Has everyone gone insane? (Or: I quite like the new UI)

[gltech]

Anyone fine with the new UI is not using the pro/expert features that a lot of us signed up with fastmail for in the first place. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they keep the option for the classic (expert) UI. It's that simple.

[sslund]

Originally Posted by horatio8

#3 there is a workaround - setup a personality with *.yourdomain and when you select it from the drop down box it will allow you replace the wildcard - not sure why they took the edit button away

Re the #3 workaround -- you're only partially correct. By setting up the *.domain.com personality, there is the ability to customize the wildcard part of the email addy but NO way to customize the name that will be displayed as the sender without going into the *.domain.com personality and changing it every single time. No, thanks!

I'm sure some are sick of reading it, but this issue is keeping me trapped with the classic UI. The ability to not only use a custom email addy, but a custom From name is crucial to me. I use "Jane Doe" professionally, and sometimes "Jane Doe, Owner." For family & friends, just "Jane" works. For alumni emails, I use "Jane Smith Doe." For emails to my dd's school, class, and friends' parents, it was "Sally Smith's Mom Jane Doe." And so forth. My list goes on & on, but that should make the point of why the new UI is pretty worthless to me.

It's a pity, too, because some of the other aspects of the new UI are intriguing to me, but the above makes further exploration pointless, at least for me.

[montmorencyfm]

Another aspect of this is that you seem to be limited to the same number of personalities as the number of aliases your account level allows. I currently only have "full" membership, so 8 aliases, and in order to set up a *@mydomain, I'd have to sacrifice one of my existing personalities.


To be honest, I never used "made up on the fly" from addresses (I don't claim to be the most advanced user of FM), and I'm not even sure how it works ... how it can work.

Do replies to "on the fly" from addresses get delivered, or do they bounce? I can see they could be useful if you are forced to give an address to an organisation you don't fully trust and expect to spam you (and you don't actually want any email from them).

I'm not clear how it could work for mail to come back to you, unless FM is logging all these made-on-the-fly addresses for future use, in case any replies come back to you.

I use some of my aliases to give out to potential spammers, and it would be good to have a few more, but I've been holding off upgrading. I'd never thought of "on the fly" addresses for this purpose.

---
OK, I've just tested this to myself in Classic, and it indeed bounces.
So, I'm not 100% sure how people generally are making use of this.
I do get the idea of changing the display name on the fly. That could be quite useful, although for regular recipients it might be worth using different personalities for that, if one has enough available.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by montmorencyfm

Do replies to "on the fly" from addresses get delivered, or do they bounce? I can see they could be useful if you are forced to give an address to an organisation you don't fully trust and expect to spam you (and you don't actually want any email from them).

There are many different ways the feature is used, all useful.

Sometimes, you want to make sure that any reply bounces. You can then just create the reply address BOUNCE@eml.cc (for instance).

However, more commonly, this is used in one of these two situations:

1. In conjunction with plus addressing or subdomain addressing. For instance, to create a sender of FM-alias+CompanyName@fastmail.fm or CompanyName@FM-alias.fastmail.fm.
2. In conjunction with ones own domain. For instance, let's say a colleague's email is forwarded to me temporarily and I want to send an email on her behalf. It is really handy to just be able to edit the from name and email address and send off the message.

In neither of these two cases is mail delivery an issue.

[montmorencyfm]

Many thanks BritTim!

[mjl]

Originally Posted by Mwongozi

The amount of bile and vitriol in the forums this morning is astonishing.

OK, I get that people don't like change. And I can understand that people may have good reasons for not liking the UI.

But to complain that we "weren't warned" is silly. The new design has been in public beta for ages, and they had to do the swap at some point. If not now, then when?

The number of posts making "demands" and even saying they're going to leave (Really? Already? Awesome amount of patience you have there.) is just childish.

Combined with the fact that the old UI is still available (and yes, I know the colours are a bit different. I'm sure they'll fix that.), really, it's not the end of the world.

I'm quite happy to have conversation view now, and the automatic notifications of new email seem to work quite well.

Now let's all take a deep breath.

i would agree with you if this was a free service but i am paying money for this and spent much time trying to figure out where certain features are, now realizing that they are no more. i switched back to classic until jan. when i am paid up til and have 2 months to find a reliable email service, sorry if there are any spelling errors in this rant but the spell checker is no more.

[jdtaylor]

The web interface even on the mobile interface was confusing me, and then finding the right buttons was a pickle for me. It's not just me but just on the generally going insane mess - I can't believe local councils in my area they are driving me the same way - very annoyed and it makes me wonder if people are loosing it with design ideas it's a mess, and with me it's real life councils too - some are insane to with the way things are done.

So, in general I'd agree things are going insane not just here but real life to.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by sslund

." For emails to my dd's school, class, and friends' parents, it was "Sally Smith's Mom Jane Doe." ...

I'm so glad to see I'm not the only geek doing this (though mine are actually "Daniel's dad" or Jonathan's dad" ).

Originally Posted by sslund

...It's a pity, too, because some of the other aspects of the new UI are intriguing to me, but the above makes further exploration pointless, at least for me.

I too think that the new UI has a lot of potential. Otherwise I would just be happy with the statement that the "old" one is not going away. I would rather see all the unique functionality that's in the old interface incorporated in the new one.

I remember that not long ago, we had a similar situation, with people comlaining about a new interface "that sucks" and a wonderful old interface. Well, that "new awful interface" is the one that is currnently "the perfect old interface" that is being replaced by "a new one that sucks".

I don't think the new interface is that bad. I do think it lacks a lot of features that make FastMail unique. Rob Mueller said in some post (or email) that "the 80-20 rule means that the 20% percent of the functionality that 80% of the users use shouldbe right there, and that the rest of the 80% functionality (that 20% of the users use) should be 2-3 clicks away. I cannot find where it was said, but I clearly recall it. Past FastMail interfaces were good implementations of this concept (as opposed to some Google spokesperson that mentioned this rule and said that Google provides the functionality for the 80%). I hope the new interface would be another good implementation of this interpretation of the 80-20 rule.

[Chandao]

It has to be said that the behaviour of Opera/Fastmail has been dictatorial over the last few years. Changes and been implemented without any concern for the existing fee paying customers. I have had my account since 2005 and am on 'full' membership. I remember the 'Bounce' facility being removed, although this may have been before Opera took-over. The point is that corporate considerations are made regardless of the opinions of the paid clients, or the effects upon service such changes involve. These forums appear to exist to give the false impression that Opera/Fastmail are 'listening' to our concerns, but many of those who answer questions, do so on a voluntary basis, and they do this very well. I have noticed how these forums are used to 'absorb' dissent by continuously quoting official Opera/Fastmail rhetoric to every complaint of dissatisfaction, until those doing the complaining run out of steam. The psychology is simple; the fault is actually with the complainer and not with Opera/Fastmail. From reading the many posts of complaints it is obvious that the opinion of the fee payer has no weight with Opera/Fastmail, despite any claims to the contrary. The manner in which the recent changes occurred is unprofessional and shoddy - but we are stuck with them - as usual.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Chandao

It has to be said that the behaviour of Opera/Fastmail has been dictatorial over the last few years. Changes and been implemented without any concern for the existing fee paying customers. I have had my account since 2005 and am on 'full' membership. I remember the 'Bounce' facility being removed, although this may have been before Opera took-over. The point is that corporate considerations are made regardless of the opinions of the paid clients, or the effects upon service such changes involve. These forums appear to exist to give the false impression that Opera/Fastmail are 'listening' to our concerns, but many of those who answer questions, do so on a voluntary basis, and they do this very well. I have noticed how these forums are used to 'absorb' dissent by continuously quoting official Opera/Fastmail rhetoric to every complaint of dissatisfaction, until those doing the complaining run out of steam. The psychology is simple; the fault is actually with the complainer and not with Opera/Fastmail. From reading the many posts of complaints it is obvious that the opinion of the fee payer has no weight with Opera/Fastmail, despite any claims to the contrary. The manner in which the recent changes occurred is unprofessional and shoddy - but we are stuck with them - as usual.

I do not exactly disagree with your post, but I do look at things slightly differently.

Some of my personal email goes through FM, but my primary concern is for customers whose business to a large extent depends on a stable, predictable email service. Those customers use FM (in spite of shortcomings in certain areas) precisely because I have judged, in the past, FM to be a low risk solution for such businesses. I am now trying to put my anger on one side and determine to what degree my assessment of the risks needs to be reevaluated.

One major concern that I have is the common framework used by the classic and ajax interfaces. I can see why this is attractive to Opera engineering, but I believe it represents a major risk for users of the classic interface. I believe the ajax interface to be unfinished, and expect it to be under continual major development for some time to come. I see no evidence (except negative) that care will be taken to avoid impacting classic interface users as these developments are made. Because of this, I am tending to the opinion that mission critical email systems cannot be reliant on the FM web interface, especially when work flows rely on custom UI tweaks.

I continue to find much of the underlying FM infrastructure attractive for business users, and some of the important features of this are difficult to find elsewhere. However, I am quite reluctant to build my customers' email systems around external mail clients. I consider web based systems to be more flexible and the way of the future.

Moving customers to other email services is disruptive and not an action to take lightly. I feel really torn on this one.

[LioNiNoiL]

Originally Posted by Mwongozi

Has everyone gone insane?

Perhaps if you try not to confuse frustration and indignation with having "gone insane", then maybe you'll be able to grasp why paying customers are frustrated and indignant.

[goky]

I figure the below is pretty self explanatory.

Heres a copy of what I sent to fastmail support:

"Like the subject says: Due to your "improvements" I am unable to auto log in... AGAIN

And you did it without warning... AGAIN

So hours and hours of my effort have been wasted... AGAIN

As soon as I can transfer things to another email provider I will do so. I know it's unlikely but is there ANY way to get me the old login back long enough to do this without AGAIN having to manually input all my logins?

I would like a refund on all my paid accounts, I'll supply you with a list of the others shortly.

I know it's unlikely but is there ANY way to get me the old login back long enough to do this without having to AGAIN having to manually input my logins?

I am impressed that you managed to drive me away, I think I've been a customer since 1999, through quite a bit of garbage with Operamail. But I just can't handle this kind of anti-customer service anymore.

Assuming there is someone who cares: You really should check on who is responsible and see if they are intentionally trying to damage your company. I would have said that Opera and Fastmail were too small for such corporate espionage, but otherwise I have no idea why you would keep springing these "improvements" as surprises. Insanity?"

So, anybody know of a way to use my Opera Wand logins on the new interface? I suspect Fastmail will either tell me "too bad, we don't care" (given that's what happened last time) or not have a clue. AS OF 7+ DAYS OF WAITING: No action on support ticket of any sort.