The Changes At Fastmail.

[KevinW]

Originally Posted by webdesign101

You can tell us to leave... but whose going to pay your monthly server fees when we do? My guess is that, turning off the stylesheet yesterday resulted in a 1% loss in paying customers. My guess is Fastmail is still bleeding customers today. My guess is the reason the old Fastmail has continued well beyond its shutoff date is that when it goes the lights go out. Just like Google, you will find bad customer service can start a cascade (love the irony of the term) of lost revenue that will never be recouped.

This seems like a rather large leap. Especially if you consider that during this same time frame:

• the beta site was down
• define rules was broken
• new stylesheets were introduced, including one that needed updating

Seems much more likely to me that there were updates/changes going on with the servers and the old interface was affected.

[webdesign101]

To all of the above..

Then kill the old design today. Go ahead.... I didn't think so.

For those that want to migrate to another system.
http://www.yippiemove.com/index.html

[Pfolson]

Originally Posted by webdesign101

Then kill the old design today. Go ahead.... I didn't think so

Well, if it was up to me, I would have killed it two years ago -- clean break, overnight, let everybody complain for a few weeks and get it over with, and then move on.

But there's one catch ... I don't work for Fastmail. Neither do 99 percent of the people here. We're average users just like you.

I personally believe Fastmail has been far too kind (or perhaps wishy washy) by leaving the old interface around ... and around ... and around. As others have pointed out, it's unfair to the users, who shouldn't be forced to wait and wonder, day after day, how long they have until the plug is finally pulled. Force them to adapt (which history shows most will eventually do) or to move (as some others will inevitably do).

When you have to take a bandage off a wound, it's always better to do it quickly, one quick rip, and get it over with. Nothing is gained by peeling it off slloowwwwwwwly. That just prolongs the pain and hampers the healing process.

But again, I don't work for Fastmail, so I get to sit here with the rest of you and watch this ridiculous wailing and gnashing of teeth go on far, far longer than it should.

Paul

[the bishop]

Actually they should have left well enough alone. We didn't need the move, and that it took the moving of the interface and a real near timeline of death for the good interface to bring people out shows you just how many of the paying customers aren't interested in bleeding edge geekiness. But they do pay, so there you have it.

They should have focused on the excessive downtime, the non sync'd addressbook, and global searching, while keeping the very good (and faster) interface intact.

Instead we have much better uptime, still no sync for addressbook, and a whole new (and slower) interface with global searching. At best it's a push. With the ratio of unhappy to happy folks right now of about 3 dozen to 4, I think it's not even a push.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by Pfolson

...I personally believe Fastmail has been far too kind ...

That's something I hope will never change! They have always been kind, and always have been optimistic. They still are.

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by hadaso

That's something I hope will never change! They have always been kind, and always have been optimistic. They still are.

That is, if you were a supporter of the change. If you were not, like I was not, you didn't miss some of the snide comments like "we don't think you need to see the number of unread messages in a folder so its not going to be an option to turn on except by coding it in" or just plainly ignoring the problems that the poor current interface introduced that were not in the good classic interface (which Shelded and I did time and again).

I would say that except for Bron, the rest have been blase at best. YMMV.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by the bishop

... comments like "we don't think you need to see the number of unread messages in a folder so its not going to be an option to turn on except by coding it in" ....

The way I understood this is that they meant that in the main stylesheets that most users use this would be hidden, but that later when more stylesheets are made available there will be stylesheets that show more or less functionality. The old interface had "basic" and "advanced" versions of some screens that were served that way from the backend. The new interface was made so that these differences could be made using stylesheets so there's only one version that the servers serve, that can look radically different to different users. So as I see it when they said it (when the interface was young and in βετα) they were just overly optimistic about users taking advantages of all the configurability, and of themselves adding several more stylesheets after a few months.

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by hadaso

The way I understood this is that they meant that in the main stylesheets that most users use this would be hidden, but that later when more stylesheets are made available there will be stylesheets that show more or less functionality. The old interface had "basic" and "advanced" versions of some screens that were served that way from the backend. The new interface was made so that these differences could be made using stylesheets so there's only one version that the servers serve, that can look radically different to different users. So as I see it when they said it (when the interface was young and in βετα) they were just overly optimistic about users taking advantages of all the configurability, and of themselves adding several more stylesheets after a few months.

Well, someone said in another post that it would have made more sense to use the new huge added benefit of flexibility by giving the less code savvy end users 'selectable options' via checkboxes in the options area to turn things on and off. When asked about this (I don't know if they took it down off of the Fastmail wiki or not) Rob said 'tough tomatoes' basically in that he didn't want the numbers listed so they would not be. I remember that one because it was so ignorant of a comment I literally laughed out loud when I read it and thought it par for the course on having the new interface shoved down our throats like it or not.

If Fastmail did that and made it more user friendly to adjust the newer interface to be as usable as the classic, I think many could swallow the slowness that we now have. But less usability + slower? That's a step back, and all the newbs here are saying the same thing. It is what it is.

[Pfolson]

Originally Posted by the bishop

That's a step back, and all the newbs here are saying the same thing. It is what it is.

Just for clarification: By "newbs," are you talking about newcomers to EMD? Or are you talking about Fastmail's "newer" customers?

I'm assuming it's the former, because true "Fastmail newbs," or at least anyone who's joined Fastmail since the new interface was officially rolled out in February 2009, has probably never even seen the old interface, so has no reason to sit here and play the what's faster, what's slower, what's changed, what's missing game.

This is the thing that I'm starting to find most interesting (and humorous) about the whole debate. It's the point I tried to make above, and will try to elaborate on here.

There is, without a doubt, a core of long-term, hardcore Fastmail users who are upset by the change. How many? We don't know. Based on the evidence in these forums, it's a small core, but of course you can extrapolate those numbers to support any argument you want to support. This group, however small or large it might be, keeps predicting Armageddon: "They took away something I loved for 10 years, so the world is going to end, everyone's going to leave, and Fastmail is going to suffer and/or even die." It's as if they believe they're the entire Fastmail user base, as though time stopped and no one joined Fastmail after them.

But new people are joining Fastmail every day. Certainly many have joined since the new interface became the default two years ago. They know nothing about the old interface. Then there is the sizable group that only uses Fastmail with an e-mail client and probably only logs into the interface when they want to change an option. I know. I used to be one of them. My first two years with Fastmail I used IMAP exclusively and only logged on maybe three or four times in 24 months, usually after reading about some change in the newsletter and wanting to peak at it myself. My habits have since changed, and I split my use about 50-50 between IMAP and the web, but surely there is a sizable number that still uses only IMAP. And finally we have the unknown number of users who came over after the Opera acquisition, when Fastmail was touted in their forums, and the certainly much larger number that will arrive in the near future, when the new "Operamail" version of Fastmail is rolled out.

All of these people, should they be looking in here, are probably scratching their heads, wondering what all the fuss is about. Because, quite frankly, what the old interface looked like and how it worked and whether the message counts showed and where the buttons are located and how many clicks it takes to use a dropdown ... all those things are meaningless to them and these arguments must seem like a tempest in a teapot.

I'm not trying to say that long-term users don't matter. They do. Of course they do. And their needs should be considered -- along with the hundreds of other types of users who have to be factored into the company's technical and business decisions every day. Long-term users are one factor, not the only factor. Long-term users are important, but they are far from the only game in town and the universe does not revolve exclusively around them.

(As a side note, I'd love to see the breakdown on "old" versus "new" users. Even before the new interface came along, Fastmail users were defecting to other services like Gmail, some because they thought Fastmail was stodgy, some because Gmail and others were "cool," some because those other services were free, and some for other reasons altogether. The new interface arrived and even more old users left. So I'd love to see the percentages, showing how much of the user base is, say, pre-2005 and how much after. I think that would be extremely interesting.)

We can sit here all day (or many days!) arguing whether or not Fastmail "screwed" its long-term users, and whether the new interface is an improvement or a step back. Of such discussions are political debates, philosophical arguments and internet forums made.

But long-term users who think their preferences and opinions are the only ones that matter, and that the dawning of the new interface means the End Times are here, need to understand that they are just a group of pixels in a much larger picture. They need to think about all those people who have come to Fastmail since 2009 and all those using the service in ways other than the web interface and all the other "new generation" users that Fastmail and Opera will need to appeal to from here on out, and realize that the world is maybe a much bigger and more diverse place than they want to admit.

Paul

[johanborg]

Originally Posted by webdesign101

For all you fellow old interface users that had this option with just one click. The new way to do it is put in capital letters in the search box... SEEN HASATT . This will list all the emails with attachments that you have looked at.

Forgive me from starting to use FastMail after the new interface was introduced, but I cannot find a setting in the old interface to search for attachments. There is a column in the old style that allows you to sort by attachment and this column is hidden (still exists with a css tweak) in the new one.

We'll discuss this feature, I've reported it in our bug tracking system. Thanks for bringing up a concrete example of missing functionality since keeping the old interface around forever is not an option, while improving the new one certainly is.

PS
We added another style sheet a week ago to the new interface and will add a few more over time.

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by johanborg

There is a column in the old style that allows you to sort by attachment and this column is hidden (still exists with a css tweak) in the new one.

Ah, wasn't aware of this.
This css tweak makes it visible

.contentTable th.attachment a {
  display:inline;
  background-image:none;
  font-size:70%;
}

[webdesign101]

Hi Johan:

Originally Posted by johanborg

I cannot find a setting in the old interface to search for attachments. There is a column in the old style that allows you to sort by attachment and this column is hidden (still exists with a css tweak) in the new one.[/i]

Yes that is correct. On the old interface you can sort by clicking on any of the column headings. So if you click on the bolded "ATT" heading and then click on the bolded "Size" heading you can immediately see which emails need to be deleted to reduce your MB usage.

Don't forget to add the Boolean link I mentioned on the advanced search page.

To correct the problem with user friendliness do the following:

Look at the layout on this forum. Notice how all the text is black or in dark colors. Notice how all the backgrounds are in light colors. Notice how there is a lot of empty space around the text. Notice how Font sizes are very similar. These are the features missing in the new interface that were present in the old interface.

Specifically. Make all text in dark colors. Remove any colors on the page that are dark (dark blue and dropshadow.) Try to increase the empty space as much as possible. If this means increased heights on the message rows and pulling the right border on the left options panel over, try it. As the original artist did on the original design, order the darkest text as the items most commonly used (or considered most important) . The darkest text is what the eye will see first. When you can look at the page in one glance and know where everything is, you will have succeeded in your task. If a stylesheet already exists for this.. make it the default stylesheet ASAP. Always remember that in email, Function is everything. Pretty graphics are completely irrelevant.

If its possible, add a "make a suggestion link" at the top so that you have direct feedback from your non-tech savvy users. If you can create a bank of commonly answered questions to the feedback you receive you will remove all the hostility from your users and help immeasurably with your transition. Don't make them search for answers!

Microsoft conquered the world with buggy software. They had one thing that trumped all the linux and far superior open source products that existed at the time. They had user-friendliness and product support. Probably 90% of their users never opened a manual on how to use MS software. They just clicked on the intuitive picture icons and the software did what it was supposed to.

Some day over a beer, you'll have to tell me how many people were still on the old interface. I know you can't divulge that, but I bet its close to 50%. Solve your interface design problem and its smooth sailing the rest of the way.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by Pfolson

Really? You read every single newsletter? And you saw nothing in the Nov. 27, 2008 newsletter that suggested a major change? Not even this?

Well, I know you don't believe me, but yes I do read every single one of those. If the section "as a whole" doesn't not look like something I'm interested in, then I'll skip over the section. But I can't see me skipping over an overhaul section. Instead of assuming there's an issue with me, has it occured to you I never got that? I think if it stressed "major overhaul" and talked about getting rid of the old, I really would have noticed and paid attention, because I do pay attention to things like that. The first I recall seeing about anything "major" was about mid-2010. Whether you care to believe it or not, I read those newsletters and yes, I was completely unaware that any of this was happening.

Anyway, I'm done with this argument. You continually claim, in thread after thread, that you have no free time. But as you prove over and over, you sure have a lot of time to post long replies here, attacking and arguing with and calling "stupid" anyone who has a different opinion, offers a suggestion or tries to provide help.

Yes, I spent entirely too much time over here the other day and was ticked at myself for it, because it was my day off and I didn't get done much of the other things I needed to be getting done. If you hadn't noticed, it was also the first day I'd been over here for quite a while - so I was here too long one lousy day when I shouldn't have been, and I fully admit I shouldn't have been. And I even fully admit I shouldn't be here now but you tick me off something fierce, and yes I'm short-fused, so sue me.

My parting words on this: You need to give yourself more credit. Your posts show that you are clearly an intelligent (if somewhat short-fused) person.

I don't need to give myself more credit. I do believe I said I was perfectly capable of learning the stuff. I have a web site that I made using an old-fashioned thing called Notepad using my own two little hands. But I'm also busy trying to start two forums using some php junk I'm unfamiliar with and is getting complicated, and finding a new place for my web stuff since my ISP dropped their hosting, and fighting with Turbo Tax (what a waste of time that's been), etc. etc. and really don't feel like having to deal with learning something for my email as well..

Maybe later when I've dealt with some of this other stuff. But the point you seem to be missing is that I should not have to. I wouldn't care if I had 48 hours in a day -- I should not have to deal with this. And if I don't want to deal with it, I should not have to. That is what I was paying FM for. I will never comprehend what is so difficult about that concept for you to understand. The other thing you can't seem to comprehend is when you read something and have no clue what it's saying or what it means, it feels overwhelming and makes it more difficult to learn, and therefore does become more time-consuming. Because you shrug if off, you refuse to see that maybe it's just not that easy for someone else to shrug it off. Even intelligent people can feel overwhelmed by something!

You are really not helping matters - if I appear to want to do nothing but argue, maybe it's because I've gotten nothing but hostility from you ever since I first complained about this.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by neilj

Click the 'Show message options' link on the right under the message body textfield (this setting should be remembered by your browser).

Yes, thank you, neilj. Someone pointed that out on another thread and I have found that. I looked all over and that thing is very, very tiny and hard to see.

As I pointed out on the other thread, perhaps at least some of the complaints could be curtailed if things like that were not so difficult to find. The ease of finding things is just as important as the existence of them.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by the bishop

Well, someone said in another post that it would have made more sense to use the new huge added benefit of flexibility by giving the less code savvy end users 'selectable options' via checkboxes in the options area to turn things on and off. When asked about this (I don't know if they took it down off of the Fastmail wiki or not) Rob said 'tough tomatoes' basically in that he didn't want the numbers listed so they would not be. I remember that one because it was so ignorant of a comment I literally laughed out loud when I read it and thought it par for the course on having the new interface shoved down our throats like it or not.

?? If Rob said that, sounds like he's changed a lot. I never thought of him that way. But that's something else I do not like. The full number of messages does show - if you hover over the folder. I don't want to hover, I want to just see them. I kind of lost the message somewhere, but it was pointed out that's one of the things about the stylesheets - different ones did have different things like that. They had different fonts, were "fitted" onto the page in different ways (i.e. looks like some are set pixels and others are percentages), how the # of messages show up, even how read/unread messages in the folder list show up, etc. All those styles gave a real option not only in the look, but more important to me, the font it used and how it would place things on the page. The colors and such are only important in terms of what is easy on my eyes. (like some of that bright orange and such just makes me freaky)