FOLDERS Great to see in the new version, but the current presentation isn't as
ideal
when you have lots of folders. I think would be boosted substantially
by
having sub-folders initially hidden and expandable, although possibly
saving
the "expanded" view in a cookie or prefs or something. It also
truncates
the name of long (or deeply nested folders).
Totally agree. The current solution was just added very quickly and surely has to be improved with more functionality.
NAVIGATION / UI I watched about 5 people initially try to use Roundcube for the first
time,
and everyone seemed to initially struggle with working out the
navigation
options. Ajax is new to most, so not everyone's used to the way things
can
work yet. Some suggestions:
- Make the cursor change to an hourglass when you double-click on a
message,
or put a progress bar/icon somewhere - so that people know something
should
be happening. It wasn't very obvious to double-click (based on the way
the
cursor/selection stuff happened) - so maybe make the clicking title automatically open the message, or provide a location on the line
where a
single click will definitely work.
Because Roundcube does not come up with (ugly) checkboxes on each line to select a message, we used one click for the message selection. Also it was some sort of a test, how a web application using double-clicks will work. I already got lots of feedbacks concerning this topic. We also made some tests with setting the hourglass-cursor and it's possible to do so but if you reset the cursor to 'default' (this has to be done for the whole document) then all buttons will loose their hand-cursor. If someone has a better solution for that, please let me know...
- Two nav bars: The nav at the top and bottom is a bit confusing to
users,
so I'd suggest putting them all in the one location. Feedback from my initial test users is that some of the icons aren't obvious as to what
they
do (the inbox at the bottom, "logout" -- could be confused with delete
-- so
maybe make delete a trash can? This is obviously changeable through
the
skins, but feedback provided in case you think it's worthy updating
the
default skin.
The current skin actually is just for development and was designed by a programmer and not by a real screen designer. The lower nav bar should be some sort of a task list. We have people working on a new skin for RoundCube.
- Use of alt-tags, window.status messages, etc: For a first-time user
there's no real clue as to what buttons do except their icon. The
mouseover
URL doesn't provide much insight, as it's all JavaScript references,
etc.
All buttons have title-attributes set for the <a> tag but IE prefers to use the empty alt-attribute. Modern browsers all show up the titles set for each button. Also the skin architecture allows to create buttons with a text label.
- Drag-and-drop targets: I noticed Zimbra changed the dragged item to
green
when over a valid drop-target. A helpful UI clue to assist users if
easy to
implement.
Good point. I'll try to improve this.
- Speed with large mailboxes: The first time I logged in (with 380
messages, but about 40 subscribed folders) took an age. I realise the
cache
needs to be built up, but this first-time hit (our imap server is
currently
quite slow, which may be contributing to it) is quite unbearable for
users.
Perhaps a message could be displayed like "Updating message listing"
so that
it moves off the initial login screen more quickly? Ditto for loading
up an
un-cached mailbox, although the "loading" at the top helps.
If logging in for the first time, all mailboxes are listed and the client requests a message count for each one. This is what takes a lot of time and it certainly has to be improved.
- Mysql max_allowed_packet: Encountered a user (with about 3000
messages in
inbox) exceeding the default max_allowed_packet of 1M. Worked by
boosting
it, but there may be some issues with really large mailboxes under the single-cache-entry for per mailbox. Certainly a read-me note would
help for
this. When it did encounter the issue, the error was plastered behind
the
message list; although I think the changelogs indicates a possible fix
in
the latest version for this.
I already know this problem. Unfortunately it's not mentioned in the INSTALL or README file. Also for caching messages with large attachments, max_allowed_packet should be increased. I know that the current caching method is not perfect and can be dead slow with more than 5000 messages in one box.
- Livegrid: You've probably already seen it, but check out
http://openrico.org/rico/livegrid.page. This concept would be great for dealing with large imap mailboxes. Removes the need for pagination, and may be possible to reduce loading time by caching
on-demand.
Live grid is nice but since you are talking about usability, I think the scrolling behavior of the list is a bit confusing. Further I'm not sure how browsers can deal with tables containing > 20.000 lines.
ATTACHMENTS I seem to be having issues with Windows XP service pack 2 (and IE 6)
with
attachments. The new window loads but then says files are being
blocked from
downloaded (PDF doc). when I accept the download file it then asks me
to
save it rather than view it inline. I think this is something to do
with the
iframe, and may not be affecting other users (could be a mime setting
on my
webserver I guess). If sticking with the embedded attachment approach,
I'd
put some instructions to trust the website or something (but then
again, not
necessarily a good idea for webmail where any sort of attachment could
be
presented).
RoundCube only opens a new window for attachments which could be displayed within the browser (like images and PDFs). Other file types will be downloaded directly. This functionality should be improved with a plugin-checker detecting if the browser can display a specific file.
DELETING
- Bug? When viewing a message and clicking "Delete" up the top the
current
build displays progress then reverts back to message listing and
doesn't
appear t delete the message. When you highlight the message in the
listing
and do delete, it does quickly disappear though.
Probably a caching problem. I'll check that
Well that's it for my first post. Thanks for the great work so far.
Shaping
up to be a kick-arse webmail client. Let me know if you like the
feedback,
and I'll continue to assist with more usability comments.
You are welcome to do!
Regards, Mark Mackay.
Best regards, Thomas