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Re-Designing the classic email client

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Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#91

Post by glodime »

rdl wrote: post #34

I comfortably ignore any comments about email and what it should be from anyone who hasn't used a text email client (well configured) like mutt, mh, elm, or an emacs mode for at least 100 hours. The only real complaints I have about email with a well-configured text client are: * HTML mail from idiots * Syncing on multiple machines, with offline mode (IMAP is ok, but you want to keep full repositories on laptops for…

I just learned about imapsync, imapcopy, OfflineIMAP and Archivemail on linux. I haven't test them out yet. Have you tried any of these utilities? They seem to address the "Syncing on multiple machines" bit of your post.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#92

Post by hythloday »

ezy wrote: post #86

This person needs to try outlook. You see, there's a little flag you can click on next to the email with a task priority. And a todo bar/list which shows them in priority order. Not only has it existed before, but it really doesn't help that much. You still need to apply yourself to use it correctly. This doesn't change that. Sigh... but then I knew I was in for wheel re-invention as soon as I saw the "modern creativ…

I had a serious crack at using Outlook for this a few years ago and I found it woefully inadequate. Outlook tasks are either todo or done. There's no way of monitoring "waiting on Alice for confirmation", "waiting for Bob's approval of the finished work". Related to this, the task list seems to only display one-dimensionally, e.g. I couldn't put together a useful list of my more important tasks that were due later this week alongside my less-important tasks due today. Also, tasks are effectively a pointer to an email. There's no way of tying together disparate emails into a single task. Lastly, I found myself wanting to really use tasks as a something like "tag annotations" - I'd be having 2 or 3 conversations about optimization in the team and want to note them all together along with a high-level view of things to do before and after.

I quite like Outlook and would love its task system to be more useful, enough so that I've thought of putting work into it to make it what I want. The fact is, though, that it doesn't really do most of what the author of the article wants, and it definitely isn't suitable as anything more than building blocks for a workflow system.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#93

Post by porker »

Immediate thoughts:

From a business perspective, 3 steps like that isn't enough. What I really want is email completely integrated with a CRM/Project management tool & a calendar - I have tried Googl Apps and the whole Email / Tasks / Calendar separation just doesn't work. From what I've seen Exchange comes close, and I believe one of the others (Zimbra?) does too.

The problem with email is everyone uses it differently. The email client that works for my work emails won't work for my personal email account and vice versa.

Minimalist for GMail is nice, it starts to improve by removing clutter: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bmihblnpomgpjkfdde... and I wouldn't be without it.

I totally agree about typography - it would make a massive difference. But not just here, everywhere.

Grouping email is another problem - I've tried folders (one per email, not enough), tags/labels (unmanageable). This is symtomatic of our whole digital information management issue - how do we deal with so much flexible information? Hence my need for a CRM/tasks/todo app on top of email.

[Background: I run a small company, it's growing, and managing projects/developers/clients/email is a headache. If you've found a way to reduce the pain, say!]

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#94

Post by davegauer »

brianlovin wrote: post #14

Is there anything out there right now that handles email attachments like described in this pitch? I would love the ability to see all the attachments ever sent to me, organized by date/sender/filetype. Or clicking on a contact and seeing all attachments I've shared with that person.

The mail client built into the Opera browser has an Attachments filter which allows you to see all messages by attachment type. After that, you can sort the messages by 'From', 'Subject', 'Size', etc. No thumbnails as in his example, though.

As with everything in the Opera mail client, it is all handled through two panes - filtering on the left (Unread, Received, Labels, Attachments, etc.) and the email messages themselves on the right. All email accounts are aggregated together. I've been hugely enamored with its simplicity and elegance for years.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#95

Post by pault »

ezy wrote: post #86

This person needs to try outlook. You see, there's a little flag you can click on next to the email with a task priority. And a todo bar/list which shows them in priority order. Not only has it existed before, but it really doesn't help that much. You still need to apply yourself to use it correctly. This doesn't change that. Sigh... but then I knew I was in for wheel re-invention as soon as I saw the "modern creativ…

To be fair, as far as I can tell this is only a concept by a UI designer, created as a portfolio piece. I believe the its purpose isn't to reinvent email as much as it is to show off his knowledge of graphic design and CSS transforms.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#96

Post by dpark »

huhtenberg wrote: post #82
dpark wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you seriously complain about someone else saying "holy shit" and then follow it up by calling my comment "retarded"? And no, it's not "retarded" to question someone's expertise when they're presenting themselves as an expert and making critical errors. Your opinions on fonts are at best suspect if you use Comic Sans for the content of your blog. Likewise, your opinions on interaction design are at best suspect if…

No, not your comment, the ad hominem approach. There's plenty of reasons why Comic Sans could end up on the page talking about fonts. It can be a joke, it can be a fallback font, it can be some hosted template that got messed up. In this case, pixelated jpgs are probably the fasted way for him to publish the content, fading is likely inherited from the general site template, it is presented unconventionally, but I pe…

I think you missed the point of my comment about calling it "retarded". The issue is not whether you're attacking my comment or the general thought or even me directly. It's that you are criticizing someone else for lowering the standard of conversation and then doing it yourself. This is the same kind of thing the author is being criticized for. If you want your advice taken seriously, you should probably follow it yourself.

> There's plenty of reasons why Comic Sans could end up on the page talking about fonts.

Joke? Okay, but if you made the entire page Comic Sans, then clearly the joke is more important than the content, so I see no reason to take the content seriously.

Fallback font? Then you still suck at choosing fonts, and your opinion is as useless as if you'd made it the primary.

Broken template? Did you not bother to look at the page after you published it? This seems like an unrealistic scenario.

> In this case, pixelated jpgs are probably the fasted way for him to publish the content

Expedience for the author at the expense of usability? Tell me again how this demonstrates any expertise in interaction design. Seems like the opposite.

> fading is likely inherited from the general site template

Undoubtedly. It's still a poor design from an interaction standpoint, both on this page specifically and on the site in general. It's designed to look pretty, which is fine, but it's bad for interaction, which is not fine.

> but I personally had absolutely no problem reading it.

I found much of it to be pixelated and fuzzy. I also found the layout to greatly detract from the reading experience. It looks like it's designed to sell a product by dazzling the user rather than educate the reader.

> The actual content is thoughtful and it makes sense.

I was not actually very impressed by the content. It looks like he drew the Twitter iPad client. I didn't see anything new or innovative, but there's plenty of other discussion here about that.

> So do tell me again why nitpicking on the text fading thing coupled with a holy shit drama is a good way to start the discussion.

Tell me why I should take an author seriously when he doesn't follow his own guidelines.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#97

Post by stcredzero »

blhack wrote: post #62
podperson wrote: post #36

Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…

In my kitchen I have: 1. A fridge 2. A coffee machine 3. A stove 4. A microwave 5. A blender 6. Mixing bowls 7. Measuring cups All I want to do is feed myself. Why on earth do I need to have so many different things to do it? To...most people, having a separate "app" for things that do wildly different things is a good . Skype and email fill completely different roles to me, and I suspect they fill completely differe…

Like a lot of snark, it's not really that bright, but it's agressive and presenting itself as clever. Not all of those things deal with the same category of work.

> You might want to send a message to somebody and not care how, but I do care how.

But why do people have to remember how? Why can't I send off a message and have a computer figure out the preferred way to send the message. Remember, a big stakeholder in this preference is often the recipient. Also, most people don't really care about the how. They care about the result.

> If something major in my life happened..., I wouldn't call my best friends to tell them, I would SMS them.

You mean you would use the most appropriate form of communication, with the right degree of formality and immediacy. Right now that means picking from a slew of applications. The history of technology tells us that those applications will probably change, and that eventually people will be somewhat removed from the how, only expecting things to just work. (And that people who realize this can parlay that into tons of money.)

EDIT: Someday our insistence on picking an app to do communications will seem like driver's insistence on manually shifting gears.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#98

Post by jetz »

Email nor anything related to core email protocols do not need to be fixed or redesigned. It's doing what it was supposed to be used for and still doing it very well. Over the years desktop and web mail people have added too much and its 70s design idea of anyone can send mail to any other's inbox (btw, creative idea at the time worked till 2000s) have cooperatively decreased its usage.

We still need this universal and mature protocol but we should do a different thing for communication. period.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#99

Post by msie »

darklajid wrote: post #67
podperson wrote: post #36

Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…

I don't want to turn this into a (mobile) OS war. And my favorite is dead anyway.. That said, did you ever see the way WebOS handle[sd] this cases? The 'synergy' thingy was solving a lot of the friction points you're complaining about - and yet it obviously wasn't good enough to save the platform.

Some ideas:

- Sometimes we come up with solutions for problems that people don't have.

- Not well-marketed enough.

- Too complicated for people to grok. The abstractions get in the way of people trying to understand a feature. A new paradigm for communication would be hard to understand for most people and provide little benefit.

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