Compose screen update to test on /beta/

[Prognathous]

Originally posted by robmueller
7. Notepad 'Insert' button changed to 'Append' for now. I had a look, but can't see a quick JS way to submit the current cursor position, so for now it'll have to be an append.

It seems like the append action always throws-in a couple of leading Carriage Returns. Both are redundant when all the user may want is to insert/append a single special character.

IMHO, it would be better to let users insert these Carriage Returns when creating the note, rather than to force them into the beginning of any note.

Prog.

[AndrewL]

I really like the way the current beta is shaping up, but I have a couple of small points regarding custom personalities.

1. When choosing a personality and clicking the 'Custom' button, the 'Save Copy' list removes the '-Personality' option and instead defaults to 'Sent Items'. Would it be posssible, please, to default to the 'Save Copy' setting of the personality chosen before 'Custom' was clicked?

2. The 'Signature' list still retains the '-Personality' option, and has it selected as default, even when using a custom personality. Is this a bug? As with the 'Save Copy' setting' could the '-Personality' option be removed and instead default to the 'Signature' setting of the personality chosen before 'Custom' was clicked?

I think both of these would be useful and intuitive changes, and would make the 'template personality' concept (originally suggested by hadaso, in this message) more powerful.

Thanks,


Andrew

[AndrewL]

I think I've found another minor bug on the beta compose screen. The help text shown when hovering over the little '?' next to the 'Spell Check' and 'Save Draft' buttons is the same as the help text for the 'Check Names' button.

Best regards,


Andrew

[Sherry]

Originally posted by robmueller

5. "Spell Check" instead of "Check Spelling" (though wonder if it should be "Check Spelling" to be same as "Check Names")
Rob

With 2 of the four buttons, starting with the same word, causes the mind to pause a split second to read the second word of each. I think in a small design it's better for each button to be individual without drawing your eyes to just those to. (I don't mean to sound picky, just going by an overall look) This is just IMHO.

Sherry

[kander]

I share that HO, Sherry. I know I would click the wrong button occasionally if they're too alike...

--K

[injinuity]

Originally posted by injinuity
dont know if its a bug or if its intended this way but when you click on an email ID right from the inbox, you go to the compose screen with the "To" field filled with a lot of junk for eg.
"NAME EDITED" <nameedited@something.com>

This is still happening ... browser Opera 7.11


Jinu Johnson

[kander]

Originally posted by robmueller
Also, a person emailed me saying that they used the existing 'bug' of drafts not being deleted after sending an email quite a bit to keep a folder of 'template' emails. I'd really like to change to the proper behaviour, so I've come up with a hacky solution. Basically, if a draft comes from a folder called 'Templates' or 'SomeParent.Templates', then it isn't deleted when you send the email.

GREAT! Somehow I missed this earlier, but that's a great solution, for a temporary hack. Very useful!

Am I the only one noticing this sudden burst of features that weren't really requested, but VERY useful nonetheless?

--K

[mklose]

Hey!

I love it, except one thing:

I have a 1600x1200 screen on my laptop, and I usually have Mozilla on full screen and work with a lot of tabs.

With the old compose screen, the width of the compose box was just right (not with every style sheet though). I couldn't use many of the stylesheets because many of them resized to 100% width.

Can anything be done so that it shows the old behaviour? (ie if using stylesheets that do not have the 100% width in it that it does not use the full width).

Other than that: Great work!

Thanks..

[hadaso]

Originally posted by mklose
I have a 1600x1200 screen on my laptop, and I usually have Mozilla on full screen and work with a lot of tabs... I couldn't use many of the stylesheets because many of them resized to 100% width.

A little bit OT: this is really a limitaion of Mozilla, or more generally of tabbed browising vs. browsing in separate windows. The correct solution to this, IMO, would be to have a screen splitting ability in Mozilla, allowing several tabs to be viewed concurrently. Imagine how great the FastMail interface could be in such an environment, with compose and view and mailbox all vissible at once under different tabs! (warned you it's OT!

[hadaso]

Originally posted by Prognathous
It seems like the append action always throws-in a couple of leading Carriage Returns. Both are redundant when all the user may want is to insert/append a single special character.

It would be nice if we could have an "insert symbol" pull-down with user configurable symbols (say a specially named notepad note where the first character in each row is the one to be inserted. The rest of the row a description that would go into the pull-down). Perhaps after HTML composition is incorporated, a "scaled down" version can be made for text, i.e. in addition to the simple text entry and the HTML editing panel that can go there, there can be a choice of composing plain text but with some tool panel for some simple text manipulations.

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally posted by hadaso
It would be nice if we could have an "insert symbol" pull-down with user configurable symbols (say a specially named notepad note where the first character in each row is the one to be inserted. The rest of the row a description that would go into the pull-down). [/b]

Why not just use the facilities provided by your OS?

[hadaso]

Originally posted by Jeremy Howard
Why not just use the facilities provided by your OS?

Of course I can! But my OS doesn't go with me everywhere! And it is more convenient to have the functionality right in the screen I use to copmpose (not to mention that the way I know how to do it in MS Windows is to go to Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Character Map and then scroll through hunreds of symbols, select some, then click copy... Well, a simpler way and accessible from anywhere would be for me to put a txt fileon the web with all the symbols I need (would also be OS independent)

Anyway, all this "enter a single character from notepad" is theorizing for me. I would probably just put all my special symbols in one note and append it so I can copy and paste them. Inserting from notepad requires a page refresh, and that is not something I want to wait for each time I type a single character!

And finally, FastMail as it is is more than I ever hoped or expected to have in an email system. The best aspect is watching it evolve, and being able to participate to some extent! I could live with nmuch less functionality (till about 3 years ago email meant for me just using telnet and then the UNIX mail command!)

[Prognathous]

Edit: what he ^ said :-)

Originally posted by Jeremy Howard
Why not just use the facilities provided by your OS?

For several reasons:

1. Most special characters are not mapped in the standard keyboard layouts. Even the most trivial characters (like dashes) are missing.

2. Tools like Windows CharMap are slow and cumbersome. You have to launch them, search for the special character, select, copy then paste it. This is way too slow. OS X Unicode Character Input tool is just as useless for day to day typing.

3. Arcane combinations like Alt+NumPad0206 may be sufficient for a character or two, but not as complete solution – most people either don't know about them, or don't want to bother memorizing them.

I think that Hadaso's suggestion is great. Please implement it, or at least remove the redundant CRs from the Append Note action.

Thanks,

Prog.

[JeffK]

Thank you Rob for considering my requests and others who commented. I'm reasonable happy with the outcome. and look forward to it going into production.

Regards, Jeff

[robmueller]

Ok, spent a bit of time with another mockup tweaking the top part, and also working on the bottom part.

http://robm.fastmail.fm/mockup/compose_mockup9.html

I quite like this one! Here's what I like:

1. Up to 9 quick list items displayed without a scroll bar now
2. All major actions now have a button, and there's still space for one more in the future
3. 'Save Copy' header now lines up nicely with other header items
4. Displays better on Opera
5. Append Note is now down the bottom, probably where it deserves to be. Stuff at the top is 'meta-information' about the message, stuff down the bottom is action oriented items to perform on the message
6. At the bottom, things on the bottom right are all lined up nicely, with a bit of a gap between Send/Cancel and the actions below it. Also Send/Cancel buttons are in the same order as at the top.
7. Attachments are pretty much unchanged, just moved the buttons to the left side, not right.
8. I've removed all the ? help links for now. I'm beginning to like them less and less. The keep stuffing up the layout slightly because of their 'superscript' nature. They display quite differently under IE, Moz and Opera, making it hard to make it look nice everywhere. Also, most browsers support 'title' attributes on buttons so when you move the mouse over them, a popup appears with a description, which is what I've added to most buttons now. My long term feeling is to:
a) Remove the ?'s for screens
b) But leave the Help link at the top to go to the appropriate FAQ page
c) Some day, add a help facility like the '?' button in windows. Basically you click on something, and then as you move the mouse around the screen, popups appear with detailed information as you move over various screen elements. This will have to be done with JS, but 99% of people have JS enabled browsers these days anyway...

Is there anyone out there with lots of novice user experience who can tell me whether anyone actually uses the ? help links and are actually useful, or if they just add clutter?

Comments?

Rob