Beta testing - help required

[marianh]

We have been testing some changes to make some more existing Fastmail features available in the Beta AJAX interface. Some of these changes touch the underlying code used for the HTML interface too, so we'd love your help to make sure all works as you would expect.

How can you help?

1. Go to http://beta.fastmail.fm/mail/ to use the current HTML interface for a little while, and see that there are no problems with anything you use day to day.
2. Go to http://beta.fastmail.fm to test out some of the existing features we've brought across to the AJAX interface.

Account preferences we've brought across to http://beta.fastmail.fm so far:

• "Username display"
• "Keyboard shortcuts"
• "Web bug protection", with caveat - "Disable" does the same thing as "Show images for known senders"
• "View HTML"
• "Default direction"
• "Time format"
• "Save new names", with caveat - "Prompt" currently does "always save automatically"
• "Default compose mode"
• "When replying" and "When forwarding"
• "Reply to all mode"
• "Reply attribution", but recommend you leave blank as the default is the most standard
• "HTML when responding", with caveat - "As viewed" is determined by content of message and "View HTML" preference, either other option actually means "Use default compose mode preference"
• "From when replying", with caveat - the "Always default" uses the default personality from the personalities screen, all other options use best guess personality, there's currently no fully custom from address available
• "Signature for new" and "Signature for reply"
• "Wrap lines"
• "Default charset"

This is in no way a finite, feature-complete list. Please remember that the purpose of the Beta is to expose our work in progress in order to receive your feedback.

We appreciate your time and effort. Thanks for testing!
Marianh

[Terry]

Welcome to the forum....

when I log in with fastmail.net....I get there is a problem with this websites security certificate....currently the login is only set up for a fm domain, this needs changing.

Just one other final question....why the hell are you changing what we have ? from my point of view you are making things worse not better.

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by Terry

Welcome to the forum....

Also my warm welcome Marian! I hope you come here as often as in the Opera forums.

[n5bb]

Another welcome to EMD Forums, Marianh!
Rob told me you would be posting here, and we appreciate your interest in this forum.

• So far, I have not seen any problems with the beta HTML features since you restarted the servers.
• The beta AJAX interface introduces an extra line containing two hyphen characters at the top of signatures, which is very annoying. I believe this bug was present before you restarted the servers with the new code. The HTML signature gets the following tacked at the top of the signature (with a specific number I'm showing as 123456):

  <div class="signature sig123456">-- </div>

  The text signature similarly gets an extra signature line containing "--" at the top.

Originally Posted by Terry

...when I log in with fastmail.net....I get there is a problem with this websites security certificate....currently the login is only set up for a fm domain, this needs changing.

Terry, I think this is only because it's a beta test, which you don't have to use. Your browser should ask you about creating a security certificate exemption, and if you accept the exemption it works fine (at least in Firefox).

Originally Posted by Terry

...Just one other final question....why the hell are you changing what we have ? from my point of view you are making things worse not better.

This thread is about testing changes to the two beta test user interfaces. I believe that Marian is a quality control engineer, and needs to be sure that adding the old features you know well into the new AJAX interface hasn't introduced bugs. Why don't we give her help with her project? The only way that you will get to keep the features you like is if they are propagated appropriately into the new interface.

Fastmail currently has four web interfaces, and users can choose any of these. I think this shows an amazing support for allowing customers to slowly move to newer systems. The current login addresses are:

• http://old.fastmail.fm (developed in many steps between 2001 and 2009)
• http://www.fastmail.fm (the current fully supported interface, released over three years ago in Feb 2009)
• http://beta.fastmail.fm/mail/ (the current interface with a few additional features, such as Advanced Sieve support in the Define Rules screen) -- the code was just cleaned up a bit, but as Marian says the features should still be the same unless bugs were introduced.
• http://beta.fastmail.fm (which redirects to beta.fastmail.fm/m/) -- This is the long-awaited AJAX interface which has instant notification of new messages, threaded message interface, and other improvements to come I'm sure.

Bill

[Terry]

Yes I should stop posting about how much I hate the new U.I, as so many people have pointed out I'm not compelled to use it...

I had trouble going from the very old U.I to the current one and I now feel we are going down the same road again and so soon....my question is why all this work for so many people with almost the same end result.

I will try hard not to post about it anymore...

[CyberDyne]

Your message was not sent because:

(no reason)

I've experienced this quite a few times this week on the http://beta.fastmail.fm/mail/ server.

The same message then sends fine from WWW.

According to recipients, some of the emails which result in the above (and a subsequent autosave draft) are actually sending but appear as though they have not.

[CyberDyne]

Originally Posted by CyberDyne

(no reason)

I've experienced this quite a few times this week on the http://beta.fastmail.fm/mail/ server.

The same message then sends fine from WWW.

According to recipients, some of the emails which result in the above (and a subsequent autosave draft) are actually sending but appear as though they have not.

Just happened again, https://beta.fastmail.fm/mail/
Replying to email received.
Composed message.
Hit Send
"The message was not sent because:" (no reason)

The message did actually send but appeared to fail, plus an autosave draft created.

Added:
Switching to https://beta.fastmail.fm/ as the above is happening pretty much every time with https://beta.fastmail.fm/mail/

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by Terry

Yes I should stop posting about how much I hate the new U.I, as so many people have pointed out I'm not compelled to use it...

I had trouble going from the very old U.I to the current one and I now feel we are going down the same road again and so soon....my question is why all this work for so many people with almost the same end result.

I will try hard not to post about it anymore...

It could be worse Terry. Fmopera could be totally redesigning the mail portion again instead of focusing on requests for things that have been needed for years that other providers have had and ... oh wait that's what they're doing. Inconceivable!

[gyaresu]

Ok. Well first. Hello again.

Quick story and then bug:

Good stuff:
I've been using Fastmail since 2002. Tried business plan when first came out. Didn't work out. Went to Google Apps. Have been maintaining both accounts but using FM as mainly a backup until I found FMBeta.

So very happy to get ajaxy goodness finally.

Not so good stuff
I had to hunt down this forum. I just wanted to submit a bug report. Is there somewhere?
Twitter account dormant since 2010. Seriously? Not even tweets of the blog posts?

Bug
Won't stay logged in for anything more than a few hours. Re-login box won't authenticate so have to manually go back to root URL https://beta.fastmail.fm

OSX 10.7.3
Opera 11.61 Build 1250
Fastmail beta: r#23562

<3

G.

[Mystakill]

Originally Posted by the bishop

It could be worse Terry. Fmopera could be totally redesigning the mail portion again instead of focusing on requests for things that have been needed for years that other providers have had and ... oh wait that's what they're doing. Inconceivable!

Shhh! They might catch on that we've noticed what they're up to and redesign the AJAX interface again before it's even done!

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

Shhh! They might catch on that we've noticed what they're up to and redesign the AJAX interface again before it's even done!

You win 5 Internets today sir!

[marianh]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I'll try to respond to those that haven't already been answered:

n5bb: Thanks! We've been tracking the signature issue internally - you're right that it should be consistent. As it stands, the delimiter we add in the AJAX UI is the accepted signature delimiter many clients recognise. It's used as an accepted format for things like letting a client hide, remove or reformat the signature as the client or user desires.

CyberDyne: Thanks very much for the report. Unfortunately I can't reproduce what you see, but I'll definitely keep digging around. I'll contact you again if we need any further help reproducing it.

gyaresu: Welcome! Thanks for the report. Right now, Fastmail support issues can be lodged through the "Support" link at http://www.fastmail.fm. Regarding your report, this is a known bug relating to Fastmail session handling limitations which we will fix.

[astrodog73]

I use the current production interface - www.fastmail.fm - you guys need to give these catchy names, like OSX releases..... so we know exactly which we are talking about!

Anyway - if I dabble with the new AJAX beta, will this corrupt or otherwise break my current sieve code I'm using?? I think I'll back it up in any case, but can I switch back and forth seamlessly between the interfaces without issues.....

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by astrodog73

I use the current production interface - www.fastmail.fm ... ... if I dabble with the new AJAX beta, will this corrupt or otherwise break my current sieve code I'm using?? I think I'll back it up in any case, but can I switch back and forth seamlessly between the interfaces without issues.

The three supported and beta web interfaces (www.fastmail.fm, beta.fastmail.fm/mail/, and beta.fastmail.fm which becomes beta.fastmail.fm/m/ after logging in) only change how you interact with your account. When new messages arrive and your Sieve script is executed (or an email client connects to your account), everything works independently of whichever web interface you have been using. You can log into all of those URL's simultaneously and read or send mail from any of them while all sessions are active.

The only warning I would provide is the one new significant feature which affects how you can create your Sieve script (on the Options>Define Rules screen):

• In the two beta interfaces (HTTP beta at beta.fastmail.fm/mail/ or AJAX beta at beta.fastmail.fm/m/), you will see a new tab on the rules screen. The Advanced rules tab lets you create custom Sieve script which is inserted at the point you select into your Sieve script. This allows you to use custom Sieve but still use the forms-based rules screens, spam filtering screen, and the many other Fastmail features which rely on Sieve to operate correctly.
• However, since that Advanced tab isn't on the non-beta login web interfaces, you will remove any of those Advanced custom Sieve features from your Sieve script if you accidentally Apply all changes to your Sieve rules from the current (non-beta) interface.
• If you happen to have a fully custom Sieve (so that no Fastmail screens automatically change it), this is a good time to move to the much more flexible Advanced Sieve features.
• Now don't get worried if you accidentally apply your Sieve rules in the non-beta and temporarily wipe out your new Advanced Sieve rules. In that case, just log into one of the beta interfaces and click Apply all changes in the Define Rules screen to recreate those Advanced Sieve rules. They were stored for you and were not lost. They just weren't being applied to your executing Sieve.
• I hope that's not too confusing!

Bill

[CyberDyne]

Originally Posted by marianh

CyberDyne: Thanks very much for the report. Unfortunately I can't reproduce what you see, but I'll definitely keep digging around. I'll contact you again if we need any further help reproducing it.

Issue reproduced first time, PM sent.
Thank you