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Evolution Reaches A New Milestone
dalutong writes "Ximian has recently released Evolution v1.2 to the masses. New features include (among other ones that don't affect me as much) optional Emacs and XEmacs bindings in the email composer and much faster mailbox indexing (and thus loading.) It's nice to know evolution hasn't stopped."
I see Evolution as a great example that open-source cannot be end-all solution to the world's software problems. A big reason is usability: open-source doesn't have the resources to research and develop effective UI. Usability experts, consumer studies, prototype testing and well-designed feedback loops are all needed to design user interfaces that are intuitive and efficient.
It takes for-profit companies, with a lot of money to throw at the problem, to design original and effective UI's. Evolution neatly copies Microsoft Outlook's user experience. It's a good thing that MS put all that work into designing the UI, and didn't give Ximian any guff over using it.
From the cover-my-ass dept: I'll admit that there are some exceptions. But by and large, the UI on open-source sucks unless they are copied from for-profit software, such as Outlook (for Evolution), NEXTStep or Windows (for various Window Managers), Wordperfect/MSWord (various word processors). And before somebody says that you don't need UI--Random J User cannot effectively use text-console programs without a lot of training.
(Pay no attention to the trolls. They're probably just 15 year old immature boys).
I've used pine for the last 8 years, and it's a great program. I still consider it easier-to-use then Evolution. I've switched between Pine and Evolution a dozen times in the last 2 years. My fingers still autotype the Pine keybindings.
Several things that Evolution has over Pine:
- It's not just an email program. It's also a Contact Manager (Pine only has an addressbook), a Calendaring program, and a Todo list.
- Pine does not display message threads very well
- More intuitive message filters
- Simpler to setup multiple mail accounts
- It displays HTML and Graphics appropriately. My friends/coworkers keep sending me HTML email (HTML can be useful in email sometimes), and Pine munges 1/5 of the messages...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Evolution is one of those pieces of OSS, that you can point at and say: "OSS can deliver, there, eat this". It belongs to the group of amazing projects like Apache, Samba and Mozilla if you ask me. Now if we had some great multimedia programs (MPlayer is getting close though).
when people can import their outlook data files (.pst files etc) complete with calender, contacts lists, tasks and of course email.
I *know* one can export outlook data files to imap (uh, correct me if I'm using the wrong acronym there) and then re-import them to unix mail format (theres a howto on this), but, importantly;
this causes *EVERYTHING* to appear as an email item, including calender entries, contacts lists everything comes across as a piece of email. Which I regard as a lot less than useful...
Some might say thats better than nothing, I say *phhfft*
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Great, now all we need is for it to have the one feature that Outlook still has over it. No, not Exchange integration. I mean running on Windows. I'll stick with my Microsoft utlook (*sigh*) fo rnow.
A classic example is sickle cell anemia, which is caused by a one-codon mutation, resulting in red blood cells which have a decreased lifetime. However, in Africa (where sickle cell anemia originates), it is (or was) beneficial because it provided protection against malaria, providing the person with a longer lifespan (as compared to a non-mutated person who dies of malaria at age 3 without producing any children).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I think you're absolutely right. (This is getting off topic but since this entire thread formed here anyway I might as well say something about that...)
...well usable)"
There are a lot of people who think that:
- "No, OSS GUI interfaces are not broken, they are in fact superior (just not
- "X is so much more advanced" when it is in fact a pain in the ass and slow as hell even when used over what it is made for - network connections.
- "By the way text mode is the way to the future, GUI is for faggots" which I think doesn't need any further comment
- "Linux has sooo *not* a dependency hell but Windows has" ignoring the fact that Linux libraries situation (source and compiled objects alike) is totally out of hand because often times you can't even run two apps alongside because they need different versions
- "Linux software installation is just so smooth" when in reality one can install even complicated apps on Windows and OSX within mere minutes while on Linux you are lucky if it takes under 2 hours to get something running.
Now, all this is not neccessarily a bad sign for the state of the OSS developer community, if people would just *recognize* the problems and try to fix them in the future. But sadly nobody seems to care, quite on the contrary. Everyone pointing out these problems will be marked "flamebait" disregarding the fact that a well meaning wake-up call often originates from a friendly corner.
Contrary to popular belief in the linux community, Microsoft is actually one of the software companies most frequently criticized by usability professionals. They are the most frequent inductee in the Interface Hall of ShameJust because they've got more money than some industrialized nations doesn't mean they aren't capable of cranking out some horrendously bad designs. If Microsoft had effective usability, they never would have come out with Window-in-Window MDI, multi-row tabs, or any of the other atrocities they've released over the years. Unfortunately, Open Source Software has incorporated more than their fair share of these stupid designs in the mistaken belief that microsoft knew what they were doing.
A developer community is only successful in areas where they have very strong beliefs and values that are advantageous. Linux has succeeded so well on the server because the linux development community had very strong values regarding security and stability, and these sorts of values were advantageous on the server. Unfortunately, linux people are unix people, and unix people have had a long standing tradition of calling end-users stupid, telling them to go RTFM, and decrying the field of usability as BS and usability folks as "whiners".
Who'd want to do usability for free for people who say things like:
Open Source doesn't need money to improve usability. It needs an attitude adjustment.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
What we really need is a large forum for communicating User Interface ideas to programmers. The problem with OSS is that it tends to expect /everybody/ to be able to pick up the code and remove the horrible from apps. This just isnt the case. /normal/ users, not programmers, not even just people who prefer OSS, just users of programs to, basically, complain. Until the OSS Community has a real and good forum for complaining, we arent going to see programmers taking notice and fixing things like UI problems.
It's true, we can't afford consultants and experts to tell us what 70% of potential customers would like to see, but we do have this whole internet out there, and something should be done to harvest the feedback.
Not saying that no options are out there right now, only that the current options arent working, and there needs to be better ways for
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Wonderful. They take an email client, and add emacs key bindings, thinking all of us emacs users will switch over. Why switch to Evolution when we have an email client, a newsreader, a web browser, a text editor, a blender, and a kitchen sink in one 20MB tarball? If I want to use emacs-style bindings for my email, I'll use emacs, thank you very much :).
The question is *. The solution is emacs.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
Did you pay for your copy of Gnome?