End of classical interface
 

Hello,

I see classic interface will be closed in june 2017.... I'm totally crazy about that !

3 months ago, i have explained here and in support a bug which sometimes remove 2 messages instead of 1 inside the new interface, only the classical interface avoided that. support ticket was closed.

afterthat, i picked up the phenomena here on video:

So before closing a great thing, please explain me why my finger touch deleted
message 62, 60 and 54 on the beginning of my video before viewing any even small content of these messages ?

https://youtu.be/0IbIvyEerIs

I think these are totally two different things. One seems to me a bug in the new interface (yes, no software is perfect). Closing the classic interface is too bad, but I understand.

I expected that this day was coming, and I understand the legitimate reasons why Fastmail intend doing it. I must say, though, that vivil raises a good reason why having two interfaces has value. Apart from access to functionality unavailable in the current interface, it provides an alternative when critical bugs cause the current interface to malfunction.

Everyone has access to free IMAP email clients for their PC or mobile device. Fastmail has never forced users to stay on webmail.

Bill

I think what he means is, things like you cant download an email to your HD where as you can quite easily on the old UI.
Also looking up headers some applications are missing in the current UI, there is really a long list of things that are in the old UI that are not in the current one....Lets hope they will all be added before its cut off.

Sure, you can download any email as an .eml file to your PC using the current interface. I agree it takes two steps and isn't labelled as "download message" in a menu.

• Open an email to read it.
• Click More...Forward as attachment (which converts the message to an .eml file)
• In the Compose screen, click on the attachment and save it to your PC.

I don't understand what you mean by "looking up headers some applications are missing". Email headers are not affected by the user interface, and you can view some (Extra Headers setting) or all (Show Raw Message) in the current interface. You can also search for specific headers. I think you must not have meant "headers".

Bron stated in another thread that he will work on adding anything which seems important (although rarely used by most users) to the current interface. So I think this is a very good move.
Bill

Bill in the old UI you have Show full header and show Raw message, the show full header is much nicer to use and missing in the current UI.

I find the ability to show user-selected headers is more convenient. For example:
https://www.mediafire.com/?tzd3j94de45st1l

Bill

Thank you Bill........I use header info to block a lot of junk in my wife's mail.

It's a pity, I normally use my browser without javascript and many times I need to check my email with the browser, so... another email service using only javascript. I think it's only riseup and hushmail offering an interface without javascript yet. I understand it in FM but very very bad to me :(

a malfunction reported *AND* never corrected... hard to debug i agree but...

I answer to another message which says that POP3 and IMAP4 clients still exist... for sure to avoid this big bug on video, i must switch on a new e-mail provider or choose an external software. lots of settings to have, lot of these does not permit by default to move a message on the trash... a mess.

The classical interface permits to choose another e-mail as poster and so on...

They only think to cut that ancestery method but new interface is not on the same level. period.

Yes hushmail AND safe-mail both have BASIC interfaces that work 100% w/o scripts enabled...

Parting is such sweet sorrow. The sweetness of the memories will surely linger.

Hail and farewell, my dear, dear friend.

Is there a list anywhere of the differences remaining between the old and new interfaces? I'm glad that customers have an opportunity to provide some feedback and I hope it's not going through the motions. After all, some of us have used Fastmail a long time (14 years in my case) and signed up many users.

Edit....as it was a pointless comment.

List of differences
 

I created this list and started the thread when the new interface was first introduced and as far as I can see much of what can be done in the classic interface still cannot be done with the new interface:

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=65512

It astounds me that fastmail are planning to throw away thousands of hours of development work and force their loyal users to use something that's nothing like as powerful and sophisticated as the classic interface.

The lack of that functionality will mean there's very little differentiating them from gmail or outlook.com

The new interface is also clunkier, demanding two clicks rather than one, for example to log out or get to the address book!

In my view we should campaign for them to continue to offer it, for our benefit and theirs.

Quilleron, you are so right. I wish I could have said it as well as you.

They did this once before when they discontinued the original interface.

I believe it's a fait accompli. Sadly, our pleas, no matter how strong, will fall on deaf ears.

I agree that the classical interface still supports some capabilities absent from the current interface. It also, in some instances, allows common requirements to be accomplished more comfortably than the current interface.

That said, the current interface has some very positive aspects of its own. It is much cleaner and more modern looking. From a marketing perspective, that is critically important. I can tell you, from experience talking to my customers, that it is also important to many of the long time users. The fact that the message list updates automatically as new messages arrive in the mailbox (without the need to constantly refresh the folder(s)) is a huge benefit. I have customers who receive important email into several different folders(for different business units) and being able to see at a glance when there are new messages in a folder is almost an essential requirement. While compose has very rich functionality in classic, the simpler system in the current interface is more predictable in its behavior, and better at quickly producing good looking results.

The simple fact is that the classic interface is great (in general) for power users who are more concerned with functionality than aesthetics. That is not the key demographic Fastmail now wants to market to. While we might wish otherwise, Fastmail is not going to change its mind on this. I will be sorry to see the classic interface go, but fighting for its retention is certain to be a losing battle. I think it makes more sense to decide which functions in the classic interface are really important from a practical perspective, and using the next few months to lobby for their inclusion in the current interface.

Thats the "norm" today sadly...... Take something GOOD and make it worse/intrusive.......


Its really very sad..... Some of us CANNOT USE THE NEW INTERFACE! (And dont want to as its not as good .. Its slower and a huge step backwards)

I really hope they will reconsider this.... If more ppl started using the classic interface JUST FOR NOW it might help keep it going......

I have been a FM user since 2001. In my experience the current or new interface has always been faster than the old or the classic interface, in multiple browsers and in both Windows and Mac operating systems. I can't explain how my experience differs so much from yours. And it has the great advantage of automatically updating itself as new emails arrive.

I really like and use "own" classical interface. What I mostly don't like in new interface is that I need dom storage to be activated to use it. And secondary there no possibility to use custom css, and thats classical interface killer feature. Beside, if you restricted fonts in browser, you will see utf code symbols in new interface. And thats ****ed up.
And yes , beside all effort fm try to put in new interface, it couldn't be more secure then classic, since you don't need js at all.
More above they should consider to use Subresource integrity with js/css and Subresource integrity, even when they host things on same domain.

I liked and used the custom CSS feature. I can live without it, as most of the better browsers can operate with the stylish extension that allows much the same capabilities to be supported without Fastmail's help.

I appreciate that there can be font issues with some languages but, in all honesty, I have not seen this cause a practical problem for Fastmail in manstream browsers using the current interface. Thai, Chinese and Japanese on MS Windows (Chrome and Firefox) OSX (Safari) and Linux (Firefox) have all seemed fine. Do you have an example of failure to display foreign characters correctly with the current interface?

In the past, avoiding DOM storage and Javascript was important to me. In recent years, tremendous effort has gone into improving the security of these. I am now comfortable enabling them for selected trusted sites (Fastmail being one).

I would prefer it if classic was going to remain, but Fastmail has some legitimate reasons for retiring it.

Thanks, I thought there was a list but couldn't remember for sure.

What about conducting a poll on what we value most?

For me one of the most important features is the ability to sort by nickname in the old addressbook (it's used to hold a number, not a nickname).

However there are quite a few differences. Old UI allows import of addresses into distribution lists. Last time I tried the new didn't.

Tagging contacts to add them to a list was handy in the old UI. In the new one, it's adding lists to a contact. Both are valid. Shame to have one without the other.

But some of the differences should be fixable quickly: e.g., the lack of a count for records in distribution lists in the new UI.

Caveat: I have never used the classic interface since the current one was the default when I joined FastMail.

• I would think that sorting by nickname should be easy.
• The ability to tag contacts and add to a list does exist. Check each one and then select the group.
• Import into a group does not exist. This will require 2 steps: import followed by group assignment.
• The group member counts are in the group list in settings. Probably makes sense to add them to the sidebar or at the bottom of the contacts for that group like the folder counts in email.

DS

In the old UI the compose screen is different and it shows your address book on the left hand side which I think is a lot nicer, the current one shows your folders.
I prefer the old UI style, but sadly we don't get a choice.

What reasons??????

None as far as Im concerned..... (No GOOD ones)

I am not saying I agree with the decision, but these are decent arguments:

• Devoting resources to keeping the classic interface compatible with the backend, as it changes, siphons off developer time that could be better spent (in Fastmail's view) in other areas.
• The classic interface provides an additional attack vector for crackers. Removing the interface improves security.

Fastmail claims (and I have no doubt they are right) that only a small minority of the base still uses the classic interface.

If having a second, parallel web interface is a security risk and a drain on resources, why on Earth did Fastmail set up the new interface in the first place?
If they have to drop one of the interfaces then they should drop the new one.
It doesn't work at all on my device, and in my experience of it on library computers it is inferior to Classic in almost every way.
It is a failed experiment.
They have had several years working on it and it still falls well short of the standard of functionality, speed, ergonomics and accessibility of the 'classic' interface... which itself is inferior to the original 'old' interface it replaced.
To say it has 'a modern look and feel' is vacuous.
If Ford brought out a new car that was slower, harder to drive and less comfortable than the model it replaced, they would be laughed out of town for drawing attention to its 'modern look and feel'.
Computer technology seems to be the only area of life in which people meekly accept that 'modern' inevitably means worse.
It doesn't have to be this way!

A Huge Step Backwards
 

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Something that the vast majority of web developers in the world simply don't understand. Back in 2007, Fastmail was free. Then it was $5.00/yr. Now it is $10.00/yr. for those who already have a Lite account. For others it is now $30.00/yr. for a new user basic account! Is that inflation or what? A 3000% pricing increase in about 9 years or less!

The classic interface does rings around the new one. At the end of our billing cycle in Nov. 2017 I may well move to Hushmail or Safe-Mail. Enough is enough! :(

Divide $30 by the number of days in a year, and look at the day price. If you can't stomach that, perhaps go for a free service, like GMail?`;)

Gee, I just looked at the prices for Premium accounts at Safe-Mail. Ouch.

Grhm, I agree with you. The original ("old") interface was, without question, the "crème de la crème." Oh, how I miss it!

As Jeremy Howard, one of the two co-founders of FastMail, said in these forums, Rob Mueller, the other co-founder, wrote most of the code of the original interface--an extraordinary achievement.

Indeed -- Much better!!!

Why do things always get worse?

Agreed, on all counts.

And here is another related point, from a personal perspective, if I may.

A family member of mine is happy using the classic interface. She is locked out of using the standard interface because her older browser is not supported. And before anyone asks why she doesn't simply update her browser, she couldn't further upgrade her browser even if she wanted to do so, because it is the highest version supported by her computer's OS, and further upgrading of her OS is not feasible. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that the only way for her to coninue using Fastmail after the classic interface is discontinued would be to buy an entirely new device, something she has no need or desire to do.

She doesn't need or use elaborate features and would be perfectly glad to use a 'basic' or 'minimalist' interface that provides simple access to her account without all the bells and whistles, but her browser is also incompatible with https://tiny.fastmail.com/, the 'minimalist' interface which previously afforded at least a basic login capability to users of older systems and browsers. (I'm not sure when this incompatibility took hold, but a test login using https://tiny.fastmail.com worked OK at some point during the past year, so some change must have been made fairly recently that now precludes this option, at least in her case.)

There is no intrinsic reason, either technical or economic, why such corporate decisions are inevitable. To cite several examples large and small, Gmail, EuMX, and VFEmail all make allowance for backwards compatibility which accommodate as many users as possible, including those willing to do without fancy features. Gmail offers a 'basic HTML interface' which will work with just about anything, and EuMX and VFEmail offer a 'basic' or 'minimalist' interface (available as a choice at the Horde login page). A number of other reputable and reliable providers offer similar or analogous options in connection with various webmail interfaces or as a stand-alone separate log-in option.

If providers at opposite ends of the size and resources spectrum can offer versions of this sort of simple user option, then why can't Fastmail do it? Clearly it is not economically impractical for VFEmail or EuMX to do this, and they are quite small operations, so a provider doesn't have to possess Gmail's bottomless resources to display this sort of flexibility. Why should my family member have to choose between buying a new device she does not need or sacrificing access to her Fastmail account?

I accept that backwards compatibility can realistically be taken only so far, and I acknowledge that eventually a time does come when older software and the technology that uses it must be retired and replaced. In this case, however, Fastmail has been disingenuous from the very beginning about its intentions regarding the 'old' interface, while continuously chipping away and redefining and degrading it.

I understand all the reasons given for their decisions, but their past record in this connection disinclines me to viewing their actions with much sympathy or approval.

Yes same with me.... I like my browser and do not wanna change to something I dont like....

What a beautifully written post, communicant.

Because of my browser, I, too, cannot access the standard interface, and for me to continue using FastMail, I, too, would have to buy a new PC, which I cannot afford.

(For years, I have admired your posts, because of their clarity, conciseness, and cogency. If you are not a professional writer, communicant, you definitely should be.)

Looking at that I'd say hard to reproduce too, it looks like the browser is sending two touch events in quick succession. In which case it's indistinguishable to our software from you hitting delete again. Do you have the support ticket number from when it was reported?

Yes he speaks for alot of us!!!

Thank you communicant!

I agree with communicant, but we have a solution: using an email client working with old operative systems or (if you like it) a smartphone. In my particular case I use the browser because I can be in many different places or in my job, but in your case, communicant, maybe it's a solution, I don't know. I love those simple interfaces without javascript only to send and receive emails and some other important functions, and some big companies are offering it yet.