For the Love of God, Just Switch Back to the Classic Interface

[jewelmind]

Here's what I just sent to support:

Hi, first a bit of feedback - I am at the moment very unhappy with the
new system. You seem to have removed some important functionality, such
as the ability to sort mail by "from" (which didn't work wonderfully,
but it was better than nothing).

Also it seems you have removed an important reply option. I have mail
from my domain, forwarded to my fastmail inbox. I used to be able to select my domain address as the "reply from" address in fastmail, so clients only ever saw one email address. This allowed me to only ever use one client to receive and send mail (fastmail), and so easily allowed me to keep my business and private email in one place,
but separated in terms of send and reply addresses. If you have removed
this option, it is a major blow to my usage of fastmail, and for the
first time ever, I find myself considering closing my fastmail account
and looking around for something else.

Also, none of the selectable themes seem to be able to add a coloured
background to the inbox, instead of the glary white screen that's faced
us since the last renovation of the system.

If there is any way to restore the options that have apparently been
removed, I would be delighted to know.

[Medina Desert]

Fastmail have staged an own-goal ambush on devoted users - like me. Like others I've lost hours of time over the past days wading through Gmail-style threaded conversations, trying to find the spell checker and having bizarre cursor and keyboard movements when typing in rich text - blind ot the fact there was the option to revert to the familiar.

Thankfully the forum I've now signed up to has managed to give me a steer back to the Classic Interface. Even that was not clearly spelt out on the log in. The comments I read as a forced new Forum sign up speak for themselves.

My Question before becoming a refugee: Will Classic devotees, unwilling to sort through the as yet unsupported interface be able to stay where we are - locked into the tried-and-tested set up? If not, when will we forced to abandon it and join the hastily rolled out "all-new" set up?

For me this is no Opera - rather a cacophany.

[William9]

Your last line is very good!

[gardenweed]

Originally Posted by BritTim

Actually, the new interface is ajax based and new messages appear without needing to click 'Refresh'. This is probably the best new feature.

I'm using Windows 7 Chrome Version 22.0.1229.94m and I find that the push functionality of the new interface often doesn't work & that I need to press the refresh button often (one does exist just right of the inbox).
(Also there is a shortcut "u" for refresh)

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by gardenweed

I'm using Windows 7 Chrome Version 22.0.1229.94m and I find that the push functionality of the new interface often doesn't work & that I need to press the refresh button often (one does exist just right of the inbox).
(Also there is a shortcut "u" for refresh)

Quite true. At the time I made that post, I was assuming the major selling point of the new interface had been tested.

[montmorencyfm]

Originally Posted by gardenweed

I'm using Windows 7 Chrome Version 22.0.1229.94m and I find that the push functionality of the new interface often doesn't work & that I need to press the refresh button often (one does exist just right of the inbox).
(Also there is a shortcut "u" for refresh)

So that's what that means! I didn't dare press it in case it did something horrible.

You really need something like this because if you leave your screen for a long time, as I often do, you won't know if what you are looking at is a fully refreshed screen, or a session that has timed out, but you don't know it yet.

[montmorencyfm]

Originally Posted by gltech

1. If you use the keyboard when possible (in other words, if you're one of the people who can do everything on a computer about 10 times faster than a mouse-only user) the shift+click to open an email in a new window is GONE. Oh yeah, you can right-click then click "Open in new window", but that's 2 clicks instead of one, PLUS the new window has a "loading" progress bar and opens 10x as slow for some reason.

2. To forward (or "reply all" and some others) an email, you now have to click "More" then "Forward" whereas you could just click "Forward" before (yes the new interface takes MORE clicks/effort/TIME). Yes I do realize there's a "forward" button at the bottom, but you have to scroll to it if the email's not short.

...and the list goes on and on.

BOOOOOOOOO!!!

How about just using the "f" shortcut? (followed by CTRL-enter to send after you've typed the address in)? (since you "use the keyboard when possible")

EDIT: Interestingly, I notice that shift+click, allthough it doesn't open a new window, it does show a progress bar and take forever to load, even though it stays in the same tab. Curious.

[montmorencyfm]

Originally Posted by labarum

Here is the well loved interface:

http://truesteel.fastmail.fm/slimsand_main.png

A Google image search finds lots more

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fa...w=1366&bih=681

Fastmail nostalgia porn. Love it!

[ChinaLamb]

Originally Posted by Medina Desert

My Question before becoming a refugee: Will Classic devotees, unwilling to sort through the as yet unsupported interface be able to stay where we are - locked into the tried-and-tested set up? If not, when will we forced to abandon it and join the hastily rolled out "all-new" set up?

The "new classic" is not going away.

Fastmail is now using its mail backbone to drive two different customer needs. 1) the technophiles traditionally drawn to fastmail and 2) those needing a high end business email service, whith a simplified interface.

Fastmail has actually been trying to meet the needs of these two groups for some time now, but the abundance of features is just too much for the average user. There are some bumps along this road to meeting two user's needs, but I believe they will ultimately pull it off.

Microsoft is doing the same thing. Outlook.com uses a dumbed down interface on top of exchange to drive the old hotmail userbase. They use a full exchange implementation for those needing enterprise mail for their Office 365 platform.

All we can do at the moment is trust fastmail/opera that they will keep their comittment not to get rid of the new classic.

[gardenweed]

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

The "new classic" is not going away.

All we can do at the moment is trust fastmail/opera that they will keep their comittment not to get rid of the new classic.

Where is this documented as commitment?
I would be pleased to see this.

I've seen is a post from a Rep saying that they have no current plans to switch off classic, but I haven't seen any Fastmail/Opera formal commitment to keeping classic - or indeed maintaining it.

[ChinaLamb]

Originally Posted by gardenweed

Where is this documented as commitment?
I would be pleased to see this.

I've seen is a post from a Rep saying that they have no current plans to switch off classic, but I haven't seen any Fastmail/Opera formal commitment to keeping classic - or indeed maintaining it.

For the time being, that is what you are going to have to go on.

[David]

The Opera team have never made any commitment (to their userbase) as to what they will do. They have never had to (in the past) as most things 'Opera' were free. Though Fastmail is paid, I suspect that the income they gain (from account sales) is a drop in the bucket to them.

Commitment and promises (of any kind) will not be forthcoming (anytime soon) I predict.

[gardenweed]

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

For the time being, that is what you are going to have to go on.

Indeed.
No commitment at all - yet.

So, hope the best - plan for the worst.

[robn]

Read what johanborg wrote here:

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...2&postcount=17

The most we can say is that we have no plans to retire Classic, and by that we really mean "no plans" as opposed to "we're thinking about it" or "we're definitely doing this".

Right now Classic is an important part of the FastMail service. It will continue to exist until such time as its no longer contributing to our goals for the service. The same can be said for any part of the FastMail service. It would be foolish for us to commit to anything more than that, because we can't predict how technology and the needs of our customers may change in the future.

[David]

Originally Posted by robn

Read what johanborg wrote here:

johanborg speaks of days, weeks, and months, I notice, which is not a long time.......