Highlighting the folder drop-target - Dev

10 Oct 2005

      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