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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that is evolved.

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.

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

[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.

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

[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.

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.

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

[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.

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...

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: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.

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.

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: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.

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?

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

[tugrul]

Calendar
Tasks
Mail
Contacts
Shrunken Navbar

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