i want new features in 2007!!!!

[b7j0c]

okay fastmail people, you have my money and my gratitude but i want more features!

- provide openid hosting

- give me php5/mod_perl etc for my "web links" hosting area. i know you are hesitant to get into hosting, but many hosting companies are providing email services like yours for about the same cost, compete!

- give me a notepad feature with some steriods. i like having the simple option available, but i would also like something like the dojo rich editor integrated in a notepad-plus like environment

- double my storage and bandwidth allocations for the same cost. come on, disks are getting cheaper for you every day, pass some of that on to me.

- more???

i love this service but the features are getting stale, and yes i expect more from you than i would get from gmail, i can get gmail for free.

[Terry]

Please may we have....not I wan't. I have a gmail acc I know which I prefer.

just my 2 c worth

[walesrob]

Hmmmm..."give me..... I want..."

I also used to have a Gmail account (and Hotmail, Yahoo) and Fastmail is far better than any of them, end of story.

[robmueller]

I think 2007 will be a better year for new features. 2006 was a big year of infrastructure work that I'm happy now seems to be going well...

Rob

[b7j0c]

i am not disputing that fastmail is superior to gmail, i am a fastmail user too, at the highest service bracket (and i would pay even more to upgrade even higher if there was a bracket above mine with useful features)

i don't think its snotty to request features, fastmail is not a charity, the developers need to know what will retain and attract users.

[hadaso]

Originally posted by b7j0c
- give me a notepad feature with some steriods. i like having the simple option available, but i would also like something like the dojo rich editor integrated in a notepad-plus like environment

It has been suggested in the past (by prog) that the notepad can be implemented as an IMAP drafts folder, which would then allow access to it using an IMAP client, would allow html formating of text, attaching files and anything that can be done with email messages (and perhaps also having subfolders of the notepad to add directory tree structure to the notepad).

Another thing that can be implemented in a similar way is delayed sending: a "drafts" folder with email that have future "date" headers so that whenever a message is stored there sending is scheduled according to the "date" header, and whenever this header is changed delivery of the email message is reschduled (so the compose screen would have to have an additional action to set the "Date" header, that can be done through the "actions" menu without an interface change, and setting this field would change the action of "send" to saving the draft in the delayed mail folder an scheduling its delivery. And saving a message in that folder through an IMAP client might also trigger scheduling delivery).

[robmueller]

I would like to add future delivery. The actual implementation of composing the emails wouldn't be too hard, though having some way to specify a date in the future might be a bit annoying (I'm sure some people want just "in 10 days" and others want "exactly at xyz"). The main issue is actually the fact that you need to scan a special folder in every users mailbox to look for emails with a future date set. I haven't really calculated the extra overhead that adds, and how often you might do it (every day? every hour?). You might say "You can only compose future emails from the web interface", and thus set a flag somewhere saying "this user needs to be checked for future emails", but i'm sure people would compose emails from some client, and drag them into the folder at a later stage.

It's that thing of specifying what you want, vs how to do it can be harder than you think

Rob

[hadaso]

Originally posted by robmueller
... but i'm sure people would compose emails from some client, and drag them into the folder at a later stage.

Can you make the IMAP server trigger an action when it stores a message in a specific mailbox? If you can then whenever a user puts a message in the "Outbox" (or whatever it would be called) the server could trigger an action that would record the data that says "this message needs to be sent at ...". This way you can have a separate place where you have just info about time + location of message to be sent at that time. Then when the time comes a process takes the message and sends it (or if it's not there does nothing. so you don't have to do anything if the message is deleted before having been sent). This way you can have email sending scheduled almost to exact sending. It depends of course on the ability to have the IMAP client trigger actions (another useful thing can be to have it trigger a virus scan on uploaded messages, i.e. when a user drags a message into an IMAP folder in a client the server would initiate a virus scan).

[robmueller]

Hmmm, not a bad idea. I don't believe you currently can get cyrus to give you notifications on folder changes, however, it shouldn't be too hard to add something like that to the code. It would only be "append" and "copy into" events that would need notifications sent.

Still thinking about it, there's a couple of extra issues to deal with:

1. I'd probably create a folder called "Outbox" or something like that
2. Somewhere on the compose screen, would be the ability to schedule a "future send" of a message. If you set that, then when you click Send, it would put the message in the Outbox
3. If you click on a message in the Outbox, it would open by default on the read screen, with some note about "this is a message that will be sent at...". Of course you can delete or move the message to stop that
4. You'd want some way to "re-edit" the message, which would need to put a \Draft flag back on it, and edit it again.
5. Edge cases get complex there. If you're editing a draft, it obviously shouldn't send the email again, so it should probably move the email to the Drafts folder, and edit there. If you're editing the message, and click cancel, should it move the original message back to the Outbox to send again? Probably. Again, edge cases.

The basic intent is easy to describe, but it's specifying the exact and edge case behaviour that adds quite a lot of work.

Rob

Originally posted by robmueller
5. Edge cases get complex there. If you're editing a draft, it obviously shouldn't send the email again, so it should probably move the email to the Drafts folder, and edit there. If you're editing the message, and click cancel, should it move the original message back to the Outbox to send again? Probably. Again, edge cases.

Perhaps it could be edited directly in the Outbox folder (without moving it to Drafts first)? For example:

1. There is a message in the Outbox.
2. User starts editing that message. Web interface opens the message in the Compose screen and adds \Draft flag to the copy in Outbox.
3. The delayed-sending job runs, notices the \Draft flag and does not send the message. (It assumes the Web interface will reschedule it.)
4. a. If the user clicks "Cancel": the Web interface asks the user whether to (re)schedule or immediately send the edited message. (Re)scheduling requires removing the \Draft flag.
4. b. If the user clicks "Save draft": the message is saved and moved to the Drafts folder. It already has \Draft so it won't confuse clients.
4. c. If the user clicks "Send": the message is sent.

[hadaso]

I thought about an "Outbox" as a "drafts" folder, so that clicking an email would also work by openning the message for editting, not viewing. It might even just be the "Drafts" folder with additional capability to have some messages scheduled for automatic delivery.

What happens if the user decides tto edit? It seems reasonable to postpone the sending until after the user is done editting, and this is probably what desktop clients do. However, if the user just closes the window you don't know that the user gave up editting. I had some drafts open in a web browser tab for several days.Perhaps just warn the user that the eamil is scheduled for delivery in a short time and that this needs to be disabled or postponed if the user doesn't wish the current uneditted version to be sent.

Originally posted by hadaso
However, if the user just closes the window you don't know that the user gave up editting. I had some drafts open in a web browser tab for several days.Perhaps just warn the user that the eamil is scheduled for delivery in a short time and that this needs to be disabled or postponed if the user doesn't wish the current uneditted version to be sent.

Another scenario: the user starts editing, and then for some reason their connection drops (low battery, routing bug at the ISP, ...). In such case you don't want to send the not-yet-finished version of the message.

[hadaso]

Web based calendar applications that send alerts have similar issues (the time to send an alert is reached while an entry being edited). We can test how some of them work in this situation.

The main purpose of delayed mail is not to send an email within a few minutes in the future. So it would be reasonable making the user responsible to handling these situations (i.e., warn the user that the message is scheduled to be sent soon, and let the user choose whether to disable sending until sending is enabled again by the user. Then upon saving a messsage with sending disabled ask the user wether sending should be reenabled and wether sending time is to be rescheduled. I think that with a message scheduled to be sent within a few minutes that is openned for editting the most reasonable action is to make it into a regular unscheduled email in the compose screen that is sent immediately when "send" is clicked.

[fhapgood]

Originally posted by hadaso
The main purpose of delayed mail is not to send an email within a few minutes in the future.

More specifically, at least for me the main purpose of introducing delay into email sending is error-checking. 50% of the time after I write and send an email I have a bright idea that would have made that email soo much better, if not so much less wrong. I could and sometimes do just park email in the drafts folder in expectation of such thoughts, but when I do that I sometimes I forget to send it at all. Giving my second thoughts N hours to show themselves, and then sending the email as is if I don't come by for a second pass makes sense.

However, N should be configurable on a per-message basis. There should be a default, but changing that default should be easy.

[FMRocks]

Originally posted by walesrob
Hmmmm..."give me..... I want..."

I also used to have a Gmail account (and Hotmail, Yahoo) and Fastmail is far better than any of them, end of story.

Heh, yeah, I'm of the same mind here. There are nifty little features FM has that distance itself from free Yahoo and Gmail services (not that they aren't becoming pretty good values in themselves). IMAP access (as opposed to POP), the ability to change sender email on the fly, sieve rules, redirect, forwarding based on rules (instead of just a blank forward address), etc.

Do I want to see new features? Always, it helps FM stay on top. But let's face it, FM isn't exactly suffering from a feature shortage compared to others.