My quarter cent reply. :)
- Folders
While I am loathe to add more to the front end, I do agree that sub folders presently only work if you use IE. For those who are not aware of the problem, check out this screenshot (using Firefox):
http://www.idiotabroad.com/pix/subfolders.png
I haven't tested this in Safari or Opera however....
- Navigation
I too agree that the navigation is confusing (though very pretty to look @!). For instance, virtually every webmail program presents the 'Send' button near the bottom of the page, or at least in a heightened position. With Roundcube, its actually the second option on the top message nav.
Personally, from a usability point of view, it really should just be on its own line on the bottom of the message pane.
- Message Selection
I have to admit at first I was a bit put off by the multiple clicks needed to select a message. Now however, I do see the point of clicking to highlight the message. However, the way it works now is a user still needs to double click to open the message in the browser once highlighted.
Really, three clicks is too much work. For me it would be great to have one click highlight the message, and one further click to open. What does everyone else think about this?
- Reply to all
This feature is sorely missing. Hope it can make it in in a future build!
- Removing commas from contact info
If you add a users contact, who originated from a MS Exchange environment, you can sometimes get a contact that looks like so:
"LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME (SOME-COMPANY)" x.xxxx@xxx.com
Roundmail doesn't like the comma in the above contact. It tries to send a mail to lastname@localhost, as well as the fully qualified email. The fully qualified goes through though.
- List Archive
Thanks for bringing this up Mark. Yesterday I sent a mail to the Roundcube admin bringing up the very same point...lists are great as long as everyone has subscribed to them. But, as soon as you get someone new joining the community, they will invariably ask 20 questions that have already been answered in the lists. With no archiving facility, you lose that shared knowledge. For instance, how many of you were aware that doing an upgrade required you to ALSO upgrade index.php (this step was missing from the documentation)? I wasn't, at least until I saw a mail from a fellow user in the list.
A suggestion I put forward to Bob was, why not put up a simple bulletin board (like phpbb)? As the Roundcube community grows I really think it would be helpful to have a central place for users to get help and ask questions, keeping the more development oriented threads to the lists.
Again, this is just my opinion, what does everyone else think? I've got server space if thats an issue.
Oh, hope the above was not perceived as being overly critical of the effort. I am truly blown away on how powerful (and slick) Roundcube is as an application. Really, its quite amazing!!
Thanks All,
Geoffrey
On 10/8/2005, "Joshua Layne" joshua@willowisp.net wrote:
my half cent responses... good ideas. j.
Mark Mackay - Orcon wrote:
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).
i agree
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.
I actually really like the double clikc, particularly since the click and drage moves items - i think this is just a paradigm shift that people will adopt with AJAX, an hourglass would be cool though.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
speed in general - i may have been wrong in my earlier message about the newer IMAP making a difference, things seems to be back to status quo
- 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.
- 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.
livegrid looks really cool. I like the idea of a dynamic frame.
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).
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.
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.
Regards, Mark Mackay.