New mockups from Neil

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by David

Thanks Jeremy. It's nice to see you drop in occasionally.

Hey my post count is still double yours...

[David]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

Hey my post count is still double yours...

it sure is LOL

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by robmueller

Just an FYI, Neil has been working on some new mockups for us. They're currently available here:

http://mockups.neilj.fastmail.fm/revision7/

There already is a revision 8 & 9. See http://mockups.neilj.fastmail.fm/

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

There already is a revision 8 & 9. See http://mockups.neilj.fastmail.fm/

These aren't necessarily "better" - just some new ideas Neil is playing with. Personally, I like the new location of the Search functionality in r9.

[henrico]

When can we expect changes in the several screens? Later this year?

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

Personally, I like the new location of the Search functionality in r9.

There's now a new message viewer in r8/r9: http://mockups.neilj.fastmail.fm/revision9/message.html. Has the option 'view all pictures in slide show'. Great!

[Chipper]

Originally Posted by landale

I am concerned this is going to just be like the last time Neil posted a bunch of mockups a couple years ago. Everyone seemed to love them but nothing ever became of them.

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

Fair call. However it's very different this time:

• Neil isn't at school now - he's got time to dedicate to this
• He's being paid for the work!
• FastMail developers are working closely with Neil to ensure it fits our needs

I must have missed the mockups that Neil did where nothing happened to them. I remember the mockups for the addr book (which we did see come into production). What were his other mockups for. Were they for a calendar? (Hint hint )

[Chipper]

Question: Are some of the earlier versions "out of the running?" Just wondering if there were some that I didn't need to compare against each other.

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by Chipper

Question: Are some of the earlier versions "out of the running?" Just wondering if there were some that I didn't need to compare against each other.

I believe that revisions 7 and 9 are the current "gold standard". However they are still a work in progress.

[Chipper]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

I believe that revisions 7 and 9 are the current "gold standard". However they are still a work in progress.

Ok, thanks Jeremy. Just one suggestion: could we remove the versions that are not going to be considered? (Currently, there are a lot of versions and it makes the task of evaluating them daunting.) Good stuff overall!

[neilj]

If you want to see progression you can look at all the old mockups. If you want to make comments though really you should be looking at the latest one, easily recogniable by the highest revision number. The previous ones are there for reference, so that if I try something out Rob/Jeremy can say 'you know I think I liked it better in revision x' and we can easily compare.

BTW, I will be reading the comments on this thread and evaluating all the ideas. I don't however have time to post individual relplies (well, probably not, anyway) but you may find your ideas popping up in future revisions .

Those worrying about speed or customisability, fear not: the pages are marked up far more efficiently, which should drastically reduce page size and also allows stylesheet authors far more control over the layout. Images are all easily removed (although they're all very small and should load fast on even a slow connection).

Wow, that was my first post here for a long, long time...

Neil

[robmueller]

And we're up to r10 now!

http://mockups.neilj.fastmail.fm/revision10/

My overall comments so far

* I love the "Type to find a folder" idea. Ok, it was my suggestion, but I think it's much better than the current "popup with all folders" list that we currently have
* The j/k/i keyboard shortcuts look good. Additionally, Enter now reads a message, and when you're on a message, Backspace goes back to the mailbox screen, and remembers the chenron position. Yay
* The order of the Search/Saved Searches/Folders sidebar boxes needs some fiddling. I think the search should be on top, but then it's a bit weird having Search/Folders/Saved Searches. I've made a bit of a hacky suggestion to Neil, but we'll see
* I'm also a bit concerned about loosing the "View: All Seen Unseen Flagged Selected" options.
* The message read screen is looking nice, I really like the idea of thumbnails of attached images, and displaying attached messages inline, something I've wanted for ages
* I'm not sure about having the folder sidebar when viewing messages, by Neil is very keen. He likes the consistency

I'm really liking these new mockups, I think we're heading in a really nice direction. Neils put good thinking into how to deal with existing issues, removing unneeded clutter, tightening things up, but at the same time creating really great HTML + CSS that will let stylesheet authors in the future do a lot more.

Rob

[Sherry]

The following may not be what will be in the "real" screen and only in the mockup but thought I should mention it. The message previews are not wrapping and has no right scroll bar. (800x600 IE6) Example: the first line of the newsletter ends with "please" then the next line starts with "FASTMAIL.FM". Dragging the folder list as far as possible to the left gives more room so I see "please switc".

PS - Thanks for moving the paper clip back to the left so all the info on a message is in the same column.

Sherry

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by robmueller

And we're up to r10 now!
...
My overall comments so far
...
* The j/k/i keyboard shortcuts look good. Additionally, Enter now reads a message, and when you're on a message, Backspace goes back to the mailbox screen, and remembers the chenron position. Yay
...
* I'm also a bit concerned about loosing the "View: All Seen Unseen Flagged Selected" options.
* The message read screen is looking nice, I really like the idea of thumbnails of attached images, and displaying attached messages inline, something I've wanted for ages
* I'm not sure about having the folder sidebar when viewing messages, by Neil is very keen. He likes the consistency.
...

These are looking better and better, but I have a few issues with the Mailbox and message viewing screens:

• The j/k/i shortcuts are OK, but I would like downarrow/uparrow/space in addition (or some other more common selection that doesn't require me to go look up the magic keys in Help). Does the > chevron do nothing but let you select the message with i and read with Enter? Maybe we can find some more uses for it. The backspace doesn't reliably return the chevron to the same message for me (on Firefox 2.0.0.4). It sometimes returns to the bottom message or some other message.
• Losing the current View: All Unread Read Flagged Selected modes is a bad idea, I think. I would like to add at least two more viewing modes: View Unread in all folders and View Flagged in all folders which would allow you to see all unread or flagged messages, no matter what folder they are in. The folder name wouldn't be needed in the normal Mailbox screen (although it might be nice in message preview mode). I file messages to folders with Sieve rules, and it would be nice to see all of those unread messages on one screen. I would want to be able to set this mode as the default mode (in a setup screen).
• The message viewing/reading screen is looking better, but I don't like a few things. First, I think the folder which contains the message should be clear, and I don't think the folder tree can show this to you reliably, since you need to be able to open up subfolders in the tree to use the << move/copy button to move the message to any folder, and so the highlighted source folder for the message might be off the screen. Since the Mailbox screen has the current folder (such as Inbox) at the top (above the Delete button) and the screen layout between the Mailbox and View screens are now "lined up" similarly in this area, would it be possible in the View screen to leave the folder name exactly where it is in the Mailbox screen, followed by the message subject? Maybe the subject should be shaded to match the From/To/Date fields, so it's obvious that it is related to that data.
• As I suggested above, I think it would be neat to leave the folder tree on the View screen as Neil has done, and allow you to move/copy a message to any folder using the << tool.
• When on the message viewing screen it needs to be an easy to see how to return to the Mailbox. The <- Inbox -> tool at the right is over too far for beginners to see easily, I'm afraid. It shows the user which folder is being used, but I don't think beginners look over that far to the right. If the current folder was displayed before the subject, then the user could just click on that item (folder name) to return to the Mailbox screen.
• When in the message viewing screen, you really need a Delete button. I like the old user interface Delete and < Mailbox > feature (I use it all the time), but I would guess that beginners don't understand what it does. In the current version 10 layout, you have to use the pull-down box to switch between Keep, Delete, and other modes. I like the current interface move and delete buttons on the Advanced screen. And we need obvious Report as spam and Report as non-spam buttons, if per-user Bayes filtering is going to be widely used. Maybe we can think of some other good way of implementing the switch between these actions. As far as a simplified interface, his version 10 method works, but I'm afraid it may confuse beginners when they can't see how to delete a message from the message view screen.
• Being able to view both the From and To fields in the Mailbox screen is often very useful, especially for those of us who use a number of aliases. What if you clicked in the bar between From and Subject (or anywhere else in that bar except on existing items) and you got a drop-down box which allowed you to click on To (or other optional column items) to toggle them on/off.

Bill

[zhak]

Originally Posted by robmueller

* I'm not sure about having the folder sidebar when viewing messages, by Neil is very keen. He likes the consistency.

With great appreciation for the work that has been done, I must suggest that usability trumps consistency. One of the most unique features of the current Fastmail is the nearly full-screen width compose and message view. It would be a real shame to lose that.

I have a 19" monitor and the v10 compose screen opens a text compose window barely bigger than a 3x5" index card. If I wanted to type on a postcard, I'd get a Fusemail or Slashmail account.

I understand I have practically no history on this forum, and I also understand I may not be a popular voice amidst all the 'Looks Great' posts, but extra large buttons, space consuming sidebars, smaller viewing size, and a tiny editing area is going in the wrong direction.

-Jim