Ximian Evolution's New Clothes

Lispy writes "Looks like everyone's favorite graphical email client, Ximian Evolution, will get a new interface with the upcoming release. I found a posting on the Evolution hackers bulletin board which leads to some mocked-up screenshots (here: calendar, tasks, mail, contacts and one of the shrunken navbar). Although this is mostly eyecandy, this could be the right time to make yourself heard. What do you think about a maturing Evolution that goes its own way and leaves the Outlook-like interface behind?"

Comments

no spam filter?

[tomstdenis]

Quickly checked their feature list. No automatic spam filter [as in Mozilla].

No sale. I live off that moz filter [since it catches basically all spam I get].

Tom

Re:no spam filter?

[dracvl]

One word.

POPFile.

You'll love it, I promise ;)

Re:no spam filter?

[jfm3]

Have you tried server side Spam filtering? For example, spamassassin and procmail? This works much better for me, since I don't have to waste a lot of bandwidth downloading the spam just to determine that it is spam and should be discarded. AFAIC, it's the only way to go.

Re:no spam filter?

[Mr.Ned]

Evolution isn't targeting your demographic. Evolution is the complete Outlook replacement. Most corporations will have a server-side spam filtering set up; while an integrated Bayesian filtering mechanism might function better, in practice it's probably not worth the individual user's time to set up and train.

A quick look thorugh the official Q & A shows a simple, local SpamAssassin integration HOWTO.

Re:no spam filter?

[program21]

Here, here! I've been using POPFile for about a year, and I love it.

Re:no spam filter?

[ElGuapoGolf]

Not everyone runs their own mail filter.

And not many, if any, ISPs will do spam filtering. What if they filter out legit mail by accident?

And sometimes, it's nicer to just point mozilla to your mail server, rather than set up a bunch of helper utilities to grab your mail.

Re:no spam filter?

[aastanna]

Oh, I don't know. Apple's Mail.app has an integrated Baysian filter and it isn't hard to set up at all. One click to turn on training mode, then you just say "Spam" or "Not Spam" to every email that's identified incorrectly. When it stops making mistakes, one more click to go from training to actually filtering. Outlook is quite common on Windows boxes as a simple mail client, witness the popularity of spam viruses. If it wants to be an Outlook replacement how could it hurt to include such an excellent feature.

Re:no spam filter?

[mystran]

In addition, you don't need to genius to add (external) spam filter to Evolution anyway. =)

Tools -> Filters.. -> Add

Re:no spam filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a quarter kid, go buy yourself a real spam filter.

Re:no spam filter?

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Most ISPs do spam filtering. Earthlink has spam filtering services that need to be turned on, but they also do host-blocking whether you like it or not.

Try sending mail from a dynamic IP to an @earthlink.net address.

Re:no spam filter?

[Libor Vanek]

But imagine how cool would be if you can through the Evolution interface give command to SpamAssassin that this message is spam (even if not marked so) and this (even marked as spam) isn't. This would make Bayesian learning much more user friendly.

Re:no spam filter?

[tcopeland]

There's also a nifty Outlook to Evolution conversion utility. It does a good job on contacts, tasks, etc, and gives pointers on how to convert email folders.

I used it to convert from Outlook to Evolution and it worked pretty well.

Re:no spam filter?

[Alan]

I like the idea of popfile, but can I set it up on a remote server so that I can use it to filter the mail I read through mutt? Right now I'm using mutt+bogofilter/procmail(=happiness :) because I want all my mail in one place without having to duplicate addressbooks, procmail recipies, etc at both home and work. If I can filter it on the server, or even on the client side (but still leaving the mail on the server) that'd be sweet. I'll have to look into it.

Re:no spam filter?

[IvyMike]

Most corporations will have a server-side spam filtering set up; while an integrated Bayesian filtering mechanism might function better, in practice it's probably not worth the individual user's time to set up and train.

I get about 100 spam messages a day. SpamAssassin catches about 60% of those. That leaves 40 messages a day I need to deal with. In mozilla, I just started clicking "this message is spam" and a few days later, I get less than 1 spam message a day. It pretty much couldn't have gotten easier.

Granted, I happened to use a tool that supported the Bayesian filtering, but that's sort of the original complaint: an integrated solution makes it trivial to catch spam that other filters missed.

The bonus is that users hate spam, and giving them a button to click when they get it satisifies their need to somehow complain :).

Re:no spam filter?

[Lars Arvestad]

while an integrated Bayesian filtering mechanism might function better, in practice it's probably not worth the individual user's time to set up and train.

I'll have to say that, to me, Mozilla's Baysian filtering was "just there" and worked well almost instantly! The only setup you might want to add is to redirect spam to Trash or a special directory after a while. It is extremely intuitive to train the filter, and the icon's are natural and interactive. The only thing I miss is a toolbar button to move spam-marked email to Trash: Right now I have to go through a menu, which is not as immediate as I might want it.

I am a more or less a power user though, but I honestly think my parents would be able to use Mozilla's filtering!

Re:no spam filter?

[chowells]

I get maybe 40 spams a day. Removing all HTML e-mails and those containing the words "viagra", "penis" and "manhood" (no, I don't want a bigger dick thanks) cuts down the number of spams arriving in my inbox to virtually zero.

Re:no spam filter?

[kwerle]

Maybe you don't want to change filter programs. But you might care to try http://tess.sf.net/.
Put spam in the spam box. Regular deleted mail goes in the regular delete box. Pretty user friendly and x-reader compatible.

You just have to read mail on the server (or imap from it).

Re:no spam filter?

[jfm3]

Most ISPs do spam filtering these days. Users demand it.

Spam is put in a special IMAP folder rather than being deleted outright, so you can double check if you want. This is the same thing you get with a client side spam filter, right?

I'd rather have client side spam filtering than not, I agree, but I still think the ideal place to do it is on the server side.

Re:no spam filter?

[leviramsey]

Spamassassin supports Bayesian filtering (and IIRC, it also uses a Bayesian approach to tweak the values of its filters, which makes it more reliable than simple Bayesian approaches).

All you need to do is add a button that pipes the message into "sa-learn --spam --single".

Re:no spam filter?

[jd10131]

No no, it's a drop in Outlook replacement, features must be replicated, possibly enhanced.

Rumour has it that the next version of Evolution will not only automatically execute harmful attachments; in the absense of such, it will attempt to find one and translate the code to the Linux equivalent before executing it.

Re:no spam filter?

[tomstdenis]

Oooh, ooh, one word.

Redundant.

I already have Moz installed, it already sports a mail client which has spam control.

Why would I install this new suite and then a spam filter?

Tom

Re:no spam filter?

[tomstdenis]

Second that.

I recently switched from XP to Debian [knoppix actually]. In winxp I had Moz [naturally] and it was trained very well.

Upon switching to linux I spend a few days getting all my spam in the inbox and now [a couple weeks later, though really after the first few days it was much better] I get nearly no spam in my inbox [and zero false positives].

Seeing how Moz is open source there is little reason for not using their filter technology in another open source mail client [what would be cool is if you could export/import the filter data so you don't have to retrain it].

Tom

Re:no spam filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two mistakes in your .sig; real men don't wear lingerie and the stable pillar is missing: beer!

Re:no spam filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "hear, hear".

Re:no spam filter?

[Zuke8675309]

The beauty of POPfile is not that it is a spam filter. In fact, it's not a spam filter. POPfile is an email sorter/classifier. Subtle difference, but very important. You can train POPfile to sort email into "buckets" or categories of your own creation. Of course, one of those categories will be spam - it's just that catching spam isn't the *only* thing that POPfile does and that is why it's far superior than other spam filters. At work, I have about 8 different buckets set up that my email sorts into based on content. AWESOME for keeping your incoming email organized and keeping the spam all to itself.

Re:no spam filter?

[tomstdenis]

Um features of moz over spamass.

1. I don't have to setup a server to run moz.

2. Moz doesn't delete the spam, it marks it as spam. This is important if having legitimate email deleted scares you [as in many improperly setup spamass setups].

3. Moz trains *very* quickly and essentially correctly identifies all spam.

4. Moz has a push-button setup. It really can't get any easier. You click "this is spam" and boom Moz learns.

Tom

Re:no spam filter?

[Jellybob]

I used it to convert from Outlook to Evolution and it worked pretty well.

And there I was thinking that you were gonna use it bring about world peace. Have you no thought for the rest of the world?

Just ignore me... I've drunk too much :P

Re:no spam filter?

[tcopeland]

> use it bring about world peace

Touche!

I demand that you refer to me in the future as "He Who Posts That Which Is Very Obvious". Or HWPTWIVS for short.

Re:no spam filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's Mail.app has an integrated Baysian filter

Mail.app is not Bayesian based, just a point.

Re:no spam filter?

[Eminor]

POPfile is an email sorter/classifier.

Ximian evolution already has email sorter.

Re:no spam filter?

[jhunsake]

1. Neither do you have to for SA.

2. Neither does SA.

3. So does SA.

4. Point granted.

Re:no spam filter?

[RoadkillBunny]

Most corporations will have a server-side spam filtering set up;
I need one filter for my hotmail account, when I set junkmail filter on, I get my important messages in junk and junk in Inbox...

CHEERS --RoadkillBunny

Re:no spam filter?

[nchip]

Most corporations will have a server-side spam filtering set up

Most corporations still have clueless sexchange admins. Most corporations also have imap4 access, not pop3 access, so I can't popfile either.

So I, and probably many others use mozilla mail in the excact enviroiment evolution is supposed.

Re:no spam filter?

[Jellybob]

Well, I'll try to, oh HWPTWIVS.

It's amazing what work will do to you.

Re:no spam filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be able to cobble something together with popfile and fetchmail, but it might be a bit ugly... IMAP is great if you read mail from several locations, along with OfflineIMAP if any of them are dial-up.

Re:no spam filter?

[tcopeland]

> It's amazing what work will do to you

"My advice to you is to start drinking heavily."

Surely I need no attribution for this reference.

Re:no spam filter?

[Jellybob]

Now that's a good idea... if only.

I can't drink coffee in here, never mind anything stronger.

Re:no spam filter?

[vorwerk]

You can use SpamAssassin with Evolution.

In Evolution, setup a filter to run a regex match for ".", and have it call the spamassassin application. You'll need a command line switch -- don't remember which one off-hand -- to tell SpamAssassin to return "0" for no spam or "1" for spam. Then, Evolution can capture that return code and you can use that to categorize the incoming mail as spam.

I've been doing this for some time, and it works great.

Re:no spam filter?

[Edweirdo]

What about IMAP? My guess would be that "POP"file won't work with IMAP. Give me mozilla any day. If I wanted to use outlook I'd use outlook.

Re:no spam filter?

[tomstdenis]

Vile foe! you make no sense!

This means war!!!

Re:no spam filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha. Real funny how you ripped off that line from the Dilbert UNIX guy comic strip.

Someone should tell Ximian

[Anonymous Coward]

That he's naked! The clothes aren't actually invisible.

Bluring out emails

[umrgregg]

Anyone else notice the author forgot to censor out the most obvious location for the contacts email? In the description? Heh

http://primates.ximian.com/~anna/evo2/evo2_navbar_ shrunk.png

Re:Bluring out emails

[jared_hanson]

It's OK, Slashdot has done a remarkable job of censoring anything that I have been trying to see.

Re:Bluring out emails

[missing000]

Yeah, I bet he gets a lot of prank calls on that phone number. Looks real to me!

I just have 2 words to words to say

[luugi]

Mozilla Mail

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 4 words to say: Mozilla Don't Got Calender.

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[Drakonian]

Does it have the calendar/task features that Evolution does? Outlook similarity is a big selling point of Evolution, IMO.

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[Osty]

I have 4 words to say: Mozilla Don't Got Calender.

If you're willing to go for one more word, you could actually sound intelligent. How about, "Mozilla doesn't have a calendar," instead? Also, since it's irrelevant (and impossible?) for Mozilla to have or be a machine in which cloth or paper is made smooth and glossy by being pressed through rollers, I fixed your misspelling of "calendar".

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[k-hell]

Mozilla.org hosts a Calendar project. It can be found here. Although still in development and a bit buggy, it includes the basic functionality. I have been using it for a couple of months now.

Currently, I think the Calendar only supports Mozilla. I am not sure what will be done (if any?) to support Firebird/Thunderbird. I hope that it will be a standalone project like the new browser and mail client.

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[luugi]

I have 4 words to say: Mozilla Don't Got Calender.

If you're willing to go for one more word, you could actually sound intelligent. How about, "Mozilla doesn't have a calendar," instead? Also, since it's irrelevant (and impossible?) for Mozilla to have or be a machine in which cloth or paper is made smooth and glossy by being pressed through rollers, I fixed your misspelling of "calendar".


Doesn't "doesn't" equal 2 words? That's what I used to do back in school when I was counting how many words my essay had.

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[Anonymous Coward]

They teach you how to count in school?? the "a" is his/her 5th word.

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[luugi]

They teach you how to count in school?? the "a" is his/her 5th word.

Did they teach you how to read in school? I'm talking about "doesn't"

For me I consider it it as 2 words. "does" and "not".

Too bad u posted as Anonymous Coward you.. you.. Coward

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[Osty]

Doesn't "doesn't" equal 2 words? That's what I used to do back in school when I was counting how many words my essay had.

I've never counted contractions as their separate word components for purposes of word counting. If I ever needed to pad out an essay's word count (not usually necessary, as I generally found myself over the limit rather than under), I would just skip the contractions and write out "does not" instead.

I'm sure it depends on your goal, of course. Whichever way of counting a contraction gets you to your desired goal is the acceptable way of counting it for that piece. Or something like that.

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[ChaosMagic]

Although still in development and a bit buggy, it includes the basic functionality. I have been using it for a couple of months now.

You were right about the buggy bit, it's only the 14th you know; you've been using it for two WEEKS not months... ;)

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[stevejsmith]

In formal writing you're not supposed to use contractions in the first place. The only time I ever find myself in that position is for essays in French where things need to be put together ("je m'appelle" counts as how many words? You're not allowed to write out "me appelle," so, I dunno).

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[k-hell]

Actually, if you'd done some research, you would've noticed that the project have had a 1 year anniversary already...

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[blahtree]

Yes it does. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[docl]

I've always wondered why people need to have e-mail and calendar in single program. What ever happened to the old unix - "do one job and do it well" philosophy. I want a calendar that loads fast without having to read all of my mailboxes as well. Sometimes its nice to have a *separate* window for e-mail and calendar so you can see both at once. What the commonality?

Re:I just have 2 words to words to say

[stuntpope]

Because (for one example), in Outlook, someone can email you an appointment which can then get added to your calendar, and will signal a reminder when that appointment time rolls around. Maybe you don't need this, but if the idea is to sway Outlook users to use Evolution instead, a simple 'does one job well' email client isn't going to get users to switch. They'll say "how come I can't do x in Evolution, I could always do it in Outlook' and then they'll moan that non-MS apps are inferior.

Slashdotted already

[jdray]

They seem to be slashdotted already. How do the screenshots look?

XImian's logo looks like a self-spanking monkey.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that is evolved.

clothes?

[elmegil]

Maybe they could make other things work right before worrying about the look and feel? Like the IMAP implementation? I just resolved today that I *am* going to get around to writing my own email client after the bloody thing stopped working with my IMAP INBOX for no apparent reason, and with no apparent fix in sight. And no, email clients by browser makers are not worth a damn so they're not an option either.

Re:clothes?

[good soldier svejk]

Maybe they could make other things work right before worrying about the look and feel? Like the IMAP implementation? I just resolved today that I *am* going to get around to writing my own email client after the bloody thing stopped working with my IMAP INBOX for no apparent reason, and with no apparent fix in sight.

Wouldn't it be easier to fix their implementation than to write a whole new client from scratch? That is sort of the point of Free Software; if you don't like the implementation, change it. No?

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

If I'm going to write it myself, it's going to be cross platform, rather than dependant on the GNOME mess. I want an email client I can run on my wife's mac, my Solaris box, my Linux box, my PC. Evolution was only acceptable as an alternative to any such client that I like (no, I didn't like Mulberry much either), and was only used for work email on Solaris and sometimes Linux.

Beyond that, I've always found that other people's code is almost always an enormous hairball that takes longer to understand than writing things myself. And just because I want to write my own email client doesn't mean I plan to actually release it to anyone....

Re:clothes?

[jpsowin]

And no, email clients by browser makers are not worth a d*** so they're not an option either.

I use Mozilla Mail for my IMAP inbox needs. It does everything I want and more. Spell check, spam filtering, easy folder, easy searching, color labeling, etc etc. I love it for business and personal use, and it's open all day for both uses.

Point is, maybe you should give them another chance, because it doesn't sound like you've used it in a while.

Re:clothes?

[Kaa]

I just resolved today that I *am* going to get around to writing my own email client after the bloody thing stopped working...

Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

Re:clothes?

[Wordsmith]

Sounds like a theory of Evolution to me.

oooooohhhhh (groan).

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution works here okay on the imap server here at work (courier-imap ssl). But do what ya like :-D

Re:clothes?

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

oooooohhhhh (groan).

Sounds you got one of those self spanking monkey's I heard about...

Re:clothes?

[good soldier svejk]

If I'm going to write it myself, it's going to be cross platform, rather than dependant on the GNOME mess. I want an email client I can run on my wife's mac, my Solaris box, my Linux box, my PC. Evolution was only acceptable as an alternative to any such client that I like (no, I didn't like Mulberry much either), and was only used for work email on Solaris and sometimes Linux.

Evolution will run on most of those platforms (Not Windows I assume. Not sure if there is GTK+ for Windows since I don't ever use the platform). On OS X the install is fairly straighforward with Fink. I can see why you wouldn't want to run it there though. For one thing, running local X apps on OS X is a bit of a letdown, even with Apple's X server/window manager. At one point a coworker and I were investigating a Cocoa port of Evolution. Nat Friedman said that if demand reached critical mass, which our user base would constitute, Ximian would port Connector. But shortly after we talked MS announced their own connector product for Entourage, due any day now. So we don't need either port. Solaris comes with a GNOME implementation, but only intsalling the bits you want is probably a pain.

Beyond that, I've always found that other people's code is almost always an enormous hairball that takes longer to understand than writing things myself. And just because I want to write my own email client doesn't mean I plan to actually release it to anyone....

I could see feeling that way.

Re:clothes?

[A_Duck_Named_Ping]

I do use it and find it to be a good client, but do get annoyed by it (more so under Linux..) So I wonder what other faults do people have with it?

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond that, I've always found that other people's code is almost always an enormous hairball that takes longer to understand than writing things myself.

Just like your code will look like an enormous hairball to me and almost everyone else.

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no!

Okay, in a last ditch attempt to save my favorite little program, I'm hereby kicking off a project to add mail reading capabilities to footguy.

Who's with me?

Re:clothes?

[GrenDel Fuego]

There is gtk+ for windows. It's used by both Gimp for windows and gaim for windows.

Re:clothes?

[NMerriam]

Mozilla Mail has a few bugs, but the vast majority of it is one of the best IMAP clients available. It certainly was NOT usable for non-basic IMAP back at Mozilla 1.0, but it works well in 1.4, just make sure to change a few hidden preferences so that it will check every folder for new mail (documented in a hundred different web sites).

If only I could find a PalmOS client that worked with long nested IMAP folder names, I'd be a happy camper!

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

I seem to recall saying "cross platform"; leaving out windows is not an option to meet that criterion. On Solaris I am running GNOME, which isn't a problem. Getting Evolution to actually fskcing WORK is the problem.

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

The user interface looks like it wants to be a browser. Which it isn't. And shouldn't be. End of story. All the functionality in the world doesn't make up for an interface I can't stand.

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The only IMAP email client worth a damn is Mutt, with Mozilla Mail a very close second. Evolution has way too many problems to be useful for me. It's got potential, but then again, so did GNOME.

Maybe if Miguel dealt with his ADD he'd be able to stabilize his code instead of jumping from project to project so much.

Re:clothes?

[Elentar]

Mozilla Mail is bloated. Even split off from the browser, it's huge. It does do almost everything conceivable in a mail client, but that's not what I want. It's just too big and slow.

My favorite client is Mail.app on Mac OS X. LDAP name completion? Got it. Multiple personalities? Got it. Spam filtering (I do server-side, but most people don't)? Got it. Adequate IMAP support? Got it.

It could stand some improvements in the IMAP department - specifically, storing Sent Mail and Drafts where I want them, instead of in it's own folders. And updating all message counts, not just Inbox, during it's check cycle. But you know what? There's a command-line tool for running Applescript, and you can just create a cron task to update all your Imap folders for you through that. Works like a dream.

The Linux community seems to produce 'superstar' programmers and single applications that are great, but never a system that works truly well. Case in point: Palm devices and conduits. For the Mac and PC, Palm controls the conduit technology, and anyone can write for it. On Linux, every bloody developer uses a different solution! You can't manage it all from one place! Evolution is a great example - last I checked, it uses a _dead project_ for it's Palm connectivity, one that nobody else uses.

I love Linux for developing and for servers. It's more flexible than anything else out there. But it will never have the benefit of a single overarching design that ties everything together, and that's exactly what Apple has going for it with Mac OS X.

-Elentar

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

Yepper. Did you hear me say otherwise?

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

My issues with Moz have nothing to do with the backend and everything to do with what's in my face.

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

Yah, I'm a troll because I don't buy the magic Linux Mantras that open source is always better and GNOME is Ghodly. Sorry, but after having to fight with Nautilus for control of my own bloody desktop (what, you mean someone might want to avoid call the extra overhead of running a filemanager to run your desktop?), among other things, the only reason I like Gnome is because it's better than any of the alternatives on my Solaris box. Watching all the billions of processes spun off by Evolution which appear to be dealing with aspects of interfacing with Gnome, and only serve to make Evo even harder to deal with, I can't say I think it's overall a great thing.

Now, if I went on about hairball open source code at length, maybe THAT would be a troll....

Re:clothes?

[Tack]

You might want to look at Columba, which basically appears to be an Evolution clone (mail part only) written in Java.

I'm a very happy Evo user, but I did check out Columba just to see what it was all about. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it was actually very functional, and I was impressed at its speed, considering it's Java.

Jason.

Re:clothes?

[LordNimon]

Are you kidding? He's doesn't need a self-spanking monkey. He just spanks his own monkey. All freakin' day long too, probably.

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that saying?

"If there are many eyeballs and many hairballs you should stay in the shallow end of the pool."

No, that's not it.

Re:clothes?

[elmegil]

Given that I was planning to work in Java anyway, that looks pretty cool, I'll check it out. Thanks! Bitching on slashdot DOES pay off!

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they could make other things work right before worrying about the look and feel?

Yes, it sucks.

Use Mozilla or (better) Thunderbird. They work so much better than anything else out there. They so SSL IMAP also. Plus you get support for S/MIME (even using smartcards if you want).

Re:clothes?

[akorvemaker]

You may want to consider Sylpheed. It uses the GTK+ toolkit which is fairly cross-platform. It's meant to be fast and lightweight. It has a Windows port.

It may not be what you're looking for, but it can't hurt to take a look. And if it's just missing a few features, contributing to this project may be more feasible than starting your own.

Re:clothes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond that, I've always found that other people's code is almost always an enormous hairball that takes longer to understand than writing things myself

maybe that's because you are either
1) full of yourself
2) not very smart or not good with code
3) a troll
4) stubborn
5) not very smart or not good with code
oh wait, i already said that one....

move along poorly implemented wannabe code monkey.

Evolution not for everybody

[UnknowingFool]

Although Evolution is comparable to Outlook in many ways, it is not for everybody. Take fundamental Christians, for example. To them, Evolution doesn't exist. :)

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

Studies find that the more educated one is, the more likely they are to believe in Evolution, on average. Fundamentalist Christians are not relevant.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[mblase]

Actually, most fundamentalist Christians who are informed about such things will say that it's only macroevolution which they disbelieve. Which, I suppose, means you have to execute it using a mouse click instead of a keyboard shortcut.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[netgee]

What do studies say about someone who dismisses a (rather large) subset of the population as "not relevant" simply because of their personal beliefs?

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, I think the point is that they are "not relevant" because of their low intelligence, not their personal beliefs. Or I may have read the original post incorrectly.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Dark Lord Seth]

Be sure to put them back where you found them.

Fundamental Christians are very pipcky concerning food and due to their constant bible-thumping, they make awful pets.

The bible DOES read "Go forth and procreate" somewhere... Or something along that at least; might be a bucces with Christian fundamentalist women! The bad thing of this is, is that your future stepbrother might also be your competitor...

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

This is offtopic and stuff but I was curious..
Why is it that the same people that gripe about fundamentalist christians are usually the same people that are so hardcore in defending Islam/Muslims/etc. I mean is it a liberal thing(anti-establishment,etc). I would rather deal with an idiot with a bible screaming on the side of the street than muslims parading around with explosives belts.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Dr. Smeegee]

"Correct."

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[undertow3886]

Who are these informed fundamentalist Christians of which you speak?

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[stefanlasiewski]

Take fundamental Christians, for example. To them, Evolution doesn't exist. :)


That's ok, most of them don't have much of an Outlook either.

"The worlds gonna end in a few years, so why should I care about global warming or cancer from smoking these cigarettes?" (I honestly knew dozens of these types when growing up).

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that the same people that gripe about fundamentalist christians are usually the same people that are so hardcore in defending Islam/Muslims/etc. I mean is it a liberal thing(anti-establishment,etc). I would rather deal with an idiot with a bible screaming on the side of the street than muslims parading around with explosives belts.

Ah the false dilemma, my favorite logical fallacy. Well done! Your question assumes that Islam as a whole is somehow comparable to fundamentailst Christianity and that fundamentalist Christians are less prone to violence than fundamentalist Muslims. Faulty assumptions but useful for propping up your stupid opinions. Or for trolling.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the stupidest thread I have seen on /.

Gah, get a life people.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[ShavenYak]

I don't know any of the people to whom you refer. I, myself, think fundamentalism of any sort is a Bad Thing. What was it Ferris Beuller said? "You shouldn't believe in an -ism, you should believe in yourself" or something similar.

Oh, and in case you didn't know it, some fundamentalist Christians do blow shit up - they tend to target abortion clinics rather than large office buildings, though.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[JerkBoB]

LOL

Maybe it's the rum talking, but that's one of the funniest replies I've ever read on /.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

"One should not believe in an ism. Ism's in my opinion are not good. I quote John Lennon:
I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.
I good point there. After all, he was the Walrus.

I could be the Walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off of people." - F.B.

Re:Evolution not for everybody

[UnknowingFool]

So how do they execute microevolution? With a really small mouse and keyboard?

Great

[Bob Abooey]

I'm all for eye candy but...

I've been using Evolution for the past couple years and I'm giving some thought to making the move back to Kmail or even to ..gulp... Mozilla for my email client because Evolution is just butt slow. Butt slow. I'm using version 1.2 that comes with Linux 9.0 and it's slow. I really hope they are working on optimizing the code as well as making it look good because as it stands now you're not going to wow anyone who is using Outlook (which isn't blazing fast by any means) into switching.

Re:Great

[Jellybob]

It comes with Linux 9.0?

Which version of Linux are you using... there may be a more recent release that'll run faster (certainly the version installed with Ximian desktop seems faster to me)

Re:Great

[int2str]

"Linux 9.0", eh?

You're not gonna get much love around here, Bob. What is it, RedHat 9, Mandrake 9.0?

The current stable Linux version is 2.4.20. Don't confuse the Linux kernel with your GNU/Linux distribution of choice.

Cheers,
André

Re:Great

[JanneM]

Just so you know, version 1.2 is the old release; you might want to try 1.4 (1.4.3 was just released). Gnome2, faster and more beautiful.

Re:Great

[mohrt]

I have dealt with performance problems too, and it had a lot to do with the size of the mailbox files. If Evolution is having to append mail to huge mailbox files (and updating their indexes), try deleting/archiving the older stuff and then expunging the folder.

mohrt

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up you nerd. Of course it's Mandrake or Red Hat. Who cares? At least he is using it.

Believe it not, a lot of people use Linux without caring about what kernel it has or what version of gtk+ they have installed. The more elitists like you we have running around making regular users feel stupid, the more people will ignore Linux because it will continue to be viewed as the choice tool for grown men that have never touched a female body (like yourself).

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with updating to a newer version lies in the fact that you also need to update myriad of libs and other sundry things which is not a trivial task in many cases.

Especially for a stable box that you cannot afford to make unstable.

Re:Great

[Jellybob]

If you look at my post above this one (Hmmm... -1: Redundant anyone?), you'll see that someone may be able to advise him on a more recent version which will perform better... if we know what he's using.

Sure, most of the time it doesn't matter, but would you give someone advice on IE updates without knowing what version they were currently using?

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

or perhaps you're just stupid and are too bitter to admit it.

Re:Great

[Lumpy]

I'm using version 1.2 that comes with Linux 9.0 and it's slow.

maybe it's that Dell XP computer you are using or are you still using the Dell 2000 computer?

get a clue... ther eis NOTHING that is called Linux9.0 it's REDHAT or SLACKWARE or DEBIAN or best of all for newbies Mandrake 9.1

this small tidbit tells me that you dont even use it. Evolution is perfectly speedy on a REally old and out of date Pentium 866 with a tiny 1 gig of ram. (I know how dare I use such slow and outdated hardware.... my gawd....)

Re:Great

[ajs318]

I thought that was the point of package management - that you could go back and reinstall older versions and their libraries if you had to, and have it all taken care of for you. If you're running Slackware or LFS, with no .rpms or .debs, you can pretty much make up the directory structure as you go along {it's only the package managers that insist on strict hierarchies, and to be fair how else are they to have a cat in hell's chance of knowing where your files are at?}, and compile the latest versions into their own directories.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

"Evolution is perfectly speedy on a REally old and out of date Pentium 866 with a tiny 1 gig of ram"

Just putting that statement out there for everyone to ponder.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution is perfectly speedy on a REally old and out of date Pentium 866 with a tiny 1 gig of ram.

Pot, kettle, black. No such thing as a "Pentium 866". Perhaps you meant 866 MHz Pentium III?

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying "linux 9" reminds me of working on a helpdesk. Someone would call and you would ask them what OS they were running and they would just "windows". "Well, what version of windows?" "I don't know, is says start in the corner" (keep in mind that this was at a company that ran every version from 95 to XP).

I can understand common users that don't know the differenc between 95 and NT, but I've had, on several occasions, IT people tell me "Hey, I installed linux 9,8,whatever on my computer last night!"

Re:Great

[Jellybob]

Damn, you almost sounded intelligent until you spouted off about "DEBIAN" 9.0 - if you're going to be picky about version numbers, you should really check you're not 6 releases ahead of yourself (and that's only if you count a RC release as a full release).

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he got the brand name right. It's not like he called it a microchippie 866 thingy.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

dead slow and hard as hell to upgrade without RedCarpet which is equivalent to a bug, I would say.I tried upgrading it once and left frustrated in between.

Another minor problem [one due to which I switched to mozilla-mail]: In a pop3 account, it doesn't support deleteing messages from the server once u have deleted them from let's say "Trash" on ur comp. It only let's u delete all of them at the time of fetching. May be a small feature but I already know atleast 5 linux user in my neighbourhood who switched due to this.

Now u decide: L&F or POP3 synching :-)

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

read that again... he is listing DISTRIBUTIONS....not version numbers....

Re:Great

[phoenix_rizzen]

Well, since we're being nit-picky, there's no such beast as a "Pentium 866". The fastest Pentium available is 200 (yes, there's the 266 MHz, but that's a Pentium MMX).

If you are going to correct people, at least be correct yourself. :)

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's butt slow on Linux 9.0. You may want to upgrade to Computer 6.4.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Well boy, Bob Aboey is a quite well-known Slashdot troll... Don't believe everything he says.

Re:Great

[JanneM]

Or just change the big folders to maildir format (you can change the format on a per-folder basis under the File menu). That will make them a lot quicker.

Re:Great

[swv3752]

Actually, at the time of your writing, it is 2.4.21. there was a slashdot story about this recently.

Re:Great

[vsprintf]

. . . Evolution is just butt slow. Butt slow. I'm using version 1.2 that comes with Linux 9.0 and it's slow.

If you're talking about Mandrake 9.0, you have reason to complain. The version of Evolution (1.2.4, I believe) that comes with Mandrake 9.1 is worlds better. Graphics load quickly now (which isn't really that great if it's one of those "See what these girls do on the farm" spam). The switch between messages is fast, and there's no more occasional hang on shutdown.

Outlook was bad anyway

[Ranx]

The Outlook interface was bad anyway. I can understand making an UNIX-version of Outlook to make it easier for Windows-users to migrate to UNIX, but from an usability standpoint, it's unbelievable.

Even Microsoft has come to understand this: the upcoming Outlook will be quite different.

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[Osty]

The Outlook interface was bad anyway. I can understand making an UNIX-version of Outlook to make it easier for Windows-users to migrate to UNIX, but from an usability standpoint, it's unbelievable.

Care to expand on that point? I assume you have other issues besides, "The vertically-stacked mailbox/preview window view makes it difficult to read mails in the preview window because mails are generally longer than they are wide?" The usability issues I've had with Outlook have stemmed from problems with Exchange, and not Outlook itself.

Even Microsoft has come to understand this: the upcoming Outlook will be quite different.

It won't be that different. It's still just an evolutionary version (pardon the pun), not a revolutionary interface change.

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how you would make it easier.

I know Evolution is, visually, a clone of Outlook but there's a *lot* of prior art out there for the overall layout of every major function and quite a bit, if not all, of it is on non-Microsoft operating systems.

As for the next Outlook being quite different, that's excellent news! I've got a whole slew of users who won't touch anything that doesn't look like Outlook. Give me an Evolution port to Windows and I'm one step closer to Linux migration--still need a mid-range accounting package(more than Quicken but less than PeopleSoft).

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[burns210]

"Even Microsoft has come to understand this: the upcoming Outlook will be quite different."

Ya, but acording to this screenshot... It may be a even WORSE user interface.

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[archen]

And I thought the expanding menus thing was bad...

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[spectecjr]

"Even Microsoft has come to understand this: the upcoming Outlook will be quite different."
Ya, but acording to this screenshot... It may be a even WORSE user interface.

Doesn't look any different to me. All they did was put the preview pane to the right of the folder list.

All that really looks that different is the UI theme, and that's because it's from Longhorn.

Compare these screenshots:

Office 2k3 Beta 2 with a more usable layout

Outlook 2002/XP

Not much difference, except for the theme and the handling of the left-bar, with better docking of the folder view.

Simon

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[fulldecent]

I use MSDN at work... :-( ... and I threw in the Office 2003 beta CD for kicks.

... Significant difference... significant

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[FleaPlus]

I'm not so sure about that. I've actually never used Outlook before, but I settled on using Evolution (and Pine) regularly b/c the UI worked well for me.

Re:Outlook was bad anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook doesn't have to be good. Its may competitor is Lotus Notes.

Finally

[the_rev_matt]

I think it's great that they are moving it beyond being an Outlook-alike. Why limit yourself to copying Microsofts mediocre offerings? Go above and beyond.

Re:Finally

[mblase]

I think it's great that they are moving it beyond being an Outlook-alike.

Agreed. IANALU (Linux User), but one of my biggest complaints about Linux software in general has been its inevitable tendency to imitate Microsoft's graphical interface first, and Apple's second. Anytime a project like Evolution or Mozilla is able to break rank and develop its own interface, it's a Good Thing, because it proves the software is mature enough to improve on someone else's interface design.

Re:Finally

[pbox]

In my humble opionion it is better to develop open source programs with highly customizable user interface. (themes, skins, etc). This way you can have both:

1. Capture Mirosoft converts. You should never underestimate the value of familiarity. If someone has been using Outlook for the past 5-10 years, give them Outlook look-alike. They will be switching because it works just as well (more importantly they work just as well) but it is FREE.

2. Improve user interface beyond MS or Apple standards. Innovation is important. Give power users power to customize and you will see magic. See Mozilla SeaMonkey/Firebird/Thunderbird for example.

Re:Finally

[vsprintf]

I think it's great that they are moving it beyond being an Outlook-alike. Why limit yourself to copying Microsofts mediocre offerings? Go above and beyond.

Exactly. Why should Ximian have to ape (sorry, I couldn't help it) Microsoft. My pet peeve with KDE is that they once had the desktop icons working correctly: you click on one, it opens something. Now, you have to double-click an icon to open something. Why should I have to double-click other than the fact that MS does it that way?

Sounds good to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to lose Outlook and bring on the new users! Is there a Windows version of Evolution?

only 3 replies

[curtlewis]

And the site is essentially down for the count.

Could Slashdot be just a front for an evil empire that unleashes DOS attacks on their enemies?

Tonight on Inside Edition!

Good Ridance To Outlook Style

[ad0le]

I personally would love to see an office suite that put the old and tired MS Office interface to rest.

I wonder if anyone has done any research on the most efficent/user friendly ways to manage a software office suite.

Is it just the developers choice on how we access these things via the UI?

Re:Good Ridance To Outlook Style

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Entourage (The MS Apple outlook program).

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/entouragex/entourag ex _main.asp?embfpath=featartx&embfname=en_customview s.asp

Re:Good Ridance To Outlook Style

[k-hell]

This url for those of you who couldn't make the above url work.

I like the outlook look

[Captal]

I like the outlook look- it seems pretty efficient to me the way they organize the folders and emails. The colors are kind of drab but other than that it's fine.

Too bad the links are /. ed already else I'd give my impression of them.

I'm always for for contemporary styling- I like the modern theme of Mozilla over the classic theme, and 3D buttons and textures are always cool!

Re:I like the outlook look

[molarmass192]

Looks a little MacOS-y. Clean lines, a little metallic in nature. All the quick access buttons are grouped in the bottom left corner. It's not a massive departure from the Exchange look-and-feel but it's different enough that you certainly wouldn't mistake the two.

slashdotted, use google cache

[leomekenkamp]

Those new clothes might get burned pretty fast if their server keeps on getting hit by the slashdot effect; please try google's cache instead.

Re:slashdotted, use google cache

[Abcd1234]

Which is not very useful since google caches the text of the email, but not the actual images (which are presented as links rather than inline).

Emacs keybindings

[DarknessInBlindingLi]

As long as they don't give me my Emacs-style keybindings back, I don't care about no eyecandy!

Re:Emacs keybindings

[ZarKov]

You can have Emacs-style keybindings in all of your GTK2 apps. Set the GConf key /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme to Emacs.

Re:Emacs keybindings

[DarknessInBlindingLi]

That's the first thing I've done after installing Gnome 1.4 and I've just checked: it's still there. Evolution plainly ignores this setting. And to the moderators: this is in no way funny *g*

Re:Emacs keybindings

[ZarKov]

I'll be damned. You're right. I'm using Gnome 2.3 and Evolution 1.4. I just set gtk_key_theme to Emacs, and it didn't work. Not only did it not work in the composer area (which I believe is a gtkhtml3 widget), but it didn't work in the text fields either, which really surprised me. This seemed bug-worthy, so I searched. Here you go: http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=41187

Poor server

[Juiblex]

Already slashdotted... please provide mirrors...

If you're a Slashdot subscriber...

[WIAKywbfatw]

...you get first dibs on slashdotting everyones servers!

Re:If you're a Slashdot subscriber...

[LurkerXXX]

Yeah, but since most stories are dupes, you'll just be slashdotting an already slashdotted server anyhow.

Re:If you're a Slashdot subscriber...

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Yikes. Then time would collapse into a singlularity thanks to Slashdot.

Or something.

yeah.

I liked it

[nocomment]

I like the interface already. I'm all for changing it as long as it doesn't run any slower. It takes forever to open on my k62-450.

I just wish I could see what the images look like....mirrors anyone? If anyone can get through....

Well

[quantaman]

What do you think about a maturing Evolution that goes its own way and leaves the Outlook-like interface behind?"

Not much since the site is /.ed though I'm hoping it will be nice :) My main concern is whether they'll get any kind of automatic address completion like there is in Eudora or the Mozilla address bar, contacts are nice but a bit of a pain to set up and they're still not as nice as autocompletion.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

autocompletion works for me in evolution, has ever since 1.2 IIRC. I just had to set it up to point to the LDAP server (MS Exchange) and voila, I get auto completion of email addresses in the composer window. Actually it drops down a list of relevant choices ... and it also searches addresses I have stored locally ... this is one of the things I did not like about Kmail, if I was in the composer I had to bring up another window to lookup addresses.

Separating from Outlook

[dlosey]

While it would be nice to try and surpass Outlook in useability, is that something worth trying at this stage in the game? If you are trying to convince a company to use a new email client, you want to ensure them that they will not have to retrain their employees. With Ximian, they do not have a large enough user base IMHO. If I were them, I would wait until I had a little bit more market share before trying a move like that. The general office worker usually can not deal with huge software changes without retraining. I know many workers who just follow the same list of commands/buttons for checking there email, without knowing what all the commands/buttons do.

Re:Separating from Outlook

[shadwwulf]

Retrain? I hate to say it, but if a person needs training on how to use an email client, once they already know how to send email on another email client, they shouldn't be allowed to use a computer.

There are limits where a company shouldn't be expected to train somebody on the extreme basics.

Just my $0.02

Re:Separating from Outlook

[roothog]

Actually, since Microsoft is also abandoning the current Outlook interface, as a previous poster noted, this seems like the perfect time to change interfaces. If they do not change, they look like old product. Changing keeps them current and offers the new opportunity to distinguish themselves from Outlook.

Re:Separating from Outlook

[DarkSarin]

Alternately, they could allow two separate interfaces (and make it themeable to allow for user derived interfaces), and have an option the first time any given user launches the file. Selecting the box would allow the client to choose their interface (use the Outlook clone OR the new and improved interface).
This allows the company to move forward in interface, while allowing those comfortable (or those who love the outlook interface) with the old to have their cake as well.
The idea of skinnable products is wonderful, and I wish that more companies would do that. My favorite example is Object Desktop (sorry no link)--your windows box can look any way YOU want it too, without all the clutter. It's wonderful.

Re:Separating from Outlook

[FooBarWidget]

As much as you may hate it, it's the reality. Deal with it. Yes it *shouldn't* be like this, but it *is* like this, and there's nothing you can do to change it.

A new interface?

[earthforce_1]

Maybe it will put to rest those who say open source projects just emulate the work of "innovative" closed source projects.

Then again, probably not...

Re:A new interface?

[bmajik]

if you read the mailing list id say roughly 50% of the messages on the subject say "make it work like outlook 2003" and the responses seem to be along the lines of "we'll consider that"

innovative indeed.

Still not up to par...

[Fux the Pengiun]

Looks nice! Definate improvement over the old style...but the bar's been raised already. Man, I wish KDE could get with it and really make a LEAP. Not just eye-candy. Not just new window-dressing. Something actually different and innovating , not just playing catchup to whatever Microsoft and Apple are putting out. Check the bulletin board post and see their changelog:

• Killed the tree view -- you can only see one folder at a time now
• Multiple calender view & web calenders
• New ability to morph viral web services in real-time
• Improved icons for more user-friendly operation
• Support to orchestrate seamless e-services

The new graphics are nice and all, but the rest of that Outlook has had since 2000! We need innovation to beat Micro$oft, not just pretty widget to click to kill time.

[/rant] sorry if I got a little carried away there...

Re:Screenshots

[edmz]

seems to me that the ximian screenshots you point to are not for the mentioned beta 2, but rather current v1.x

Re:Screenshots

[ceswiedler]

I belive the ones you linked to are the current screenshots. The author was trying to show us the proposals for future UI changes.

Outlook 2003

[ikewillis]

In Outlook 2003, Microsoft is also abandoning the current Outlook interface in favor of a "panes" driven interface.

Looking at these screen shots, Ximian has opted for a toolbar-driven approach. This seems like a reasonable way to go, considering that it's a methodology familiar to the majority of computer users.

I think any frequent user of Outlook learned to despise the side navbar. I'm glad that both Evolution and Outlook 2003 will be abandoning it.

Re:Outlook 2003

[guanxi]

Microsoft is also abandoning the current Outlook interface in favor of a "panes" driven interface.

Isn't that straight out of the OS X finder? Though, of course, Apple probably got their idea from Xerox.

Re:Outlook 2003

[fr0dicus]

Hmm.... I hadn't seen those outlook 2003 screenshots. They seem horribly wasteful of screen real estate.

Re:Outlook 2003

[fava]

Anyone notice in the screen shot listed above most of the email is msn spam?

Re:Outlook 2003

[quakeroatz]

I think any frequent user of Outlook learned to despise the side navbar.

Any "frequent" user would know to:
1. Right Click Navbar
2. Select Hide Outlook Bar

Sometimes even Linux users need to RTFM, the one from Microsoft.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Jon Abbott]

Isn't that straight out of the OS X finder? Though, of course, Apple probably got their idea from Xerox.

Yes, but Apple seems to be adopting the sidebar idea for Finder that both Evolution and Outlook are dropping... I just hope my mom's head doesn't explode with all of these UI changes taking place.

Re:Outlook 2003

[DigitalCH]

Been using it for about 9 months... Trust me it works great. Especially if you have a nice flatscreen. Between the improved look and feel and the "real" XML integration this is truly the first office upgrade thats worth it since office 97.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Mournblade]

Looking at that screenshot, it looks like MS are, in fact, keeping the side nav bar, just changing the way it looks (i'm referring to the bottom left hand corner of the screenshot). I don't have a copy of 2003 beta, so I'm just guessing. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

Re:Outlook 2003

[IamTheRealMike]

Ah hum, use of vertical panes has been around for a looong time in user interfaces - see, for instance, xtree.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Jordy]

This interface is *very* similar to Microsoft Entourage (Outlook for Mac). The biggest difference is the buttons exist at the top instead of the bottom in Entourage. Even the order of the top row of buttons is the same: Mail, Address book (contact), Calendar.

Here are some screenshots of Entourage:

Calendar

Mail

Re:Outlook 2003

[Jordy]

Woops. Forgot to add an image with small buttons of the address book. All the panes work with small buttons.

Address Book w/ Small buttons

As you can see this is very similar. I like the Entourage UI to be honest.

Re:Outlook 2003

[roll_w.it]

Or for those who are mouse-challenged

alt-v, o

Re:Outlook 2003

[bigdavex]

Been using it for about 9 months... Trust me it works great. Especially if you have a nice flatscreen. Between the improved look and feel and the "real" XML integration this is truly the first office upgrade thats worth it since office 97.

Does it work less well on a CRT? I'm not seeing the connection.

Re:Outlook 2003

[DigitalCH]

Yeah, it looks good on a crt... but what makes it look so much better is they really went all out with cleartype integration in the new version of office. All documents are show in cleartype first. (in case you don't know Cleartype is a set of fonts+ui contstructs that are designed to impove viewing quality especially on flatscreen type devices.)

Re:Outlook 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya know ... as someone forced to use Windows 14 hours a day, my headache always seem to diappear whenever I see look at anything designed for the Mac. The Ximian interface seems just as easy on the eyes.

Looks like Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is making a monkey out of primates.ximian.com.

Move away from outlook

[ccano]

The calendar views in Outlook and Evolution are horrible. It's hard to distinguish the demarcations between months/weeks etc, and it's just very non-user friendly IMHO.

My current hopes and dreams are on a often-forgotten Mozilla Calendar, which I'm hoping will find the attention of hte masses and get that last-mile work it so desperately needs to become my permanent calendar...

Re:Move away from outlook

[Christianfreak]

We can start doing that as soon as Moz Calendar can properly install and register itself. There are still tons and tons of people who can't get it to install properly, especially on Linux, and its a bug that appears to have been ongoing for 2+ years?

The bug in question is Bug 134432 (bugzilla doesn't like direct links from Slashdot)

Sorry I don't mean to rant but I would love to try the calendar program and everytime I've installed it I run into this bug (4 times now different versions etc.)

Re:Move away from outlook

[Mournblade]

IIRC one of the main causes of that problem is not installing the correct version of Cal for the version of Mozilla you're running, which was a result of confusing links on the Calendar project page. Last I looked, they had revamped that page to make it easier to understand.

That may not be the problem you were having, but it's worth looking into.

Re:Move away from outlook

[jrumney]

The cause of that when I tried (2 weeks ago) was a Content-type of text/plain for xpi files on the server they are distributing it from. Apparently the xpi file will only install on browsers that ignore Content-type headers, like, ahem, IE. Save the file and put it on your own server if you want it to install.

It's too late

[93 Escort Wagon]

Evolution lost me in two steps. First Ximian started making arbitrary design changes (read: removal of functionality) in their mail interface that seemed to go against what their users wanted; at least if the bugzilla reports are any indication. Then, they more or less stood still while Mozilla Mail - and now Thunderbird - caught up and passed them.

I know Ximian has some very clever people, but they have to relearn the fact that users are their reason for existence. Mozilla's not perfect in that regard either, but they do a darn sight better job of it than Ximian does.

Re:Screenshots

[epfreed]

Thoes are screenshots of the current Evolution. The topic is the new UI.

My experiance with

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Evolution fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a gnome terminal (a 3200 w/1024 of RAM with dma enabled) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to delete a 17 Meg trashcan of spam! 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running on my Windows XP system running Outlook express , which by all standards should be a lot slower than this GNOME terminal, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, galeon will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even GEdit is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Gnome terminals, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Gnome terminal that has run faster than its Windows XP counterpart, despite the Gnome terminals faster bonobo architechture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 3200 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Evolution is a superior email soloution

Gnome addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Evolution over other faster, cheaper, more stable email clients.

Re:My experiance with

[reustp]

Personally I use both Outlook XP and Evolution at home and I prefer Evolution. Evolution seems to work alot faster than Outlook overall, especially when working with multiple e-mail accounts. I've never had a wait like the one you described when emptying my trash. This is on a computer with a 1.3ghz P4 and 512MB Ram dual booting RedHat 9 and Windows XP.

Re:My experiance with

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you microsoft fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Windowx XP terminal (a P4 3.0G w/2048 of RAM with dma enabled) for about 60 minutes now while it attempts to delete a 1.7 Meg trashcan of spam! 60 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running on my Slackware 7.1 system running Pine , which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Windows XP terminal, the same operation would take about 2 seconds. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Internet Explorer will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various XP terminals, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Windows XP terminal that has run faster than its Redhat counterpart on a 3 generation older processor, despite the XP terminals faster .NET architechture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 3000 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Outlook is a superior email soloution.. It's completely worthless.

Microsoft addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Outlook over other faster, cheaper, more stable email clients.

Re:My experiance with

[Anonymous Coward]

submit any bug reports? expunging huge folders is nearly instantanious for me. (huge as in bigger than 17 megs...)

which version are you using? what does strace show? etc? is this over NFS? IMAP? mbox? what?

mbox over NFS is gonna be particularly slow since in order to expunge an mbox, you need to rewrite it to a temp file and them move that over the previous file.

if IMAP, then it may be a server slowness for all anyone knows - afterall, that is where the operation is happening :-)

there's been a few complaints about speed, but no one ever gives any specifics nor reports any meaningful bug reports. if it ain't slow for the developers, then how are they ever gonna find out what is slow and fix it for you?

just so you know, up until a few months ago I was developing evolution on a celeron 400 with 128 megs of ram... and I have gigs of mail in my IMAP folders and a fair bit in my local folders and never experienced severe slowness.

Re:My experiance with

[justsomebody]

but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Evolution over other faster, cheaper, more stable email clients

faster... we could argue about that, but let's say everyone has it's favorite horse.
cheaper... since when is outlook cheaper than $0, does M$ now pay for usage????
more stable... 1.4... no crash for me yet
no virus... outlook is more or less, ...hmm, yeah, well, ... inviting viruses????
beautiful look... ok, I hate MacOS X and photo icons, while MacOS was beautiful
beautiful fonts... my ximian desktop rocks in that field

Mod parent down

[FattMattP]

You've linked to the wrong screenshots. The ones that are slashdotted are for the new UI not the current one.

Office suite recipie

[jared_hanson]

I wonder if anyone has done any research on the most efficent/user friendly ways to manage a software office suite.

Yes, they found it is best to throw an assload of buttons into 1/4 assload of toolbars. The remaining 3 assloads of options should be buried beneath 1/2 assload of top-level menus each containing 1/8 assload of submenus, repeating ad infinitum.

Re:Office suite recipie

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the customize feature...

Re:Screenshots

[luugi]

The author's links to the screenshots seem to have bellied up to the /. effect. Fortunately, Ximian has screenshots.

BTW, the author's links failed for me when there were only 4 comments posted here. Makes me wonder how long before someone starts coding sites that say, "Hmmm... the referer is slashdot.org, so don't deliver a page"... ;-)


That's the old interface.

meh

[SweetAndSourJesus]

What happens if you want to check your email with something like SquirrelMail? No filters, so your spam gets in.

The answer is, as always, Procmail combined with SpamAssassin.

Client-side filtering is for sucks.

Re:meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Client-side filtering has good sides. I use mozilla-mail and if filters all spam just fine, except that once in a while, it filters something that shouldn't be. If I were using it server-side, I'd never know what messages were never delivered. With mozilla-mail, I can check my mail, look in the spam folder and see if there isn't something that was really for me... if yes, I mark it as not junk and that never get filtered again. When the client closes, all junk is deleted. Who really cares about the few extra bytes of transfer? If it gets to MBs, you should watch on which site you subscribe and consider getting a hotmail account you never check to send spam.

Re:meh

[elmegil]

Until some wise guy decides you need an email server solution that doesn't let you use your own server-side filtering (this is work, I don't have a choice, why the software can't let me do procmail filtering seems to be just blinkered idiocy).

Re:meh

[Zathrus]

Client-side filtering is for where it's appropriate.

I like Mozilla Mail's filtering... works great for my ISP provided mailbox. But that's because it's infeasible for me to put in server side filtering... DSL, dynamic IP, yadda yadda yadda. All of these can be worked around, but it's frankly not worth the effort to me.

Of course, if you're using Evolution's features (calendaring, groupware, etc) then you almost certainly do have your own mail server and should do server side spam filtering.

Re:meh

[sweetooth]

Apparently you haven't looked at the squirrelmail plugin page very closely. If you had you would have seen the Filters and Spam section that has things as a SpamCop, Spam Assasin, and my favorite, BayeseSpam. Of course I haven't seen any spam plugins for Twig, so maybe that would be a better example.

Re:meh

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Then you're setting up two sets of filters.

Annoying, to say the least.

Re:meh

[jd142]

I've never tested it, but there's a Baysian spam filter plugin available for Squirrelmail.

Personally, I prefer systems that either put spam into one mailbox (like Mozilla Mail or Thunderbird) or that mark the message as spam in some way so that I can filter it (like adding [possible spam] to the message subject). The idea of a system just arbitrarily bouncing or deleting my mail on its own is troublesome. Right now, out of every 100 messages Thunderbird classifies as spam, 1 is a real message. If the messages were automatically deleted, I'd miss real mail.

getting accepted means not scaring the illiterate

[laugau]

I mean think about it, to REPLACE the outlook interface, you need to offer an alternative that is not only stronger, better and faster, but one that the computer illiterate (and marginally literate) will use. If you think about it, we are still the minority and are as happy with ximian as mutt, but can we assume the same of 99% of the user base? Absolutely not!!! We need to get them addicted to our interface with transparent innovations before we go to the visible (and potentially intimidating) ones.

In most dev classes, aren't we taught to automate the existing business practices before changing them? The whole thing is an evolution... but evolution is evolving too fast in this case.

Tabs not buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

This was posted to gnomedesktop.org last week.

I did a quick mockup of what this would look like with tabs instead of buttons.

Some of the reasons for using tabs instead of buttons:

• Custom tabs - User can create new tabs for access to frequently used views (replaces the shortcuts)
• Tabs can be renamed - Allows user to specify a name that is more meaningful to them
• Tabs can be dragged - If Anjuta2 style containers are used tags can be dragged to be reordered or even dragged off the shell into it's own application window.
• Less screen area waisted - tabs allow clean navigation without resorting to taking up a chunk of UI

--
J5

Re:Tabs not buttons

[int2str]

I like it a lot!

Re:Tabs not buttons

[Mournblade]

That's pretty sweet. I was thinking a while back that i'd love to be able to run the "other" Mozilla Apps (Mail, Calendar, etc) as Tabs in the browser window.

Re:Tabs not buttons

[cpeterso]

Your mockup looks very nice. I agree that tabbed "views" seem better. Less screen real estate and they help visualize the data "views".

I used to work with one of the dev leads for Microsoft Outlook. If you think the Outlook UI is crowded or difficult now, you should hear the ideas that Outlook PMs proposed that were shot down! One proposal was similar to your tabbed mockup, but instead of one row of tabs along the top, there were THREE DIMENSIONS of tabs! There were tabs along the top, along the side, and along the bottom of the window! These different tab rows would interact in strange and "useful" ways to create new data views.

It's sad, really.. :-)

Re:Tabs not buttons

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Tabs just plain rock. I hope GUI dev.s everywhere learn this.

Re:Tabs not buttons

[Ian Bicking]

Tab everything, whether the original programmer thought of it or not: ion

Re:Tabs not buttons

[khufure]

nice link. heh!

Re:Tabs not buttons

[siveliini]

Your points are all valid but IMO they miss one point on the screen area portion.

Tabs take space from the top of the application. Most computer using people read from top to bottom and thus they constantly have to cognitively skip the tab bar which is quite seldomly used when compared to other items on the screen. So it is not about how mich screen area is wasted but how valuable screen area is wasted. And if you count together the space your mockup's tab row takes with the basic tabs - it is actually even more than the one Evolution button box takes with the basic buttons.

Other think I'd like to point out from the useability point of view: If you place many functions (app swtching & shortcuts) in similiar looking containers (tabs) they become harder to find by eye. On the Evolution mockup all functionally different portions are well separated from each other and presented in a different manner - thus making them easier to spot by eye.

After all, I think they are targetting their product to non-professional users who need more visual clues on the GUI for basic usage instead of powerful and flexible features which take little screen space.

Re:Tabs not buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

But tabs are usable. Each tab is a view, no more no less. I don't know about you but I am constantly switching tabs in many applications. It groups together similar functionality while giving each tab a full area to work with (an important consideration in data presentation apps such as Evolution). With buttons as a user I expect things to pop up in a new window or an action to take place. While tabs would be a replacment for shortcuts they would not be shortcuts, they are views. Tabs can aslo be placed on the bottom of the screen in Gnome prefs. It is more consitent with the Gnome UI then the Mac like buttons so I don't know where you get your usability assertions. It actualy increases usability over the buttons.

--
J5

Looks like Mac OS X/Microsoft's Entourage to me...

[i_mdiver]

Personally, I've liked the current Outlook feel of Evolution... looks like their just adapting to another Microsoft user interface to me. Oh well, what goes around comes around I guess.

Changed to a new set of Outlook clothes...

[mrdlcastle]

Just an FYI, If you look closely at the snapshots they are identical (almost) to the way Entourage looks (the Apple version of Outlook).

So in reality, they are not moving away from Outlook. They are just updating to keep up with it.

Re:Changed to a new set of Outlook clothes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Global menu bar (well, panel at least), default dialog button on right, preference for instant apply dialogs, HIG, proposed clone of Entourage. I sense a trend here.

Better choices out there

[mao che minh]

I gave up on Evolution when I tried the version that shipped with Red Hat 7.3. I also took one look at Kmail at the time and decided to pass.

Mozilla Mail was overall faster, easier to configure, far less bulky, and part of the browser (lighter). It's spam filtering capability is also a must - as is it's security and presentation options.

The only thing I liked about Evolution was the little configurable main page, where you could put in your favorate news-feeds or weather forecasts and what not. It also crashed harder then Outlook on a p133 with 16MB of RAM and Windows 98 First Edition.

Re:Better choices out there

[elmegil]

part of the browser (lighter)

I thought it just made the browser heavier. Seems pretty pointless to me; email isn't a web page, shouldn't be a web page, and the mozilla/netscape/whatever browser based email clients I've seen all suck.

Re:Better choices out there

[ccano]

Yes, but that's why Mozilla is seperating the browser (Firebird) and the email client (Thunderbird).

I'm personally very psyched about this, as I love mozilla both as an idea and most of the results, but I hated the fact that it was this massive all-in-one beast. Firebird is just fantastic, and I can't wait to start playing with Thunderbird when it's a bit more mature. Until then, MozMail is quite good.

Re:Better choices out there

[Anonymous Coward]

> I gave up on Evolution when I tried the version that shipped with Red Hat 7.3. I also took one look at Kmail at the time and decided to pass.

Give RH9 a try; 7.3 was release quite a while ago by Linux development timelines.

Re:Better choices out there

[Bates]

I gave up on Evolution when I tried the version that shipped with Red Hat 7.3.

Well, that was a while back. Evolution has gone through some major changes since then. Mainly it is much faster and the configuration is much easier. Just curious.. what turned you off to it?

Re:Better choices out there

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I like KMail. It's just a quick, easy, & simple email client. HTML email? No thank you.

Re:Better choices out there

[stefanlasiewski]

Mozilla Mail was overall faster, easier to configure, far less bulky, and part of the browser (lighter). It's spam filtering capability is also a must - as is it's security and presentation options.

Wow, I have exactly the opposite opinion.

On my Celeron 366/RH9 box, Mozilla Mail is twice as slow as Evo, less configurable (In Mozilla, need to have a set of folders for every pop account. In Evo and Outlook, you can store all of your incoming email in a single INBOX), multi-level filters don't always work because of folder locks (One filter to dump mail into a folder, another filter to take mail out of that box. If the second filter is active, the first filter pops up one error per email).

The Evo filters are very powerful-- anything that you cannot accomplish with the default filters can be handled by running an external command or script.

Mozilla does have decent a spam filter, and I'm really looking forward to Thunderbird

I use Mozilla as my primary MUA right now, only because I have a dual boot machine, and was trying to share a single email store between Mozilla-on-Linux and Mozilla-on-W2K. (I don't recommend doing this. Nor do the Moz developers. Just thought I'd try). Now that I'm done with this experiment, I'll probably just install an IMAP server on my second box here.

I only wish that Evolution ran on Windows.

Try KMail

[Anonymous Coward]

It's IMAP appears to be fixed. I've converted for about two months with no problems.

Re:Try KMail

[elmegil]

Um, KMail under Solaris GNOME? KMail on my windows machine at home? Don't think so.

Re:Screenshots

[djeaux]

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

I guess that's why my first reaction was, "Jeez, this doesn't look any different from Outlook."

My bad :-( <sigh>

Of course, none of this -- including my own "contribution" -- explains why an email client needs to have a calendar anyway. Except, of course, that having a calendar in Outlook allows my pointy-headed boss to stick stuff on my calendar. And it puts me in the position of trying to keep my personal calendar separate from the "public" one that Exchange lets aforementioned pointy-headed one view... Solution: never synch my Palm at the office.

Not yet ...

[BillsPetMonkey]

When evolution supports multibyte characters - that's when it will surpass outlook. Seriously - I use Japanese and English email and as soon as I tried migrating to Evolution all my email just &#"%"#%\'"&#%\%"'&%!>('$

Re:Not yet ...

[ZarKov]

All GTK2 applications should be able to handle multibyte characters. I just tried writing an email with some mathematical symbols, and they seemed to display fine. Have you tried Evolution 1.4?

Re:Not yet ...

[Anonymous Coward]

have you tried Evolution 1.4? it is supposed to handle multibyte charsets... in fact, earlier versions were 'supposed' to as well (the mailer backends all handled them fine, it was the widgets that didn't always)

but with 1.4, it is now based on gtk2 and so is capable of rendering these glyphs. if it doesn't, then you should submit bug reports.

Re:Not yet ...

[IamTheRealMike]

Wierd. The amount of asian spam I get is incredible. It virtually all renders nicely too, in antialiased glyphs :)

Try Evo 1.4 - that's based on GTK2, which uses Pango, which has lots of international characters/unicode support goodness.

It cant be worse...

[AvengerXP]

Than Lotus Notes's Interface. Oh the horror, the humanity!

Re:It cant be worse...

[CyberKnet]

Note to parent: Emotive representation does not quite cover the abhorant monstrosity that is the Lotus Notes groupware client.

Lotus Notes Client WILL Cause You To:

Claw out your eyeballs

Throw your mouse across the room

Beat your head against the monitor

Push your monitor off your desk(when above fails)

Never use email again. Ever.

Please do not underestimate the power of the daft side.

n.b. I haven't used lotus notes since early 99, YMMV, it may have gotten worse.

Re:It cant be worse...

[vsprintf]

Note to parent: Emotive representation does not quite cover the abhorant monstrosity that is the Lotus Notes groupware client. . . .

Amen. And when it is (regularly) hosed and "performs an illegal operation" and is shut down, it can't be restarted unless you reboot. So much for Lotus Notes and the great new OS that no longer has BSOD problems.

Don't think it looks all that great...

[gatkinso]

...but that's just my opinion.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he got the message the first four times.

Re:Gee that's great

[Chuck Bucket]

nice, I like the quote, "Evanthes shot one of the women and says, "I got the one with the biggest rack." - makes me != proud to be a male

Ximian Evolution

[harryk]

Will be great for moving people away from MS desktops. Coupled with Abiword or even OpenOffice is really giving me goosebumps.

One way that I'm encouraged by alot of the desktop push is by companies (some) moving to browser based applications. The company that I work for is developing their next application to be completely browser based. While this is no big deal, the interesting part, is that it 'should' work well with mozilla, thus paving the way for full linux desktops. NICE

Win32/Cygwin port

[Stonent1]

Has anyone ported this to Win32 or Cygwin yet?

Re:Win32/Cygwin port

[ptr2void]

What for? Are there still people using Windows?

Re:Win32/Cygwin port

[stefanlasiewski]

Several people have tried, but all have given up.

Unfortunately, Evolution depends on some very unix-specific libraries to function. I think getting the GTK interface working isn't that hard, but it's the underlying filesystem requirements that get in the way.

Really sad, I really want Evolution for windows.

You'd be better off getting a second cheap computer, network the two, install Linux, X, Gnome & Evolution on the second computer, and run Evolution over an X-windows connection.

Or run an IMAP/LDAP/iCalendar server on the second computer and share between outlook and evolution.

Re:Win32/Cygwin port

[FrostedWheat]

Are there still people using Windows?

OK! I'll admit it. We use windows in our office.
Which reminds me, must get them cleaned.

Re:Win32/Cygwin port

[Stonent1]

Becaaaaaaaause... Some people would like the MS Office version of Outlook's features without having to buy it. :P

Re:Win32/Cygwin port

[Stonent1]

And before you say "Download it"... Don't...

Re:Guess what

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to qualify that, it should have read: If you're a spineless, no talent, which button do I click, unemployed DeVry graduate XP is where it is at.

Come on OGo!

[afternoon]

Nearly there on the next big application area...

Good luck...

[Psiren]

I'm writing my own client too. I started about 2 years ago. Don't underestimate the amount of work involved. IMAP alone can be a real pain the arse. Still, I wish you luck. I've had a lot of fun working on mine.

Re:Good luck...

[elmegil]

First pass plans to be in Java (yah yah, don't go there) which has some nice libraries handling the grunt work. Or so I'm told, I haven't actually started on this project yet.

Crappy spell checker

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod me down all you like, but the facts remain the same. Evolution has an awful implementation of this functionality. The "check word spelling" should just list the alternative, like say, gaim. The "add word" option shouldn't be directly below the "check word" option, as it's quite easy to accidentally select the wrong option, especially with a glidepoint controller on laptops! The current 1.4.3 (Debian Sid) actually loses the spell option in larger emails. It just vanishes! The only way to check a highlighted erroneous word, is to check the whole body of text.

fetchmail, then

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Use fetchmail to grab the mail from your work server, then process it with procmail.

Sucks pretty bad that you can't do the filtering server-side, though.

Entourage

[DreadSpoon]

Except that the new screens are pretty much ripoffs of Microsoft Entourage on the Mac. ;-)

A Small Reason to Switch, Gone

[digime]

Evolution, as is, is one of the few "killer apps" that promotes the adoption of Linux on the desktop at home and in businesses IMHO. From a corporation's perspective going from Outlook to Evolution as far as users are concerned is easy. It seems the developers are talking about coding away major similarities between Outlook and Evolution to make life easier for themselves, not to help the average user. And it definitely doesn't help with the transition to Linux. I think it's a real shame.

Re:A Small Reason to Switch, Gone

[LS]

It's not really all that "killer". I'm at a large, recently merged tech corporation (over 100,000 employees) and we are still on Exchange 5.5 (not 2000), which Evolution does not support. It's baffling. Their customer support has told me that many people from my company want to use Evolution, but they just won't support 5.5. I'm sure that many other corporations are still on 5.5 as well. I would move to Linux in a second if Ximan would just drag their heads from their asses.

LS

Re:A Small Reason to Switch, Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

huh? changing the UI doesn't make it any easier for the developers. anyways, the new UI is just being updated to match the newer Microsoft Entourage UI. thus making your comments groundless.

Re:A Small Reason to Switch, Gone

[IamTheRealMike]

Supporting Exchange 5.5 would require a complete DCOM implementation, as well as an understanding of the MAPI protcols.

In short, it's a LOT of work. So much work, in fact, that the investment probably wouldn't be easily recouped. As many places are upgrading anyway, I can see why they don't want to support it.

OTOH it is open source. Perhaps once Wine gets full DCOM support, it will be possible. But by the time that happens, truly nobody will use Exchange 5.5 any more at all :(

Re:A Small Reason to Switch, Gone

[digime]

Apparently you didn't RTFA.

* Killing the tree view also simplifies the architecture a lot. Right now there is a lot of machinery in place to handle the tree, making sure that components don't step on each other's toes. In particular, the handling of local folders is a maintenance nightmare, and also makes it very hard to provide the hooks that hackers need eg. to access Evolution's folders and do cool desktop integration hacks.

* The shell's APIs would be drastically reduced to just a couple calls and it would become a lot simpler to implement new components.

Roaming address books..

[Garion911]

I haven't researched it recently, but what would be a kinda killer app for me is roaming addressbooks... From what I read, older versions of Netscape had this feature, but no one supports it now..

I would really like to be able to sync my palm, and have the email address available on my web-email.. Or on my GUI email client (Sylpheed).. Or in OpenOffice..

Yes, LDAP will do alot of that, but I would also like per user.. I want my own roaming addressbook, and my girlfriend can have her own.. ANd being able to have a global addressbook would be bonus..

Is there anything else out there, besides Netscape Roaming, and is supported by a few email clients?

Re:Roaming address books..

[hillbilly1980]

That entire post was just a cheap excuse to advertise you have a girlfriend. Geek.

Re:Roaming address books..

[vonFinkelstien]

Mac users with .Mac and iSync can sync their AddressBook to with their .Mac account and then sync it elsewhere. tssfulk

Windows port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, a decent Outlook replacement. Maybe I won't have to suffer with these OE bugs any more. And when I use Linux I can stay with the same client. Maybe I'll even switch my laptop to Linux if I can do that.

Er, nevermind, Ximian doesn't care about us Windows users.

Re:Windows port?

[Serpent Mage]

No offense but it is not there mission goal nor has it ever been a mission goal to make windows an easier and better place to be.

You might as well blame the linus torvalds for not making the windows kernel more stable and usable or the authors of reiserfs for not making a windows journaling filesystem.

Perhaps you should try to instead blame windows for not making linux versions of your application instead. If microsoft suddenly decides to drop their mission goal in order to support the competition then I will support you 100% in your request for Ximian to drop their mission goal and support the competition.

Multiple Calendars

[FU_Fish]

I'm really hoping that multiple calendars makes it into the next realease. This is one feature that I've wanted for a long time and have never had the time to code in myself. I guess time will tell. Thanks to those of you who work on evolution, it's a great product.

Whither WCAP?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

One of the things holding back open source groupware is the absence of stuff that does true client/server group calendaring and scheduling. This shouldn't be the case -- the Netscape/iPlanet/SunONE calendar server has been talking WCAP for ages, and the calendar client in Netscape 4.7 spoke WCAP fluently. The protocol is well-documented. So why hasn't Ximian stepped up to the plate and implemented it?

Re:Whither WCAP?

[Dr. Smeegee]

They are waiting for Cit/UX groupware to be finished so they can see the right way to do it.

Re:Whither WCAP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ximian already wrote a 'connector' for SunONE... maybe that speaks WCAP? Apparently they gave the rights to sell it to Sun tho, so you'll have to buy it from sun.com (or maybe it is free, I dunno)

Re:Whither WCAP?

[Wesley Felter]

Maybe they don't support WCAP because it's a single-vendor stopgap protocol; the standard protocol (CAP) will be finished soon enough.

Who cares? give us functionality.

[Lumpy]

#1 on every email client programmers list needs to be a universal plugin ability for spam capture and deletion. The server admins are NOT getting the job done where it should be so we are forced to use client side spam filtering. the ONLY workable solution right now is for Mozilla.

Let's add to that squishing the bugs, making it faster, and finding improvements. I dont want my email client to burtn CD's consult the CDDB when ripping to OGG or allow me to edit non-linear video... get rid of the "features" and make the email client fast, secure and useable.

GPG interface standard, spam filtering standard.

New icons and graphics and pretty things are nice but 100% worthless..

Entourage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not simply HIGify it instead stealing entourage's interface.

Quote Jeff Waugh GNOME release coordinator:

So, I think the Evolution team are already doing an awesome job tackling the next big question for GNOME user interface standards: "What about the apps?"

What kind of standards are they if you simply steal a MacOSX GUI from a different app. It would cost Ximian one employee less if they throw the person out and license (buy) entourage's GUI files. In real life Ximian rejects following the HIG thus the GNOME people have to adjust the HIG to follow Ximian's needs.

browser email clients

[A_Duck_Named_Ping]

objections to mozilla or NS4.x?

I had to switch back from Evolution b/c it seemd buggy and flaky.

I've been *stuck* with mozilla for a while (for cross platform purposes, though I do like it for other reasons.)

The only other option that seems tempting is mutt.

Re:browser email clients

[Psiren]

objections to mozilla or NS4.x?

Neither, specifically. I just haven't yet found a mail client that works the way I want it to. I don't mind Mozilla mail to be honest, but it's just not what I want.

Re:browser email clients

[vandan]

Ha!

Mozilla has it's own IMAP issues.

There is an incredibly long-standing issue with large attachments causing Mozilla to hang.

There are multiple issues with a large number of attachments, which generate ( excessively complex command ) error messages.

There are compatibility issues with .maildir IMAP mail servers - Mozilla doesn't understand their folder heirarchy and screws everything up.

There are issues with Mozilla opening a new connection for just about every action, causing many IMAP servers to start issuing 'too many concurrent connections' type error messages.

Mozilla's IMAP code is badly broken, and I'm sorry I converted all our work PCs to use IMAP, because now the problems are flooding in, and the only way to solve it is to move people back to POP3.

That's all this world needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another open source mail reader. Great.

Let us know when it's done. Or when it becomes somewhat usable, because it'll probably never get done. And therefore, it'll probably suck as bad as every other one.

Re:That's all this world needs.

[elmegil]

And where the hell did I say it was going to be open source? Or even released to anyone but me?

One key Outlook feature missing...

[theendlessnow]

...they haven't figured out a way to automatically send an arbitrary message to everyone in your address book via some external means.

I'm not going to use it until feature complete!!

Re:One key Outlook feature missing...

[grwufwuf]

[BEGIN pre-sarcasm section] lol, good point :) [END pre-sarcasm section]

So true. Its such an inconvenience for all those who count on this feature existing in everyone else's email clients. Why doesn't Ximian learn from the choices businesses today make? I mean how else is the latest virus/worm/etc going to make it around the world before lunch time if this feature isn't in place? And congrats to M$ for their anti-spam and antivirus efforts, it seems a good place to add...

Oh wait... Don't forget to make attachments launch as applications when you click on them, especially the macros, don't forget macros... That's muy importante also...

If it isn't Outlook, then it simply isn't usable...

"Pain" Driven Interface

[RedneckTek]

I was under the impression all Microsoft interfaces were designed with maximum pain in mind.

New look Evolution

[ajs318]

I like the look of it. Obviously those static screenshots aren't going to indicate how fast the programme runs though ;-)

Evolution was the first X11 mail client I ever used {probs setting up Kmail but can't remember why anymore, since then I've got it working fine on my laptop}. "Microsoft-like" isn't a priority for me, though I can understand why it would be for some people. But it isn't the be-all-and-end-all, and if having to pretend to be MS stifles innovation, then maybe it's time for Ximian to spread their wings and fly a bit. The worst that can happen is that someone forks off a new product based on an earlier UI version.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

bugzilla.mozilla.org has been doing this for awhile

Not in the upcoming release

[valkadesh]

The next release of Evolution will be 1.6, not 2.0. In fact, Ximian's bugzilla shows 1.6 as a possible target milestone, and the evolution-hackers mailing list has messages regarding the improvements in the next 1.6 release.

Re:Not in the upcoming release

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the new UI design *is* meant for the 1.6 (or 2.0, depending on what we call it) release.

we can rebuild it.

[pyros]

Make it faster, stronger. We have the technology.

Re:we can rebuild it.

[Anonymous Coward]

A Browser Barely Alive....

Re:Screenshots

[luugi]

I think he got the message the first four times.
Notice that I wrote my message only 4 minutes after the first person posted it.

Mirror: http://acm.cs.nyu.edu/~tugrul/evo2/

[tugrul]

Calendar
Tasks
Mail
Contacts
Shrunken Navbar

It is not about which interface is better!

[byrnereese]

I only wish it was about what is the "better" way of doing things. The plain fact of the matter is that Outlook and Exchange dominate the market. Period. Simply building a better product does not mean it will sell. (Read Innovator's Dilemna, or Crossing the Chasm). What Ximian needs to focus on is how to transition customers off of Outlook onto Evolution - once they have [some] market share, then we can all discuss how to improve the interface. Bottom line: people fear change, and if Ximian requires too much change, even if it is better, people will shy away from buying it.
Therefore, I would recommend this - focus on matching Outlook feature-for-feature, focus on integrating with Exchange 5.5 (on which there is a greater percentage of companies deployed)... get rid of every reason why Outlook is better - then come at them and say, "We can transition you to a new system that requires no change for your end users - the interface is the same, the feature set is the same - AND it will cut your costs in half! (not to mention be more secure, yadda yadda yadda)" That is a story that will play really well in this economy and to IT managers and execs.

Little Difference

[Vagary]

If you rotate the list of emails and the preview pane so that they are on top of each other, how is that significantly different from how it is now?

Now (IIRC):
+---------+
|.toolbar.|
+-+-------+
|f|.folder|
|o|.cont-.|
|l|.ents..|
|d+-------+
|e|.item..|
|r|.pre-..|
|s|.view..|
+-+-------+

Outlook 2003:
+---------+
|.toolbar.|
+-+--+----+
|f|fc|....|
|o|oo|....|
|l|ln|item|
|d|dt|pre-|
|e|ee|view|
|r|rn|....|
|s|.t|....|
+-+-------+

(Isn't my ASCII art beautiful?)

Re:Little Difference

[cpeterso]

Microsoft is trying to inovate. You have to take it easy on 'em. ;-)

Re:Little Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Documents are typically longer than they are wide. The new Outlook interface would allow more of the preview to be shown.

-G

question

[Anonymous Coward]

what was so good in office 97 that it was worth and upgrade from 95? personally i think every office upgrade is worth the money if you have it.

Evolution is missing MAPI

[acidtripp101]

I have a friend who is having problems converting his workstation over to a *NIX machine because every browser in existance for *NIX is missing MAPI support, which he requires. I know that Ximian sells a package that emulates mapi stuff, but that doesn't cut it.

Keep the Out-look as a skin.

[mrmeval]

Getting people to transfer needs this till they can be weened from a fixed interface to one they can make work for them.

I'll try that.

[BillsPetMonkey]

Cool! I was using Evolution at a time when there were so many better clients around with superior multi character support - eg. Sylpheed rocks in this arena.

Overall, I find Linux multibyte input support (kinput, Canna et al.) to be a bit lacklustre. But the sound of GTK2 Pango combo in Evo 1.4 sounds worth having another try - thanks.

leaves outlook behind?

[Nightshade]

I think Outlook is leaving Ximian behind, not the other way around. have you had a look at the latest outlook screenshots? Outlook screenshots

Re:Looks like Mac OS X/Microsoft's Entourage to me

[Anonymous Coward]

you are absolutely right. mod this person up he speaks the truth! the new version of evolution is just a copy of a micrsooft mac product.

Mirror of the Mail Image

[xWeston]

Here is a mirror i setup of the Mail image only (as this is probably the most interesting).

Evolution 2.0 Mail Screenshot Mockup

I lowered the quality a ton due to bandwidth concerns but the idea is still seen easily.

Evolution does support multibyte characters

[Chuck Chunder]

I have no idea what they mean, but I get spam in one asian character set or another fairly frequently.

Ugly as Windows

[UtSupra]

This is my main beef with free software interfaces... They copy the windows interface which I think is very ugly
Invent your own or copy better interfaces, guys.
You have to know who to steal from...

Re:Ugly as Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Invent your own or copy better interfaces, guys.

Since you seem to know alot about interfaces, can you show us what you have come up with?

Oh, I see. You don't design interfaces. What's wrong with the Windows interface other then it is "ugly. WHY is it ugly?

Be a little more constructive in your criticism, jerkoff.

What's next?

[twener]

First menu shadows, now mockups. What will be the next GNOME headline? That one developer has the idea to add an option?

Usability research and testing

[c0d3h4x0r]

There is one problem with straying from the Outlook user interface: Evolution's developers will need to instead conduct their own usability research and testing, which can be costly and may not be something they are good at.

Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, the fact is that they perform thorough usability research and testing on all their software. A frustrated individual may question or complain about the interface of Outlook, but that interface was methodically refined and evolved to meet the needs of the widest majority of users, not that one user's preferences.

The single biggest failing in Microsoft's approach to usability is overkill. They make everything far more complex than it needs to be. For instance, in nearly every Microsoft program there are at least 4 different ways to accomplish the same task (window menu, shortcut key, toolbar icon, context menu). Ridiculous, and more than your average person can (or wants to) wrap their brain around.

Personally, I don't think much research or rocket science is necessary to create a usable program. Just follow the KISS philosophy ("keep it simple, stupid") and you'll be 90% on the right track. The critical part is to test the design against as many real, average users as you can, and seriously incorporate their feedback into your design (even if it seems contrary to your personal feelings about how the program should work).

Or, put even more simply: Give people what they want, not what you want to give them.

Re:Usability research and testing

[UtSupra]

Or, put even more simply: Give people what they want, not what you want to give them.
In my, limited, experience this is almost always the wrong approach, people do not know what they want, they ignore there are options to the crap that Microsoft pushes on them. Sometimes showing something different makes them say... wow. Simplicity is a good principle, though.

Re:Usability research and testing

[c0d3h4x0r]

In my, limited, experience this is almost always the wrong approach, people do not know what they want

True, people sometimes don't know what they truly want, or don't know how to verbalize it. That is part of the challenge: to develop studies and tests that do a good job of identifying what people really want. But you should still try to find out what people want and give it to them.

they ignore there are options to the crap that Microsoft pushes on them.

Most people know that alternatives exist, but they don't see any of them as compelling enough to switch. Nearly anyone who knows about Windows PCs knows about Macintosh PCs, for instance. If an alternative OS comes along one day that actually offers things that are compelling enough to everyday people, then they will switch in droves.

Re:Usability research and testing

[Anonymous Coward]

what people *want* is complexity. they may not realise it, but they do. "I want an option for this so once a blue moon I can do that" "I want a feature for this" "Can't that be an option?" "How about an option for this?"

KISS sounds great on paper, but I have yet to see many people who can actually apply KISS to a UI. There are just some applications that don't map easily to KISS.

groupware being one of them...

anyways, I'm not saying you're wrong... just that you are naive in UI design.

if you don't believe me, just try designing a UI for a groupware suite such as Evolution or whatnot. I'm sure that you will quickly find it's not as simple as it sounds.

Re:Usability research and testing

[c0d3h4x0r]

What people want is simplicity and power. Contrary to popular belief, those are not mutually exclusive. They can and should coexist in a well-designed desktop appplication.

A program's capabilities should be categorized by usage level in the user interface. For example, commonly used features should all be listed together, rarely used features should all be listed together, and power-user features should all be listed together. Microsoft tried to address this problem (but used an entirely awful approach that creates even worse issues) when it introduced "personalized menus". I've seen few other attempts at addressing this issue, but good solutions are desperately needed by users overwhelmed by feature bloat in the user interface.

All simple applications can map to simple user interfaces. Unless you're designing a program to control a nuclear power facility, fly the space shuttle, or perform scientific simulations, you don't have much excuse for generating the type of interface complexity that comes out of Microsoft on a regular basis.

Evolution Screenshots cache / mirror of mockups

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a mirror / cache of the mockup screenshots. Not all of them are up there yet but I'll put them up as soon as I get them

evo2_contacts.png
evo2_calendar.png
evo2_mail.png
evo2_tasks.png
evo2_navbar_shrunk.png

Re:Evolution Screenshots cache / mirror of mockups

[Tharn]

That Laura is one chatty gal, no?

Re:Evolution Screenshots cache / mirror of mockups

[Anonymous Coward]

what in the hell are you talking 'bout mofo?!

Re:Evolution Screenshots cache / mirror of mockups

[Jordy]

As I said in another thread. This interface is *very* similar to Microsoft Entourage. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but Entourage does a few other nice things to refine it a bit. Some screen shots of Entourage:

Address Book w/ small buttons

Mail

Calendar

Re:Evolution Screenshots cache / mirror of mockups

[rvsrvs]

So why smudge the guy's email address in the top pane of the address book, but leave his email and PHONE NUMBER in the bottom? :^)

[OT] changing sent and drafts on mail.app

[petard]

I changed my sent and drafts (OS X 10.2) by highlighting the mailbox I wanted to use, going to the "Mailbox" menu, and selecting "Use Selected Mailbox for" -> the option I wanted. Interestingly enough, mail.app appears to update all its message counts during its message cycles for me too, but I don't recall doing anything to cause that. (I have new messages distributed into approx. 15 folders.) It only shows the ones in the inbox(es) in its dock biff, however.

HTH-

petard

Bwahaha

[DCMonkey]

My God, your right!

http://www.bannister.org/xxx/entourage/index.htm

ROFL

Re:"GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE"

[Anonymous Coward]

you can tell who the real gay niggers are just by reading the review thread on imdb.org! LOL

LDAP support

[po_boy]

I wonder if they'll allow me to specify my LDAP contacts database as my default source with this new eye candy. Currently, I have to make new contacts in my own database and then move them to the LDAP server.

All images uploaded

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay I have all the images now. Enjoy.

Looks very good and very clean!

[wizardmax]

A fiew things would be nice, like importers from outlook, so MS users can migrate.

you are a lier

[Anonymous Coward]

you havnt done jack shit, you are just spouting crap to get karma.

Re:you are a lier

[Anonymous Coward]

you havnt done jack shit, you are just spouting crap to get karma.

Yep. That's me, always thinking about the karma.

No, I haven't YET done jack shit, because it was only TODAY that fucking evolution blew out on me with no recovery (reinstall it, nuke all my gnome and evo directories, still doesn't fucking work). Sorry that I couldn't spring a full-blown-open-source-magical mail client on you after 4 hours spent trying to get Evolution to fucking work instead.

what a chump.

[Anonymous Coward]

please, go write your own client, at least that will tie you up for the next few years so we dont have to read your imbicilic whineing anymore.

Re:what a chump.

[elmegil]

please, go write your own client, at least that will tie you up for the next few years so we dont have to read your imbicilic whineing anymore.

What, too stupid to understand how to use the slashdot features to avoid having to read what I say, and too much of a coward to even say who you are? Definitely someone I feel obligated to please.

I really fail to see how it's whining to say that Evolution has a pretty face already but doesn't fucking work, and Moz et. al. may work most of the time but their interfaces suck.

yes it does, chump-dick-eat-vagina-u

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ enjoy your days with much time!

lol... good one (no text)

[ptr2void]

Hey I said there was no text...!

New Look

[StarHeart]

Ugh, the new look seems pretty ugly. I am really not fond of the huge square buttons. Though it is hard to tell the rest without a decent gtk2 theme. I am fond of Crux myself. I use it for gtk1 and gtk2.

I am actually pretty happy with the current layout of everything. The thing I would like to see is to fix all the little annoying bugs, especially the ones that cause it to hang. They have started on them with 1.4.3, like the messages still show in the preview window after deletion till you expunge it or click on a different message.

Learn XUL you fucking baby.

[Anonymous Coward]

All the functionality in the world doesn't make up for an interface I can't stand.

So change it. Christ, what a crybaby.

Re:Learn XUL you fucking baby.

[elmegil]

So change it. Christ, what a crybaby.

I believe I mentioned I planned to write my own? Fuck learning a new language just to customize a browser that wants to be an email client. Like being able to customize mozilla is going to take me far professionally.

No S/MIME

[bivaughn]

Evolution/Connector would certainly be a killer app for me and allow me to move away from Windows/Outlook, but without S/MIME support, it's a no-go. Lots of financial institutions are moving to S/MIME as well, not just computer firms like mine. Come on X guys, give us something more standardized than GPG!

-biv

Don't give up chance to replace Outlook

[drmike0099]

In my opinion, Evolution is one of the primary contenders (if not the primary contender) for an Outlook-replacement. It's been mentioned here in multiple threads before that Outlook, especially the calendar, is the primary reason an Outlook-based enterprise remains on Outlook and doesn't switch to something else. Evolution could change that.

However, there are significant barriers to a change of that nature. On top of the already significant change to a Linux desktop is the fact that the actual applications people use (i.e. Outlook primarily, with some Word and Excel thrown in) also change. Now, there are perfectly adequate replacements for Word and Excel and most other Windows applications. The Outlook Calendar has no such enterprise-level replacement.

My suggestion would be to emulate Outlook as closely as possible without breaking any laws in order to lower the barrier to Linux and Evolution adoption in an enterprise. Once you actually have a market share, then start tweaking things. The first few enterprises to make the leap are really sticking their necks out to make a change to the Calendar, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Don't make a totally new GUI and make it harder.

That all being said, however, the screenshots of the GUI are not all that different from the Outlook view currently. They're pretty different from Outlook 2003, though, so having the two options in there would be a good idea. Better yet, make the GUI configurable with three presets ("Outlook 2000 style", "Outlook 2003 style", "Evolution style") so it's easy for an enterprise to set them all up for whatever their users are used to.

Module Based Pulg-Ins

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow modules and have a plugin interface, allowing other to write and adapt modules for this email client. I seen some people asking for better email filtering, a summary plugin etc.. why not make it moduler?

My 2 cents on Evolution

[bsands]

I really think evolution should try and keep a similar feel to Outlook at this stage. With Outlook so entrenched on the desktop; a similar feel is a great way to convince people to convert. My only criticism is Ximian is pricing their exchange connector way too high in my opinion. I would love to use Evolution to access my work email. However, at 69 bucks for a single user license there is little incentive to move away from Outlook; which so many have already paid for. If they considering pricing it around the 20 dollar range, maybe they would make up the difference on volume.

Feature catch-up

[babbage]

YES, but does it have DROP-SHADOWS?

I'm not buying it if it doesn't have DROP-SHADOWS.

YOW!

Evolutourage

[kitzilla]

Yup, looks very much like Entourage (the Mac version of Outlook).

Evolution 1.4 was reasonably attractive, if not a bit slow. There's little there which would lure me from Kmail, though, since I prefer standalone clients.

My main problem with Ximian (in general) is the violence done by installing XD2 on Red Hat 9 and SuSE 8.2. On RH, it damaged my KDE desktop. On SuSE, it rendered the system unstable. I'm afraid to chance a standalone Evolution install.

Re:XImian's logo looks like a self-spanking monkey

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate that logo too. Like so many open-source logos it's too cultural (others are the BSD daemon, the GNU logos, Penguin, OpenBSD's logos, etc.).

The monkey is scary looking. Looks like a devil monkey or something, I hate it. In fact, I know it sounds stupid, but for the most part I don't use anything Ximian related because of the scary (offensive) logo. Same for BSD.

Real companies know this and usually pick non-cultural logos that don't offend people. Open-source projects need to take the hint.

Sigh

[i_really_dont_care]

Instead of trying to longhorn (tm) the interface they'd better implement the notes component, finally.

Offensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't use anything Ximian related because of the scary (offensive) logo.

Offensive? How is a spider monkey offensive or scary?

Methinks you've been watching too much "Planet of the Apes".

200 Baud.

[Ayandia]

Trying to download these images reminds me of when I practically had to whistle into my phone to check my mail.

Thank god for progress...and Slashdot's nostagia-inducing ServerPain(TM).

starting to look like Entourage?!

[Anonymous Coward]

... especially with the small/large toolbar buttons option. The mail preview interface feels like a cross between Entourage X and Mac OS X Mail (without the folder drawer). As far as style goes, I'm liking what I see so far!

Funny

[jasenko]

"What do you think about a maturing Evolution that goes its own way and leaves the Outlook-like interface behind?"

It looks awfully similar to Entourage Microsoft's product for Macs.

to answer the poster's question

[nuintari]

Although this is mostly eyecandy, this could be the right time to make yourself heard. What do you think about a maturing Evolution that goes its own way and leaves the Outlook-like interface behind?

I think it is about f'ing time, tiem that we all realized that easy does not just mean familiar, it means well thought out ideas. Outlook's interface is fairly decent for some, but it does have its faults. Simple copying it is no way to make a new product, not even on a different platform. You have to make it stand out for its own simplicity of use, overshadowing a powerful tool that newbiews and power users alike can appreciate.

Re:to answer the poster's question

[nuintari]

...then you finally find the pics mirror, and becoem sorely disapointed, and retract your previous statement of satisfaction.

Its still Outlook, its still a clone, and its still seriously disapointing.

*Cough*

[arashiken]

Check out Microsoft's Entourage email program for OSX.

address book

calendar

remind you of anything?

Feature Suggestion

[HelbaSluice]

....And this one's a killer!

mutt Emulation Mode!

Don't ask them to show up for a demonstration

[geomon]

They will bail on you.

cool..

[Suppafly]

It's good to see something that has all of the features of Outlook, but its nice to see they are improving the interface.. I've often thought it should be possible to make a better interface for viewing mail.

Re:XImian's logo looks like a self-spanking monkey

[Saeger]

I know IHBT'd, but I just gotta say that I hate your marketroid viewpoint.

"too cultural", you say? I fail to see what's wrong with having some authentic culture show through VS. the alternative: boring corporate bile.

Much better to offend a few anal drones like yourself, than to put everyone to sleep with an impersonal, unoffensive lowest common denominator.

(And to spout an outdated meme: Get with the Clue Train.)

--

mutt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someday, y'all will see the light and use a text-based MUA like Mutt. Evolution is nice eye-candy, but it's possible to be so much more productive when you have a streamlined, text-based UI.

Re:mutt!

[Anonymous Coward]

yea... too bad mutt doesn't use evolution's mail backend (camel). if mutt used camel, it would not take so damn long to open my mbox files anymore... ugh !

Start from scratch...

[trboyden]

I was very disappointed in the result of the Ogo project. What started out as the Outlook/Exchange killer ended up being just another "sure I'm free except to make me work you have to buy a license" project. I think the Open Source community need to band together and start from the ground up on a new cross-platform email client and server that is standards based and has all the functionality of an Exchange setup. I can't program, but I'd be willing to organize and manage if there is interest by programmers out there to join such a project. I think a good Exchange replacement would use IMAP for it's communication protocol, MySQL for the backend message store, and some good coding and user interface testing with plenty of documentation for a start. Ideally I think a good PIM should be an all-in-one app like Outlook, but the UI could be done a lot better. Managing multiple apps from a systems admin point of view can be hell when they all have their own little quirks.

Re:XImian's logo looks like a self-spanking monkey

[0racle]

BSD's demon isn't offensive, it's a play on words, and ask most people it's the cutest logo for a computer system they've seen. It's a sad state of affairs when a monkey (Ximian, get it?) is offensive. It's just a logo, and quite an apt one. I assume you approve of the Debian swirl thing, as long as they don't include Tux, as I see you don't seem to like penguins. Sure it can't be construed as offensive without some serious thought, but what does it mean, how does it symbolize the Debian Project? And why stop there? What about the Enron 'E', its a little crooked, seems we should have known they were up to something, or IBM's, I mean with those parts missing, my god its down right shady, should I not trust IBM's products now? The logo for MS windows isn't non-cultural as you say because they wanted to appeal to a large audience but because it's a Window, it made sense. Apples is an apple because, well the Steve's didn't think that a pomegranate would be a good image for a company named Apple, oh and notice that little Byte out of it, see humor, something it seems you lack. A logo should be something that embodies the entity it represents, while ideally being something that is easily recognizable. The people obviously have a thing about monkeys, who else would choose the word Ximian for their project, or mono for a C# implementation. They like monkeys, it's their project name, so obviously their logo is also a monkey. The BSD's demon is humor along the same lines as Apples, so it makes perfect sense to those who use it. If you want to deprive yourself of good software because a monkey scares you, that's up to you, but these logos and images do encompass the projects they represent, and for those who know, for example the users, they make sense

How long before they start copying Outlook 11?

[melted]

I saw their beta - this thing blows everything else FAR away in terms of convenience.

My Monitor is Crooked

[Vagary]

So will we eventually all switch back to the vertical, paper-sized monitors like they had on the Apple Lisa?

Re:LDAP support.. It's there

[EMR]

Um.. They've had that support in there since 1.2..
I have my LDAP server as the main and only source for contacts on my setup..
Just change it in the "Default Folders" tab in the configuration..

How 'bout anti-aliased fonts?

[vivshank]

Only way I'm gonna move to Evolution is when I can get AA fonts. Is it possible to get hold of the source and compile with xft-enabled?

Re:How 'bout anti-aliased fonts?

[Anonymous Coward]

evolution 1.4 supports AA fonts out of the box.

looks a bit like

[BenLutgens]

Entourage.

Wow.

[BHearsum]

That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Looks exactly like my mail client

[Anonymous Coward]

It does look exactly like my mail client. It's called KMail: http://kmail.kde.org/art/screenshot_main.png Nice to see they caught up :)

Re:Bland & Grey

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this a troll? It's simply an opinion.

The screenshots ARE boring.

Nothing stands out. I have no idea where to look first.

Outlook-like interface??

[Trevin]

Why does it have to look like Outlook to begin with? Why not Eudora-like, or Netscape Mail-like, or NeXTMail-like, or -*gasp*- have its own completely original interface!

I think the name Evoluion is highly appropriate. We should be able to just take the best features from every existing mail program, apply a well-established set of user interface guidelines, and combine it all to come up with something really great. Then repeat the process with the new batch of programs for the next evolutionary step.

have you vagina eaten today?

[Anonymous Coward]

get to it!

There is a better choice

[ErixTr]

Try "Evo VII" from Mitsubishi.

Everybody's Favorite Graphical Mail Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing we're not biased here.

Re:XImian's logo looks like a self-spanking monkey

[dytin]

You... have been trolled, sorry to say, but next time just don't respond to anonymous coward trolls like that.

QT please...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope we will see a QT version of Ximian Evolution, because I don't like GTK2. All these different toolkits just make things look non-uniform throughout distros.

Toolbar goodness, please

[steveha]

To make me happy, please add these features to the toolbars:

Next to the delete button, a "spam" button. This would delete the mail message, but also flag the message as a spam. You should be able to customize this to run your local spam filter training script.

In the message display toolbar, there should be a button that loads images. By default, Evolution does not render any HTML that puts a hit on a server; this is a great feature, because spammers do use tricky URLs that encode your email address. When their server gets a hit from the URL with your address encoded, they know your email address is good, and you get more spam. Currently, the "Load Images" command is in a menu, and is not available with one click. "Load images" should also be in the context menu (the "right-click" menu). For extra credit, Evolution should remember that you already loaded the images, and if you go back again it should be able to get the images from the browser cache, not have to hit the server again as it currently does.

There should also be a View Source button, which when clicked would open the source for the current message in a new window. This would make it easy to check the full headers or otherwise see what an email has hidden inside it. (Currently, this functionality is available only as a global toggle which is dumb. You have to choose normal view, full headers view, or source view, and then after you are done looking at one message you have to go back and choose your default view again.)

The message display window toolbar needs a button that toggles the displayed message between a fixed font and a proportional font. By default, I want to look at my messages in a proportional font like Times Roman. But for those occasional messages with ASCII art, it would be nice to be able to flip it into a Courier font. Note that when the user prints the message, it should respect the current selection for proportional or fixed font. For extra credit, the setting should be remembered: if you get a message and click it over to fixed font, it should stay in fixed font forever until you change it back.

The message search feature is cool, but it could be better: by default, it should search both the Subject: header line and the From: header line (or, for the Sent folder, the To: line). If it searched both, I would almost never have to click on the selector that controls what it searches. Right now, I usually have to click on that.
To all the people working on Evolution: It's great! Please keep up the good work.

steveha

Now it's not Outlook, it is Entourage

[palndron]

Looks like the office for mac osx mail program now.
Way to inovate.

Outlook replacement in business

[agentofchange]

The cost of training people to use new software in business can be huge.

Event the same program with a different GUI can throw a lot of users.

Having said that, I think its not such a good idea to change the GUI.

Having a familiar interface makes the change over outlook to evolution much easier.

It may even be a deal breaker for using Linux at all. It would be nice if they provide a skins/GUI choice... more work though.

Buat to outlaw Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

...especially in schools! Too bad, beKuz he neads a good spelcheker.

Don't laugh - I use pine

[gosand]

I gave up on Evolution when I tried the version that shipped with Red Hat 7.3. I also took one look at Kmail at the time and decided to pass. Mozilla Mail was overall faster, easier to configure, far less bulky, and part of the browser (lighter). It's spam filtering capability is also a must - as is it's security and presentation options. The only thing I liked about Evolution was the little configurable main page, where you could put in your favorate news-feeds or weather forecasts and what not. It also crashed harder then Outlook on a p133 with 16MB of RAM and Windows 98 First Edition.

I'd have no idea what Outlook was like if I wasn't forced to use it at work. The only thing I like about Outlook is the calendar portion of it. The rest is crap.

At home I use pine. Yeah, that pine. I have tried the following email clients: Kmail, Moz, Opera - yet I always come back to pine. While on vacation in Paris, I was able to pay a couple Euros at an internet cafe, download PuTTY, and check my email over ssh, all in about 2 minutes. No downloading of messages, and more importantly attachments. No worries about viruses or flashy garbage html. I do get some spam, but it is quick to delete and add to my own ruleset if I see a pattern. I use fetchmail to pull all of my various accounts into one place. I can even check it over a 56k when visiting my parents, and it isn't too slow.

The one drawback may be attachments, but if I am at home, I have applications set up to view those. If I am remote, I can always save them off and download them if I really need to via ftp or http.

For me, simplicity rules. For work, I can see why you would need some of the features - but for the most part, it is just fluffy packaging.

STILL no memos/notes???

[macemoneta]

The memos piece has been missing forever. Can't display memos synced from PDA. That's one Outlook feature I used heavily.

Juno

[Patik]

That looks a lot like Juno's concept.

Good to see their are GUI programmers out there...

[devhen]

Why the hell does everyone copy the Office XP and Windows XP GUI's anyway? They're ugly and make no sense as far as a GUI is concerned. Everytime I use Office XP I get the impression that the toolbar buttons aren't actually supposed to act like this, its a mistake. But no, Microsoft actually decided on this ugliness. So whay do you know, virtually every Windows program on the market tries to look like Office XP which itself is ugly but when you give a halfassed try to recreate that ugly look its even worse. Come on! We're programmers here! We know how GUI should look and feel. How stupid is it to follow Microsoft's drunken footsteps in this regard. They are sorry excuses for programmers. Hats off to Ximian, I think they should definately use the new look/feel. ;D

Re:XImian's logo looks like a self-spanking monkey

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely.

A lot of those logos are just unprofessional looking. It's no wonder why many open-source projects will never "make it". It's amatuer work done by amatuers. Just look at the comments in this thread, haha, you guys can't even see how wrong you are.

Poll for shortcut bar

[too_bad]

I find the shortcut bar in evolution *very* convinient since I can put a bunch of mail and calendar
folders there and keep track of them. Now this thread argues that not many users use this feature.
I want to know how many slashdot users use this feature. Vote by replying to this message.

Re:MODERATE THIS CLOWN DOWN

[Feztaa]

He's linked to the old screenshots! I won't rest until this guy is Score -1, Uninformative

Would you settle for -1, Informative? :)