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Microsoft Looks At Integrating Forums and E-mail

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-ideas dept.

prostoalex writes "Scott Hanselman shares a document from Microsoft Research internal Web site on Gina Venolia's latest research in user interface design. Since half of the e-mail conversations require reply and then further replies, the model is not too different from current Web forums. Future Outlook versions might integrate the nested interface for e-mail conversations." Gotta say, that'd be pretty nice to have.

5 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Uhm... by Albanach · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's interesting that Outlook forces you to use Outlook Express as a usenet client, rather than having the functionality built in. This is fairly typical Microsoft practise when they want to be able to sell you something, yet still say the functionality via open standards is available.

    For example, in Outlook there are frequent problems when using lots of IMAP folders. To share calendars etc, you need to use POP3. Microsoft, however, can sell you exchange server to replace your IMAP folders and allow you to share calendars.

    If Outlook had built in NNTP support, every office would have a local NNTP server doing this. Instead, they'll add a new feature to Outlook that will only be available if you're running it with MS Exchange. Big bucks.

  2. Re:What are the chances.... by SoTuA · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...that this excellent idea (although I believe it has been bandied about before) will still be shot down by the /. crowd for no reason other than it is from MS?

    No, it will be shot down because it has already been done (in Mozilla and Apple's Mail.app, for example, not to mention usenet).

    I have no problems with MS software. I have problems with MS claiming this is innovation, when it is playing catch-up. (like pop-up supression and tabbed browsing coming in XP SP2)

  3. Re:Why has this taken so long? by hamanu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually it is STILL just usenet.

    You see, you CAN have PRIVATE news servers with PRIVATE newsgroups using exsisting usenet technology. You just have to not specify any news peers, and require login/passwords.

    I did this years ago.

    --
    every _exit() is the same, but every clone() is different.
  4. Once again... by stubear · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...Slashbots worldwide demonstrate their ignorance and blind devotion to the grand pumbah, errr, penguin and fail to understand what this new interface is all about. Let me first state that this is not simply e-mail threading like that in many other applications, even including Outlook since at least Outlook 97, maybe even sooner but this was the first version I began using as my sole e-mail app (in Outlook: click the 'group by box' and 'field chooser' in the advanced toolbar menu and select the appropriate fields to sort e-mail by. Tres cool.) Go re-read the "Conversation Clues" section of the article for a bit more info. Here's a relevant snippet for those who can't be bothered to RTFA though:

    It doesn't stop here. Venolia has also designed the user interface to give you some metrics about your conversations - you can find out at-a-glance just who you communicate with the most, and whether you are the originator, recipient or a participant. You can also see a complete list of the attachments, URLS, and images that are found in all your messages, in case you don't want to hunt through past e-mails to find that one document or Web site reference that you want.


    Innovation does not necessarily mean invention. Sometimes innovation is merely making something that already exists work better or more accessible. Gina's UI research has definitely developed somethign innovative in the field of e-mail UI design.
  5. Re:Mozilla Has this by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What Mozilla doesn't have is a way to intergrate your responses into the message tree in your inbox. Sure, you can display stuff threaded, but it doesn't look like a conversation because it leaves out your input. I take it the proposed Outlook implementation would be different.