new look for fastmail

[Brian L]

I can't describe exactly what it is about the new format, but I really dislike it. Perhaps the way that long pages behave. It there any possible way to use the old look (or closest) without having to go through the hoops of jiggering my own code? I've read the instructions for that, and am not really ready to surrender when I bork the .js for some stupid reason.

Why isn't there a simple catalog of themes in the same vein that was available years ago (some were way ahead of the 'themes' now available for FF and Chrome, and quite useful)

Any real help would be appreciated.

[hadaso]

Have you tried the "Concise" stylesheet?

I use it together with color/font changes published in the forum some time ago (I don't remember when. It's a theme that uses "Concise" with the colors of the "Standard" stylesheet. Perhaps it is the same as the "compact default" style sheet posted on the wiki), and some tweaks of my own, but it's quite usable on its own, and looks quite similar to the old interface.

Originally Posted by Brian L

Why isn't there a simple catalog of themes in the same vein that was available years ago

That's a very good question! My opinion is that there should be one or two additional degigns available, and several color/fonts variants on each (the design of the new interface allows breaking the design into parts. The preferences screen can be changed to allow a two step choice of "basic style" and then "variant" and that would provide a lot of variety for people to choose from, and perhaps would encourage more users to create "variants" rather than "tweaks").

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by Brian L

Why isn't there a simple catalog of themes in the same vein that was available years ago (some were way ahead of the 'themes' now available for FF and Chrome, and quite useful)

Any real help would be appreciated.

You mean this site? It was setup by Gankaku but not heavily maintained anymore according to this post. Maybe she listen?

[Graemedavis]

Also very unhappy with the new look now I've more or less been booted off the "old" interface. It strikes me as abysmal design - hard to read, lots of wasted screen, easy to click the wrong line because of the ineffective two blues colour scheme, and the float of the inbox over the left margin (search, folders etcetera) is very irritating. Is there any straightforward way to get an alternative screen design? The link above gives a series of alternative looks but they appear to be defunct. I'm looking to stop the inbox floating and maybe use some sort of green theme -and get rid of the absurd "welcome to Fastmail" bar which takes up a chunk of screen without doing anything useful. The concise style (mentioned above) seems the least bad option - lets call it dire rather than abysmal.

I'm surprised that a paid for email service has come up with this lack of choice.

Any help would be great, but I'm thinking I've got to find myself another email provider because I'm finding this all but unusable.

[KevinW]

I'm not 100% sure but I think by floating inbox you mean that the left side bar is auto hiding and then reappearing when you mouse over to it. If this is the case and you want it always displayed then scroll down to the very bottom of that side bar, there should a "Stop hiding the sidebar" link.

[Graemedavis]

Thanks Kevin - that works. Graeme_

[erimess]

Well, here's a question along the same lines. Mine defaulted to staying put. I tried clicking that thing at the bottom and now see how it "floats." That is EXTREMELY annoying. Anything that changes when I run my mouse over it and moves around is really, really, really annoying. It's nice to have it out of the way, but not nice that it appears to be the only way to get rid of the thing.

Here is one of my biggest hatreds of the new interface. I want the sidebar there when I'm looking at my folders. When I'm reading or composing (i.e. in an email), I want it gone! I don't really care if the mail screen takes up the whole screen and is wide - I care that the left side ends up "indented" and is not against the left side of the screen. i.e. I hate having the folder list there when I'm in an email. HATE IT!

I was hoping this thread was something about a solution to this problem. (since that little button is very small and hiding down at the bottom - how the heck you expect anyone to notice it????) But this isn't the solution cause I hate the floating thing even more.

So any way to set it to not be there when I'm in an email, but have it there while I'm looking at my folders? In other words, the way the old interface was.

Really, that one change would make a world of different in how much I hate the new interface.

[erimess]

And while we're at it, is there a way to change the font for reading an email? I see the option for the composing. (Though it's awful tiny for being "medium." Don't tell me - all young people did this cause us people over 40 can't read this stuff.) But I see no way to change the one in the reading of emails, and it's terrible. I can hardly read anything.

Since I don't use the new interface much, I don't really recall that font. But that one thing by itself could chase me away because I quite literally can't read it. So how am I supposed to read emails with such a terrible font? I'm forced (hopefully temporarily) into the new interface due to the disappearance of the stylesheets on the old, but I can't freakin' read anything!

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by erimess

Here is one of my biggest hatreds of the new interface. I want the sidebar there when I'm looking at my folders. When I'm reading or composing (i.e. in an email), I want it gone! I don't really care if the mail screen takes up the whole screen and is wide - I care that the left side ends up "indented" and is not against the left side of the screen. i.e. I hate having the folder list there when I'm in an email. HATE IT!

There's a tweak for it: Remove sidebar in message view
For general info about JS tweaking see Setup.

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by erimess

Since I don't use the new interface much, I don't really recall that font. But that one thing by itself could chase me away because I quite literally can't read it. So how am I supposed to read emails with such a terrible font? I'm forced (hopefully temporarily) into the new interface due to the disappearance of the stylesheets on the old, but I can't freakin' read anything!

Change the font size in your browser or use the zoom function.

[Chris_D]

This morning I have found that the old interface has been modified so that I can no longer distinguish unread emails from read ones. Perhaps these changes are intended to drive me away from the old interface to the new one which I loathe.

In fact what it is doing is driving me away from Fastmail, which has served me well for many years.

[Chris_D]

I now find that I can't tag all the emails on a page by clicking the box at the top, and all the "Help" links give "Not Found".

Fastmail is completely broken. I've been a member for so many years that I can't remember how long, paying money for an excellent service. No more. Ironically I have used Opera as my web browser for even longer than that, but perhaps their purchase of Fastmail has been the cause of this disaster.

I'll answer my own question: yes, it's time to look for a new email provider.

[newcrest]

Originally Posted by Chris_D

Perhaps these changes are intended to drive me away from the old interface to the new one which I loathe.

In fact what it is doing is driving me away from Fastmail, which has served me well for many years.

I feel the same way. What a great business plan: annoy and alienate your long serving customers.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

There's a tweak for it: Remove sidebar in message view
For general info about JS tweaking see Setup.

Thanks for the info, but this is the type of thing I was referring to... somewhere. This is touted as being so customizable and having all these great new abilities, but you have to screw with java script to do them. For the average person who goes into options, there isn't anything new about it that I can see and in fact, seems more limiting in some ways. For the average user, they don't even know this stuff is there.

So I have to take my time out to figure out how to do this stuff (I imagine a lot of these other tweaks I hear about are the same issue), and take the time to do it. And how the heck does one upload something to an email folder anyway? (This is even considering that I'm semi-nerdy, and can upload using ftp to my web site, but uploading to an email folder?)

So in order to get all this great new stuff people are bragging about, you have to turn into super geek and waste a bunch of time. I thought that's what I was paying Fastmail to do, no?

[erimess]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

Change the font size in your browser or use the zoom function.

That's one of the first things I did - it doesn't change anything in an email message. And furthermore, no matter how big, that's just a lousy font to read, period. What happened to good old Arial, like the composing screen uses? (I'm already using a lower resolution than most people - I don't feel like changing the font size for one lousy site when most of them are fine.)