Specific questions on the new interface

[neoforum]

Fastmail says they plan to disable their beloved, functional old interface "this year" and they're encouraging everyone to use the new interface. (What possible benefit do they get from disabling something that has worked flawlessly for years and has features the new thing doesn't? Yahoo has repeatedly made the same mistake on their Finance pages over the years.)

So I've finally given the new interface a look, and immediately I see several problems that I can't figure out how to fix. Is there a way to fix the following issues with custom stylesheets or something?

1. In the "Date" column of the message lists, it doesn't show the hour and minute of messages received prior to today, so if there were several messages on the same date from the same person with the same subject (as often happens in an email conversation), there's no way to know which one to click on if you know you're looking for the one sent at a particular time. (It also doesn't show the date of messages that arrived today, but that's normally not something I care about.)

2. In the "From" column of the message lists, it doesn't show the email address of the sender. It only shows the sender's name, which doesn't help you figure out whether, e.g., your friend wrote you from their home or work account.

3. It doesn't show the total number of messages in each mailbox on the mailbox window except for the mailbox you hover the mouse pointer over. It would be nice to get it to show this for all the mailboxes at once.

4. In a few messages with wide images, it seems to refuse to put a horizontal scrollbar on the message window (and if I make the browser window quite narrow, it does put a horizontal scrollbar on, but when I move the scrollbar all the way to the right, a lot of the image is still off to the right of the window). It's like it doesn't understand how wide the image actually is, so it thinks there's no need for a scrollbar. So there's no way to see the right part of the image. The same message shows up with a horizontal scrollbar that scrolls to the entire image in the old interface.

5. When you move the mouse pointer around over the mailbox window, it flashes highlighted boxes at you when it moves over the tabs at the top or the mailbox names at the left. I find this annoying and would like to disable it.

Please help! And please lobby fastmail to maintain access to the old interface instead of forcing everyone to use the dysfunctional new one.

[hadaso]

Except possibly for 4 that probably needs fixing, the rest is configurable in the new interface, though not in a very user friendly way.

Email addresses and complete date+time info is available by hovering over the name/time/date. There are tweaks to have each of these always visible though right now I could only find a tweak to make the full date+time visible.

[rabarberski]

In general, see this wiki page.

Originally Posted by neoforum

1. In the "Date" column of the message lists, it doesn't show...

See the wiki page

2. In the "From" column of the message lists, it doesn't show the email address of the sender.

If you hover over the name, the address will appear

3. It doesn't show the total number of messages in each mailbox ...

see the wiki page

4. In a few messages with wide images, it seems to refuse to put a horizontal scrollbar on the message window ....

Hmm, this might be a bug, perhaps submit it ?

5. When you move the mouse pointer around over the mailbox window, it flashes highlighted boxes at you when it moves over the tabs at the top or the mailbox names at the left. I find this annoying and would like to disable it.

This could be fixed by using a css tweak (at worst, a javacsript tweak), but I didn't see any copy-paste ready solution on the tweaks wiki page. Perhaps somebody will post the solution here... If you know CSS yourself, don't hesitate to post the solution here or directly on the wiki.

[neoforum]

Thanks for these responses! I'll see if I can get the tweaks to work. My initial attempt based on the wiki page, putting the following in custom-ui/js/tweaks.js:

$$('#mailbox .contentTable td.date span').each(function (s) {
var d = new Date(s.get('epoch')*1000);
s.innerHTML = s.innerHTML + " " + d.getHours() + ":" + d.getMinutes();
});

didn't seem to do anything. Unfortunately, I don't know much about CSS or JS myself, though I am a programmer and I have a general sense of what they're for. Maybe it's time to start learning them.

[Mystakill]

@neoforum:

If you haven't already, you'll need to wrap your code in a domready wrapper, per the wiki.

Your code should look like this when the domready block is included:

window.addEvent('domready', function () {
  $$('#mailbox .contentTable td.date span').each(function (s) {
     var d = new Date(s.get('epoch')*1000);
     s.innerHTML = s.innerHTML + " " + d.getHours() + ":" + d.getMinutes();
  });
});

[neoforum]

Cool, that mostly worked, except it now shows the time of day *twice* for messages that arrived today, and it says, e.g. "10:4" where it should say "10:04". But now I see a more evolved example a bit later on the wiki page, which I'll try.

Do you know where the APIs this code refers to are documented?

Looks like the new interface could be pretty nicely customizable, so I wonder if there's already a catalog of useful tweaks somewhere, besides the few examples embedded in that wiki page?

Ideally, fastmail could even keep a library of useful tweaks under the Options page that you could selectively install with checkboxes.

[neoforum]

So here's a tweaks.js that seems to work for my preferred date format:

window.addEvent('domready', function () {
$$('#mailbox .contentTable td.date span').each(function (s) {
  var d = new Date(s.get('epoch')*1000)
  var today = new Date()
  var ds = d.toDateString()  //date as string e.g. "Mon Dec 08 2008"
  var show = ""         //build up date/time string to show
  if (ds == today.toDateString()) { //if today
    var ts = d.toLocaleTimeString() //time as string e.g. "06:03:00 PM"
    if (ts.substring(1,2) == ":") {
      show = ts.substring(0,1)+ts.substring(2,4) //show time w/o seconds
      show += (ts.substring(8,9) == "A") ? "a" : "p"
    } else {
      show = ts.substring(0,2)+ts.substring(3,5) //show time w/o seconds
      show += (ts.substring(9,10) == "A") ? "a" : "p"
    }
  } else {
    // determine whether within 1 week:
    // first convert to UTC to calculate day, otherwise
    // times near end of day are calcluated as wrong day
    var adjustFactor = today.getTimezoneOffset()*60000
    today_adjusted=new Date(today - adjustFactor)
    d_adjusted=new Date(d - adjustFactor)
    // Divide by number of MS/day to drop HH:MM:SS:MS:
    if (Math.floor(today_adjusted/86400000)-Math.floor(d_adjusted/86400000)<7) {
      show = ds.substring(0,4)  //show day of week,space
    }
    show += ds.substring(4,7)  //always show 3-letter month
    // show 1-digit or 2-digit day
    show += (ds.substring(8,9)=="0") ? ds.substring(9,10) : ds.substring(8,10)
    if (d.getFullYear() != today.getFullYear()) { //if different year, show year
      show += "'" + ds.substring(13,15) //show ' + 2-digit year
    }
    var ts = d.toLocaleTimeString() //time as string e.g. "06:03:00 PM"
    if (ts.substring(1,2) == ":") {
      show += " " + ts.substring(0,1)+ts.substring(2,4) //show time w/o seconds
      show += (ts.substring(8,9) == "A") ? "a" : "p"
    } else {
      show += " " + ts.substring(0,2)+ts.substring(3,5) //show time w/o seconds
      show += (ts.substring(9,10) == "A") ? "a" : "p"
    }
  }
  s.innerHTML = show
});
});

which works well with this in tweaks.css:

.contentTable .date { width: 9em; }

If I wanted to contribute this to a library of useful tweaks, where would I put it?

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by neoforum

Do you know where the APIs this code refers to are documented?

The javascript is based on the Mootools framework, so you might find some information there.

Looks like the new interface could be pretty nicely customizable, so I wonder if there's already a catalog of useful tweaks somewhere, besides the few examples embedded in that wiki page?

Nope, only the wiki page. I would say thought that there are quite a lot examples on the wiki page

Ideally, fastmail could even keep a library of useful tweaks under the Options page that you could selectively install with checkboxes.

When the tweaks support was implemented, a few of us got excited about similar approaches, but nothing has emerged (not from our side, nor from FM's), so don't keep your hopes up high

[Mystakill]

Also, Opera are currently developing/testing a full AJAX interface as we speak, so this "new" (2 year old+) AJAX-lite interface is just a transitional step. Due to that, I can't imagine that Opera would invest a whole lot of time and effort backporting the tweaks into the existing interface.

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

The javascript is based on the Mootools framework, so you might find some information there.

Thank you!

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

Also, Opera are currently developing/testing a full AJAX interface as we speak, so this "new" (2 year old+) AJAX-lite interface is just a transitional step.

Oh God, not again! Some companies, like Google, clearly understand that if you have a good product with a simple, functional interface, anything that changes the interface is a major negative that requires every single existing user, from hotshots like me who just want what works well to keep working, to the 80-year-old who has a hard time finding the "return" key or remembering which mouse button to use, to have to re-learn how to interact with the product. Others, like Yahoo and, apparently, fastmail, repeatedly screw their user base by imagining that someone out there will think bad things about them if they fail to constantly "innovate".

Do you see car companies coming out with a fancy new model where the accelerator is a knob on the steering wheel like the one on a motorcycle handlebar? Would Dell announce that next year's computers will come only with "enhanced" Dvorak keyboards and that Qwerty will no longer be supported after 2 years? (I know, Windows lets you choose Dvorak if you want... but they'd never change the default!)

How can entire organizations fail to understand something so obvious? I guess they're managed entirely by computer-whiz hotshots who never actually talk to the ordinary people who could make up the bulk of their users if they managed their products in consultation with said ordinary people.

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by neoforum

to have to re-learn how to interact with the product. Others, like Yahoo and, apparently, fastmail, repeatedly screw their user base by imagining that someone out there will think bad things about them if they fail to constantly "innovate".

Do you see car companies coming out with a fancy new model where the accelerator is a knob on the steering wheel like the one on a motorcycle handlebar?

Your analogy is stretching things a bit.

Most of the changes in the interface are merely cosmetic, so there shouldn't be anything to "relearn"; as in moving a cars accelerator from a pedal to a knob on a steering wheel.

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by sflorack

Most of the changes in the interface are merely cosmetic, so there shouldn't be anything to "relearn"; as in moving a cars accelerator from a pedal to a knob on a steering wheel.

Let me guess, you're a lot less than 70 years old, you have no trouble figuring out how to set your microwave to 2.5 minutes, and you spend more than 5 hours a week at your computer, right? (The same are true of me, but the point is to consider that not everyone finds understanding interfaces to be trivial.)

I've had to learn to look for the date & size on the right instead of the left of the mailbox screen. I've had to learn to look for the quick contacts list on the left instead of the right of the compose screen. I had to learn to hover the mouse over the date if I wanted to know what time a message was sent (until I learned how to change it to show what I wanted). I've had to learn to use the dropdown for "After message action" on the message-read screen to go to the previous or next message instead of using the left/right arrow buttons that did this in the old interface. These among many other changes.

All these things done differently or in different places strike me as very similar to moving the accelerator onto the steering wheel: the function is still available, but I have to learn to go to a different place or make a different motion to do it. After years of using the old interface daily, that's significant.

It would probably just take a while to get used to driving with the accelerator on the steering wheel, just as it only takes a while to get used to a new interface... but they're both a re-learning. And just as the accelerator change would be annoying to so many people that car makers wouldn't consider it, I think interface changes are annoying to enough people that it isn't smart for fastmail to undertake them without supporting ongoing use of the old interface (or at least an emulation mode) for those who don't want to relearn.

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by neoforum

Ideally, fastmail could even keep a library of useful tweaks under the Options page that you could selectively install with checkboxes.

Yes, ideally.

Of course the easier method was to:

1: Change Interface
2: Let the end user do the work themselves
3: ???
4: PROFIT!

If they were to have useful tweaks via selective checkboxes, I'm thinking that many of us (myself included) might even not mind as much the slower interface. But to have both a slower interface and less ability unless you code? Yeah well ...

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by neoforum

I've had to learn to look for the date & size on the right instead of the left of the mailbox screen.

Seriously, this is your proof that the new interface is confusing and needs to be relearned? A 9" shift of your eyes from the left to the right?