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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."
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.
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.
Fight Spammers!
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.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
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.
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.
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.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
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.