Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ximian Evolution's New Clothes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the darling-you-look-wonderful-tonight dept.

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?"

3 of 395 comments (clear)

  1. Separating from Outlook by dlosey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:clothes? by good+soldier+svejk · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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?
    --
    It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man

    -James Baldwin
  3. Re:no spam filter? by Mr.Ned · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.