Compose screen update to test on /beta/

[PON]

Rob, I like it well enough. However, the elongated buttons on top (at 1600x1200) are a bit odd and it is noticeable that the buttons are different in each corner.

Just looking at the relative positioning of the buttons at the bottom and adjacent fields: it occurs to me that reversing the order these might be more attractive. Which makes more intuitive sense

object (e.g. ball) action button (e.g., kick)

or the same with the action first and object second. I can understand having the Do button in an easy to hit location on the outside of the frame. If that matters perhaps the other side of the screen would be better. But then this would not be a good place for right handed folks (the majority) to find the Send button, would it, and these belong together. What about dropping send and cancel from the bottom of the screen, shifting those in the title bar to the left and making them bigger, and shifting the word "Compose" to the right hand side?

I'd like to see longer path names displayed for attachments when working at higher resolutions.

Well, just musing out loud

[sky]

I really like the recent interface changes on the beta server. And the quick list feature is quite handy. However, I have a few suggestions.

1) The attachment list box at the bottom center of the compose screen is very nice. And I think the 3 "quickly add up to 3 attachments" function is kinda redundant now. If the attachments button is modified to be the browse button, then we can attach files just as efficiently as before. In addition, we don't have to go back and forth between the compose screen and the attachment screen. Also, taking away the 3 "quickly add up to 3 attachments" would make the bottom screen less clustered.

2) I think the top of the compose screen is taking too much space (6 lines). So I suggest moving the save copy and the signature function to the bottom. It is more logical too since we usually decide where to save the email and what signature to add after we finish composing our email.

[JeffK]

IMHO the save sent and sig boxes should not be at the bottom if they go off screen.

Jeff

[hadaso]

Originally posted by sky
I... we usually decide where to save the email and what signature to add after we finish composing our email.

I usually decide about this before I compose. When I decide to write the email, I already know where it belongs. And choosing where to file the saved copy is usualy related to choosing personality (usually a subfolder of the folder related to the chosen personality). And I usualy choose the signature when writing the recipient's address. The recipient usualy determines the kind of signature. So IMO these fields belong at the top with the rest of the choices. (I also usualy use the action drop-down before composing, but I guess I'm in a small minority in this case!)

[Sherry]

The three bottom buttons go off the screen to the right. Using IE6 and 800x600. I can only see the C, App, and Do without scrolling to the right.

Sherry

[hadaso]

Another little thing: In the "Save Copy" drop-down -none should be below -personality and not above it (this is because, at least for me, the most common use of this drop-down is switching from -personality to -none, and -none is never visible when the drop-down arrow is clicked. I always have to scroll up before being able to choose -none (I wrote about this in the "compose screen mockup" thread a few months ago. Since then I got a mouse with a thumb-wheel, which made scrolling up a bit easier, but having -none right below -personality (which should be the top line in this drop-down list) would be better (and I'm nesting parenthsis in text again (what's the plural of parenthesis? (and did I close all the open ones?)))))

Edit: balanced parenthesis. This means I didn't close all the open ones before!

[kander]

pa·ren·the·sis (p-rnth-ss) n. pl. par·en·the·ses (-sz)

Source: Dictionary.com

[hadaso]

BTW (related to the direction toggle):

The spelling and direction change actions are mutually redundant: obviously if you're composing right to left the spell checker won't help you (at least not at present!)

[Si1]

As fastmail wraps outgoing mail at 74 characters, would it be possible to have the compose box do this automatically whilst typing (sort of more WYSIWYG)?

[hadaso]

Yet another remark:

When using the custom "From:" header option the Save Copy drop-down has no -pesonality option. When switching back to "personalities" mose the -personality option reappeaars but is not chosen by default.

My suggestion:
Change "-personality" to "-personalty: foldername" that is more informative by telling the user what the default folder for the personality is. When switching to "custom" remember what personality it was and keep "-personalty: foldername" as the choice of folder. Then switching back to personalities would go back to the personality that was chosen before switching to "custom", and the -personality folder would be retained for use with custom "From:" header (i.e., when using the personality as a template, the From address can be edited, but the rest of the personality data (folder, signature) would still be used).


(Anyone knows a cure for nesting? (Perhaps from Nestle??? (would have put a smiley here but they don't resize with text!)))

P.S.
perhaps "*foldername" instead of "-personality: foldername". And it should be the topmost entry in the drop-down, above -none, of course!

[hadaso]

Originally posted by Si1
As fastmail wraps outgoing mail at 74 characters, would it be possible to have the compose box do this automatically whilst typing (sort of more WYSIWYG)?

So right now it's WYSINWYG!

[henrico]

what a surprise: after I came back from a short vacation (it was nice, thank you...), there's a beta version....

hmmmm....it looks OK!...the quicklist is very nice..

comments:

top:

- rows are a bit too large, especially the subject row...

- make it possible to hide the CC and BCC rows...

- do we need a custom button? is it not possible to make the text box already editable?

bottom:

- please move the attachment button a bit to the left...

- move the send button to the centre please...

[mklose]

Originally posted by 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..

Quoting myself:

People often complained about opening the compose in the same window or in a different window.

I used to belong to the group "leave it as it is" because then I can decide by myself if to open in a new window or not.

But now - for users like me that need a "small compose" window that is not so wide, would it be possible to configure it to open using javascript to open up in a smaller new window with a width of a maximum of so and so many pixels?

For me, without the resize I think I will begin using a client more and more again, currently I use the web interface 90% of the time ans really love it. But such a wide compose window will make it hard to read what I have written and I know I'll be too lazy to resize the browser

[mgking]

I'm very impressed with the beta compose window, particularly mockup9.

Slightly off the topic of the compose screen itself, but still relevant:

When the quick list is introduced and "save new names" is checked, would it be worth the subsequent "Add to address book" page having a checkbox to include the new address in the quick list straight away?

This would save the user having to manually add the address to the quick list later on. However, it would add more potentially confusing options for less confident users.

[robmueller]

Ok, I've implemented the mockup9 and uploaded it to /beta/.

Basically it implements the layout from mockup9, which a few extra things:

1. When you switch from Personality -> Custom, it sets the 'Save Copy' and 'Signature' popups to whatever the personalities was. If you switch back to 'Personalities', it always switches back to '-Personality' for both. No, I'm not going to add the extra logic to stop this for now if you happen to have changed it.
2. '-Personality' entries come before '-None' ones. This stops IE pushing '-None' off the top when '-Personality' is selected by default
3. I tested the reported Opera bug, but I think it's a Opera 7.2beta problem. Works fine in 7.1, but 7.2b7 is broken.
4. Made the quicklist font a bit smaller, so there's 10 items in there now on CSS compatiable browsers
5. I've never liked the 'Attachments' button, which I think some people use to attach any selected attachments, when really what it does is go to the bigger screen to add more attachments. Thus I've added 2 buttons: 'Attach Selected' and 'Attach Many' to go to the other screen. I've also left the list box there with a '<No attachments>' item if there are none. I'm not concrete on this, and may change.

Things left to do:
1. Update FAQ links and FAQ
2. Maybe change 'Action' to just 'toggle direction link' for the moment.
3. Optimise for each screen size to make sure everything is visible
4. Add a 'compose width' option to either fix width to 72 chars or 'size to screen width' options (it'll still wrap to 72 when sending, as that's the email standard)
5. I might make the buttons at the top right a 'fixed size relative to font' rather than 'size relative to area', since on big screens, they resize to quite large and look a bit funny.

Rob