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The Perfect Email Client?
An anonymous reader sends: "Can those who review also design? Trying to practice what it preaches, CNET published this article, a description of the perfect e-mail client. Next up, apparently: hardware and electronics designs."
like asking for bloatware if you ask me. Like somebody once said, a tool should do one thing and do that one thing well.
I dunno, just my thought.
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Evolution comes close to doing something like this already with it's "Virtual Folders". You might want to check it out.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
when i want to read my email, i use an email client. when i want to message some one i use a messaging program. when i want to download porn i use a P2P app. most of the time the only 2 features om the email client i use is the reading "feature" and the "writing" feature. although it is useful to hava an address book in the email program. this is one of the reasons why i find pegasus so easy to use.its simple, lightweight, doesnt crash, supports HTML and RTF (bleck)and has an address book. this is all i need, not some complicated mail client that is full of uneccesary bloat that i , and may others dont need. remember, adding more features will reduce the stability of any program ie outlook & outlook express or kde vs enlightenment. (integrated browser crap)
so there. pfffffffffffff
-----im billy troll----- im better than you at everything you do.
Some spammers put in an image tag that includes the email address, or encoded email address as part of the image request string so that they know it has been opened. That way, they can verify the address.
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As for autoresponders, they shouldn't be in the client unless that client (a) has access to envelope information, and (b) can send things as error messages (null envelope from). I also have rant about broken autoresponders.
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There are three major points for my perfect email client:
1. Look and feel the same in X and console, so that I could make use of both xpdf/mozilla and remote mail reading.
2. Localization. Being non-native english speaker, this one is pretty important.
3. Keyboard navigation
For the last 4 years I am extremely satisfied with the combination:
- fetchmail (getting mail)
- procmail (sorting mail into mailboxes)
- mutt (reading/replying)
- vim (editing)
When it comes down to analyze mailbox and generate some reports, like for example, in the case with antivirus reports, I use perl with Mail::MboxParser module.
For all my friends, who need GUI to read email, I recommend using Mozilla and or Evolution
Leonid Mamtchenkov
When some moron sends me dual-encoded HTML/text mail, let me prefer to show the text version. If they sent HTML-only mail, convert it to text. I never want to see HTML. Ever!
I am sick of getting HTML spam that automatically starts banging on my net connection, even before I get chance to blacklist the appropriate site through Junkbuster.
(And no, I don't want to use a text-mode client. That's throwing the baby out with the bath water.)
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Threading and scoring.
I don't know how I'd get through my mailbox without mutt threading and scoring things for me. I don't want things just dumped in another mailbox...I want my mail scored so that it has a priority meaningful to me. Threads clear up the view considerably.
I'm still trying to get Cygwin and mutt to work with my mail system, but no luck yet.
The Bat (previously mentioned) DOES have threading, so it's part way there. Pretty decent for a fairly cheap client.
Despite a committed kmail user at home, I have to use outlook at work. My job takes me around the world, so I am often having to connect using not very good communication links. The biggest problem I have is that the user interface locks up solid when its is trying to communicate with the server. I can see no reason why it has to, just bad design.
The other issue that this review misses is the difference between e-mail that is person to person (ie the sender knows who the readers are) and mailing lists (where generally the post gets sent to those people who happen to be subscribed). Most of the facilities being requested are for the first type of communication, whilst the second needs a completely different set of priorities. This suggests the integration of the NNTP protocol, the ability to subscribe and unsubscribe automatically from lists and much stronger threading capability (and associated actions such as ignore or watch threads) are functions that are built in.
Anyone I've ever recieved more than N messages from, make a folder for me, and setup the filters to automaticly put messages from that person into that folder.
Also put symbolic links to any messages I've ever sent that person (or list) into that folder.
Why do I say put links?
Ever write a message to multiple friends and you have no idea which folder the message was filtered into? It's either in some random folder for whichever filter was first, or worse there are multiple copies of the message in each persons folder.
I want it all to be automatic, so automatic that magicly my mother's 500+ message InBox is suddenly cleaned up as a series of neat and clear folders.
If it's not automatic, 99% of users (like those who never program their VCR) will never use filters for folders. At most I see people using folders manually. It needs to be all automatic!!
I'd also like all my messages stored as plain text, one file per message, one directory for each folder (like PMMail except use better filenames). I want my mail to be indestructable, and not tied up in anyones database format. Screw mbox or worse the encrypted junk in Outlook. Let the OS do the work! Then I can search for messages, move messages between folders, do all sorts of cool stuff directly to the message base.
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The first thing which drives me nuts is that news (usenet) readers and mail readers are completely saparate. Sure, at times they are both integrated into the same product, but they are still conceptually separate. What is so hard to understand in the following statement: being subscribed to a mailing list and tracking a usenet group should be *exactly the same*. And yes, Virginia, even normal E-mail "folders" *need to support threads*. Sigh.
The second thing is having to sort messages to "folders". I'd much rather be able to assign keywords to each message - multiple, independent keywords, both automatically using rules and manually when I read the message - and then view "virtual folders" based on queries on these keywords. Nothing ground breaking here... but I suspect it would take another 10 years until it would become mainstream. Ugh.
My final problem is that my work environment is based on Exchange's calendar so I'm stuck with using Outlook, so I'll die of old age before I see any of this, even if it does get into open-source viewers. Arrgghh!
you've just describe XEmacs' VM mode, very power email client working without any major bugs for years.
The only drawback of Emacs modes: you've gotta use programming. Just general programming skills b/c elisp is very simple and very logical.
The same argument becomes a benefit - you can do virtually everything. You can tune the mode for your preferences or you can integrate several emacs modes to work together or you can create your own mode.
For example, I've integrated VM with IRC and ICQ clients (yes, there are such modes for emacs!) and with diary calendar and with PostgreSQL ORDBMS. The result of such power and flexible integration is barely possible even in M$outlook.
I wish Mozilla would have same extensibility and I hope it will eventaulally, but without elisp it will be not THAT power.
In theory, this is great.
In practice, it's a disaster.
Of course, the Notes UI doesn't help. But the problems go deeper than that.
I think this guy has a great idea and I think it could be the start of an message dbase that every app could use for contact information too. I hate that every app has it's own contact information....
And just what exactly is the problem with LDAP?
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
A long while ago (pre-win2k), I used a little program called Becky! (official site here), a shareware Windows email client. It has the best interface I've seen yet. ...however, it doesn't get updates frequently and it's primary language is Japanese. Oh, and it's not free beer let alone free speech.
...and you can't beat Pine for remote access (unless you're a fan of webmail, and even then you're hard pressed for something free).
I'm currently using Pine for receiving and Mozilla for sending. Once I get an IMAP server up on my linux box, I'll use Mozilla for mail at home and Pine for remote. Personally, I think this is the optimal solution; with your own personal IMAP server, you NEVER have to worry about switching email clients and converting everything.
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Of course not.
Well, I guess if it really was one of those 'of course' things, I wouldn't be responding, would I? :-)
Users know only one thing. "I want this." This doesn't just apply to software, it applies to any industry, from cars, services, whatever. Users only know what they want, and they typically want the stupidest stuff.
It takes people who understand the problem domain and the issues involved to actually make solutions work. This is why joe-6-pack doesn't make solutions. When they do, they make Homer's Car.
They've committed several 'crimes' on their wishlist. The most prominent is that they used Outlook as a launching point. Good god. Outlook shouldn't be a launching point for anything, especially a Dream Email-PIM system.
Besides that (I'll admit that I've got several grudges with Outlook), they've ignored problems with scalability and configurability. It's easy to dictate "I want this here, and it should do this," but it's much harder to decide how it's supposed to adapt to varying amounts of data and user workflows. The split email view is bad on so many counts- it makes showing subjects and dates harder, and what if you have 5 email accounts (such as I do) that you need to monitor? It just doesn't work. You need a better solution.
And there's the whole issue of feature bloat. I'd say reviewers are fairly savvy with the software they use (if not, they don't deserve their job). But a new users (and many not-so-new users; basically whenever anyone encounters something outside of their knowledge domain, which anything that they're not used to working on) have to take a blind eye to 90% of the features of feature-bloated software. It's information overload; so much that the new user doesn't know where to start, or what half of those things are useful for.
It's just the 90/10 rule; 90% of the work is done by 10% of the code- or interface. Don't put the rest of the 90% of the interface up front, it's just not useful.
For people born and bread on Microsoft Office, it would be hard to picture another way of working. But it's not for those people to decide; it's up to the user interface designers to make those decisions and come up with appropriate solutions.
That's the most important factor when writing software. Most programmers and managers (and reviewers) completely miss that fact, and we all end up working with complicated (== $$ on training), inefficient (== $$ on time), feature-rich software designs (== $$ for MS and people who support it, like that NT sys admin at work you love so much) that don't help the user.
UI designers exist for a good reason. Good ones understand their problem domain better than anyone else, and are best suited to make solutions for it. To get anyone else to do the job is akin to putting non-tech people in charge of digital copyright laws. It just doesn't make sense.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Automated spam reporting that actually works is a huge undertaking. SpamCop only just does a tolerable job of it and they still screw up a lot, and they've been working on it for years.