EmailDiscussions.com  

Go Back   EmailDiscussions.com > Email Service Provider-specific Forums > FastMail Forum
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read
Stay in touch wirelessly

FastMail Forum All posts relating to FastMail.FM should go here: suggestions, comments, requests for help, complaints, technical issues etc.

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 21 Nov 2012, 04:38 PM   #1
Michael Hund
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 9
Inserted signature behaviour when changing personality

Greetings,

I've searched too long, and haven't found this problem. I'm using Fastmail on Mac OS X and Firefox. I'm unable to use the new interface due to the problem with personalities and signatures.

Using the new "Classic" interface, when I select the "Compose" tab, the page displays the default personality, and automatically and correctly inserts the associated signature.

If I select a different personality in the "From" field, the default signature remains, but a new one is not inserted. If I go to to the "More Text Options..." dialog and select "Insert Signature At End", it inserts the correct signature for the associated personality, however, the old signature remains also. This is not the way most email programs I've used work, they replace the previous signature with the new one. Of course, I can manually remove the previous signature. But I have around ten personalities and signatures, so I'm doing this way too much, I use the default more than any other personality, but I use it perhaps 20% of the time, 80% of the time I'm deleting the old signature.

When I switch to the new interface, no signature is inserted when I compose a new email. When I select another personality, no signature is inserted. There is nothing similar to the "More Text Options...", so I can find no way to insert a signature in the new interface, so it is currently unusable.

Surely I must be missing something? Any suggestions?
Michael Hund is offline   Reply With Quote

Old 21 Nov 2012, 09:11 PM   #2
neilj
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 971

Representative of:
Fastmail.fm
In the new interface, the signature should be inserted when you compose (so it's visible in the body; what you see is what you get). If you change personality, the signature should update. Is this not what you see? What browser are you using? Are you using rich text or plain text editing?

Neil.
neilj is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22 Nov 2012, 08:34 AM   #3
Michael Hund
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 9
With the new interface, I don't see any signature inserted when I compose a new email, but with the new "Classic" interface, I do.

As mentioned in the post, I'm using the latest Firefox on the latest Mac OS X. However, the behavior is the same when using Chrome or Safari on the Mac, or on my iPad using either the iCab or Safari browsers.

This leads me to think I must have a setting wrong, but can't find anything. I'm guessing the new interface is supposed to perform as I suggested, automatically inserting the signature when starting compose, and replacing it with a different one when a different personality is selected, because there isn't a "More text actions" box with the new interface.

Kind Regards,

Michael Hund
Michael Hund is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22 Nov 2012, 08:46 AM   #4
Michael Hund
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 9
I've found another issue that might be relevant, it appears in the accounts setting, but only when using the new interface, not when using the "Classic" interface.

Settings, Accounts, Other Pop Links
I see the message "9 Pop Links do not have an associated personality. View and edit in the advanced settings." I have 11 Pop Links in total.

Under advanced settings, Pop Links, looking at each Pop Link, there is no field that identifies the associated signature.

Under advanced settings, Personalities, each personality shows the related signature.

Under advanced settings, Signatures, each signature shows no Text signature, but does show a Raw HTML signature, this is how I set them up, and they work with the "Classic" interface, so the reference to the signature from the personality seems to be working with the "Classic" interface.

So I can not identify which 9 of the 11 are different, they all appear to be correctly configured.

Kind Regards,

Michael Hund
Michael Hund is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22 Nov 2012, 02:11 PM   #5
neilj
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 971

Representative of:
Fastmail.fm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Hund View Post
Under advanced settings, Signatures, each signature shows no Text signature, but does show a Raw HTML signature
Ah, this will be it. The new interface only uses the plain text signature at the moment.

Neil.
neilj is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22 Nov 2012, 05:22 PM   #6
NJSS
Master of the @
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Hampshire, UK
Posts: 1,238
Quote:
The new interface only uses the plain text signature at the moment.
Why is it that so many changes, if not all of them, are undocumented?

It seems that the AJAX UI has been introduced by an incomplete team of amateurs.

Surely you document changes, have change logs, have support & help documentation, consult users - not just bash on?

NJSS
NJSS is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 23 Nov 2012, 10:17 AM   #7
Michael Hund
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 9
I agree with the previous posting and many other comments on this site, that the release of the new interface was painfully premature, and that features of the new interface are not documented.

There's a lot written about how to manage these issues well. In my eyes, Opera has damaged their credibility significantly by releasing this new UI before it was ready. Surely you have a beta test group that will help to work through these issues.

Is there a reason why a cautious and less damaging approach was not taken?

Kind Regards,

Michael Hund
Michael Hund is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10 Dec 2012, 08:52 AM   #8
hadaso
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Holon, Israel.
Posts: 4,799
Quote:
Originally Posted by neilj View Post
... The new interface only uses ... at the moment
This is a major issue with the new interface. Too many things are missing. It is not well documented (well, not documented at all) and it's hard to find out if there are alternative ways to do what you need, or you have to wait for the fuctionality to come (and meanwhile use "Classic"). And we (users) don't know whether the functionality we are waiting for will ever come to the new interface.

The new interface seems much better in many ways. And then I don't use it at all, because too often I have to go back to "Classic" to do things, so after trying to use both interfaces concurrently, I ended up using only "Classic".

For instance: the new interface doesn't allow saving an outgoing message to anywhere but a single per-personality file. I use several folders to file outgoing messages with almost any personality I use. So I'm driven to use "Classic" whenever I compose email.

I delete unneeded attachments before I file emails I read (such as deleting those several hundred kB bmp department logos on lots of work related email), so I'm drien to "Classic" several times a day in the process of filing a message.

Another example: I use the supescript/subscript bottons in the Compose screen quite often, and also switch to source editing every now and then. The new interface doesn't have an interface for doing it. So I tried to use the new interface with emails that don't require the missing buttons, but eventually gave up, because too often I found in the meidle of composing that I want to save the draft and switch to "Classic" to continue editing. So I ended up using only the older Compose screen, even though I can see that the Squire engine that provides the html editing capability in the new interface is probably superior than CKeditor that does it in "Classic".
hadaso is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10 Dec 2012, 09:13 PM   #9
Mystakill
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Baltimore, MD (USA)
Posts: 835
Quote:
Originally Posted by hadaso View Post
...even though I can see that the Squire engine that provides the html editing capability in the new interface is probably superior than CKeditor that does it in "Classic".
I hadn't done any research on the new RTE, but I was surprised to find that it had been completely written by Neil J. Why not use a supported RTE like CKEditor, TinyMCE, or one of the dozens of other test & supported projects available already, rather than re-inventing the wheel yet again? It's much easier, faster, and preferable to customize an existing RTE for integration, security, and functionality.

Since Squire is Neil's project, we'll have to wait until he has time to add all of the missing functionality. You know, after all of the other missing FM features are added back in, and broken features are fixed...
Mystakill is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10 Dec 2012, 11:52 PM   #10
thymara
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 97
The best way to run up costs is to reinvent everything yourself.

The next best way to run up costs is to make continuous changes to a product to meet your requirements rather than changing your business practices to fit the product.

Last edited by thymara : 11 Dec 2012 at 03:53 AM. Reason: continues -> continuous
thymara is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11 Dec 2012, 02:43 AM   #11
Mystakill
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Baltimore, MD (USA)
Posts: 835
Quote:
Originally Posted by thymara View Post
The best way to run up costs is to reinvent everything yourself.
Sadly, I'm painfully aware of this fact due to a project I'm working on which uses someone else's home-grown AJAX "framework", which is a very b******ized spin on jQuery UI. It's not well-documented (which he'll argue adamantly against), not intuitive, and inconsistently implemented. It also sporadically stops working unless you either reload the whole page (defeating the purpose of AJAX) or delete your session cookies and start over (again, defeating AJAX). Best of all, most errors are trapped (hidden) by this hobbled framework, which makes troubleshooting very difficult. Fortunately, since I now have "commit" permissions, I'm slowly but surely fixing the broken things
Mystakill is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11 Dec 2012, 06:54 AM   #12
hadaso
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Holon, Israel.
Posts: 4,799
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mystakill View Post
...Why not use a supported RTE like CKEditor, TinyMCE, or one of the dozens of other test & supported projects available already, rather than re-inventing the wheel yet again?...
I think the logic behind making this project is correct: none of the existing editors is made for composition of email. They have lots of code for things that are not needed, like making html forms. And they have their own interface that is quite inconsistent with the application they are planted in. So Neil created a simple editor with programatic interface (API) and no user interface. The web application in which it is palnted is supposed to provide the interface. Most of what I miss is just user interface elements, such as buttons for superscript/subscript (and perhaps strikethru, but I do not use it as often). These are supoosed to be supplied by FastMail's code, not by the editor's code, and it seems to me that they should be easy to implement, only that it is not FastMail's wish to put them on every user's interface.

The fact that all html editors I saw were not email user friendly occured to me several years ago, when several such editors were tested for FastMail (there was a time when one could choose from 3 different editors on the fly on /beta/). All of them are made with the assumption that the person controling the application decides what elements to put in the toolbar (or other interface elements), sets it up in some static configuration file, or by editting some initialization code, and all the site's users should be happy with the webmaster's choice or go somewhere else. In email, however, different users may have very different needs, and it's best to allow the users to hide the interface elements that are not useful to her, and perhaps create some interface elements or rearrange them. In other words, a good html editor interface for email should allow some customization by the user. Neil's editor and the new interface is suitable for this purpose, only right now the new interface doesn't allow any kind of such customization (and "Classic" does allow such customization, despite being less suitable, but requires the user to reverse-engineer the interface to do it, and then program in Javascript, so my customizations that used to work don't work anymore. I hope the new interface would in the future allow some kind of customization in a more user-friendly and reliable way. The open-office way of selecting which buttons to show in the toolbar seems like a good choice that can be inplemented with AJAX.
hadaso is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12 Dec 2012, 02:09 AM   #13
Mystakill
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Baltimore, MD (USA)
Posts: 835
While it may seem ideal to start from scratch, the reality is that Neil is over-tasked and the editor will languish until either he, or an alternate resource(s) is/are available to continue development.

The fact remains that the major players all have well-supported codebases, documentation, community input, extensions, etc. They can be configured with just the features necessary for specific editing tasks such as email. CKEditor's latest iteration has a very light standard implementation, which is already more useful than Squire will likely become anytime in the near future.

While bespoke code makes sense for any number of scenarios, this is not one of them.
Mystakill is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12 Dec 2012, 04:12 AM   #14
BritTim
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,084
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mystakill View Post
While bespoke code makes sense for any number of scenarios, this is not one of them.
That is my opinion also. Time will tell.
BritTim is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12 Dec 2012, 04:38 AM   #15
thymara
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 97
writing your own RTE makes little sense and writing and implementing a half-finished one makes even less sense, unless of course your customer base could care less about RTE functionality.
thymara is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT +9. The time now is 02:00 PM.

 

Copyright EmailDiscussions.com 1998-2022. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy