The Changes At Fastmail.

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by sflorack

You can't please everyone all the time. Some want a cleaner interface. Some want less button presses/clicks. It's truly a balancing act.

Indeed, it is both worrying and amusing to see (in all these threads) how many people don't get that simple fact. I am not 100% pleased with FMs user interface either, but it is certainly good enough given all the other features.

I contend you're wasting your money if you subscribe to FM solely for the interface. If you don't need the features that distinguish FM from free providers, why bother?

Again spot on. In addition to all the colors, gmail gives you even background pictures! Fastmail can never beat so much functionality.

[Pfolson]

And let me just add my own "spot on" to the preceding comments.

For the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out why people get so worked up about the interface, which is just a layer of "appearance" on top of some pretty sturdy and amazing infrastructure underneath. And, if the interface really bothers them that much, why they don't spend ten minutes learning how to customize it. And, if they don't want to do that, why they don't use FM with some of the really wonderful desktop e-mail clients available out there. And if they don't want to do that, why they don't just simply go somewhere they might be happier, like Gmail's pretty little world, with lots of themes and color choices and Firefox add-ons and whatnot, and which is free to boot.

At the end of the day, it is, after all, just e-mail. Rather than demanding that your e-mail provider bend to your wishes and modify their business plan and restructure their development roadmap to suit you, and then get terribly upset when they don't, you should just find a provider that already gives you the most of what you want: features and functions, eye candy, speed, customization options, whatever. Then go there and be happy. Life's too short to let something like e-mail give you a heart attack.

Paul

[Mystakill]

Originally Posted by webdesign101

Bye bye Grandpa and Grandma and anyone else that doesn't write code for a living.

Interestingly enough, my grandmother is using FM every day and hasn't complained once about the redesign because there's a stylesheet for that

TBH, having a family plan helps, because I can manage stylesheets and other configuration options for the rest of my family members. In this case, I created this stylesheet specifically for her needs, eliminating unneeded items, and making things easier for her to see. I can do all of this directly from my FM account, without having to login and logout multiple times to configure, test, and tweak things. Name me another provider which provides this functionality (besides Google, as they still don't support subdomains and catchalls).

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

TBH, having a family plan helps, because I can manage stylesheets and other configuration options for the rest of my family members ... I can do all of this directly from my FM account, without having to login and logout multiple times to configure, test, and tweak things.

FastMail also has a reseller plan, where people can do the same for their customers. Some forum members in some posts described similar processes with their customers (that is: from their account they can customize their business customers for their specific needs). I think this has lots of potential with the new interface Javascript customization. it allows small specialized applications to be built on top of the interface, so a reseller might design plugins that appear with certain folders that help their business customers do some specific tasks unique to their business procedures. I thought perhaps it can also work with medium sized organizations where the IT department can act as a "Reseller" and other departments would act as "businesses" and the IT dept would be able to provide services like FastMail resellers do, and various departments withing an organization can utilize the sharing capabilities that a FastMail business account offers. Well, that was a bit off topic. Ever since Opera acquired FastMail I was thinking whether they can or will use FastMail as the email infrastructure for their own corporate mail (FastMail always said "we eat our own dog food" so perhaps Opera can eat it too, and sell some to other organizations).

[erimess]

Originally Posted by Pfolson

The new interface is much more customizable than the old, however it does take a willingness to spend a few minutes learning the basics of "tweaking" and a few more minutes doing what essentially amounts to cutting and pasting from the wiki or from user posts in the forums. For example, your concern about the folder list/sidebar being visible was answered over in the help forum, and that's just the beginning of what you can do with simple tweaks. Almost anything you want to change can be changed quite easily. Just ask how to do it, and it's almost certain that somebody will come up with the answer or point you to the right place.

I understand being pressed for time, but this is one case where the investment of a small chunk of time can pay big dividends in your use of Fastmail.

I've spent years now PAYING for getting these features and now you are asking me to take my time to learn how to do it myself. There is absolutely no logic in that argument and I'm getting a little tired of hearing it. If I didn't have time to hang out at the forums and the blogs to know all this stuff was coming, then I don't have time to start programming my email program myself. Give me a freakin' break. So don't tell me "I can change it quite easily." Maybe it seems easy to you. Maybe it's no big deal to you.

But your arrogance is assuming that all of us have to be the same as you. I don't have time to learn all this junk. I've already been given a link to some instructions and I'm already seeing stuff in the instructions that means nothing to me and that I don't know how to follow. Sorry, I didn't learn it in "10 minutes" like you're proposing. It would take me quite some time to figure out how to deal with this stuff. Maybe it took you 10 minutes to figure it out.

So not only is it absolutely ridiculous to take this stuff away and expect US to now do what I was paying THEM to do, but to also expect that we all have the time and that we'll all understand the instructions. And if we don't understand, to have to keep coming over here to get help over and over again, when I already don't have time to do it to begin with.

You need to get rid of your arrogant attitude that all of us are going to be like you, and the ridiculous notion that we should have to do their job and take our time to change all these settings that used to simply exist. Why is it so difficult for you to comprehend things being taken away? There are things missing (and not just stylesheets) and options that don't exist anymore.

You might be smart about tweaking js, but you sure are stupid in your expectations that those of us who have been paying for this stuff for years should now still have to pay the same amount but do the work for ourselves.

Absolutely right. FM has always appealed primarily to the power user or those who need a state of the art IMAP service.

Always? Really? I seem to recall that the top-level enhanced option was meant for the "power users." There are levels underneath that. In fact, perhaps some of these wonderful new features people are boasting about are only with that top level, which all of us do not have. The basic guest level was the simple level. It did have some nice features that hotmail and yahoo never had. There's still two levels above that before ever getting to "power user." The second level up (the one-off pay one, if that's the way it still is) would have been enough for me if it weren't for just a couple of extra features that I wanted. So I opted for the next level up. But I'm not a "power user" and many people who started here were not either. They liked some of the extra features that were offered here that free places did not have, but they weren't all "power users." Those were the people picking the highest level, for more money, and getting a lot of extra stuff that I've never needed, or for that matter even understand. Why do those other levels exist if everyone is a power user?

Having been around here for many, many, many years, methinks you are incorrect. The level I'm using never really changed all that much - a few tweaks here and there, but I've always considered it stayed at the same "level" of user needs and never turned into "power user" status.

Those two target audiences are often one and the same. And neither applies to most folks we would commonly think of as being in the "Grandma and Grandpa" demographic. Those who just want plain vanilla e-mail tend to also want "free and basic" e-mail, and are already using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or whatever is provided by their ISP, which set up their account for them when they signed up for Internet service.

Yeah, well, that stuff all sucks. I'm not grandma and grandpa. I used to be considered fairly geeky 10 years ago, before I didn't have time to keep up with stuff, so now I'm a bit behind the times and lost. But certainly not grandma and grandpa. (Which is kind of insulting in and of itself, since I'm old enough to be a grandma - I'm smarter about computers and internet stuff than some 18 year old's I know.) So where do I fit in? You seem to want to put people in two categories - the big power users, or the "hotmail's good enough" crowd. There's lots in-between, you know. (Or maybe you don't know.) I have the ability to do some of this stuff, but how many times can one repeat (and be ignored) that I should not have to do what the email already did for me at one time? The email I signed up for never required me to take the time to program it myself.

Not to mention that wonderful little "family plan" they have. A good feature - what's the use if grandma and grandpa can't figure it out? That seems a bit contradictory of you.

Iyou should just find a provider that already gives you the most of what you want: features and functions, eye candy, speed, customization options, whatever.

Yes, Fastmail was that provider. You are completely turned around. I came a long, long time ago and did find something I liked. I did exactly what you're suggesting and I spent a lot of time looking around. And now you're acting as though we all just now came, found something we don't like, and want them to change it for us. No, I already found it, and they changed it.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

For sure you also read in that same December newsletter that they were not supporting the old interface anymore. That meant ... one day it would be gone. Today might be that day, maybe?

"Not supporting" doesn't make something gone and doesn't mean the same thing. It means they aren't going to fix it when it breaks or keep up with it. And it's not "gone" now. The stylesheets (which gives us the formatting around the text-only) disappeared for a time. Perhaps you are not realizing that the old interface, without the style sheets, is just a bunch of text that is very difficult to read. However, mine are back.

Sigh... it's a bit tiring all these people complaining about 'suddenly' the new interface being forced upon them (two years seems more than reasonable to me).

You are bit tiring too. OK, first, like I told pfolson long ago, who still lacks comprehension of such an idea, some of us have other lives and do not have time to hang around the forums and blogs and such all the time. Some of you seem to be assuming that all of us have time to read everything and go everywhere and have the time to keep up on everything going on. I for one do not have time to hang around those places all the time. I already don't have time to do some other things in my life that I would like to do, let alone be wasting time over here. Years ago I had the time - I don't any longer. And as I also explained to him, that's the reason I got the newsletters and have it set on "chatty." That's what they were supposed to be for, but I'm supposed to magically know there's important information missing from them. Oh, so he found an old one that mentioned they were changing stuff -- yeah, I would see in the newsletters all the time that they were messing with this, that and the other thing. So I ignore them cause it usually means some minor tweak that I can ignore. There was nothing that caught my attention to say they were going to be making some MAJOR change that I better pay attention to. At least not in any newsletter, and I did read every single one of them.

You're assuming that everyone else knows what you know. That's about as silly as assuming someone really read the small print when you know they didn't.

Or about how the old interface is a step back without them even trying to use the new interface for 2 weeks.

The more I mess with it and try to do some of the normal daily things I do (rather than just looking around), the more I hate it and the more options that I was paying for I'm noticing are missing. I originally looked at the thing over six months ago, was looking at it again in about November, and again a bit later, and again yesterday and today. And the more I look, the more I find missing features.

It's not THAT much of a difference, you can still click email messages to open them, or click compose to compose a message. I'ts just rearranged a bit, give it some time and you will get used to it. And, maybe you'll discover a couple of features that you couldn't do with the old interface.

Bullcrap. I don't pay for Fastmail so that I can click on an email message to open it or click compose to compose one. I mean, what the heck? I can do that with any email out there. Give me a freakin' break. I'm finding FEATURES MISSING, HELLO! You're just as bad, thinking if we're not a power user, then all we care about is being able to click on an email to open it. I see nothing new that interests me. And all the "customizing" you can do to get back missing features require tweaking js. So I'm really tired of hearing about all the wonderful new features, when old features are missing. I'm not talking about the fact that the delete button moved.

I am honestly surprised that apparently a lot of people judge an email service by the number of colors available as a background. While I certainly agree that user interface is important, I'd rather have an improved one in only 2 colors, than a backward one in 150 shades.

So would I, and if that were the only problem, I wouldn't have near the issue. However, it was nice to be able to have different stylesheets that had different fonts available, and that made it easier to read, etc. And having difficulty reading a font that I can't change is NOT some minor detail. And considering the stylesheets are part of what I was paying for, no I'm not thrilled that they took it away.

I will never, ever comprehend why some of you can't comprehend the idea of taking away stuff I was paying for, whether or not YOU personally think it was important. There's stuff you think is important that I don't. The point is not about what any one feature meant to any one particular person. It's about paying for something and then having it taken away, whatever it was. And it's not limited to the stylesheets anyway - that's just the most obvious thing when you first go in.

And, if you think about it for 5 seconds longer, you'll see that a lot of the aversion against the new interface is because your are so accustomed to the old interface, nothing more.

Speak for yourself and stop assuming what the rest of us think. Having stuff GONE is absolutely not the same as having moved it to the other side of the screen. OK, delete is now a button instead of in some drop-down list. Actually, that's where it oughta be since it's so frequently used - I just have to get used to it. But there are things that are GONE, not moved. I just discovered the drop-down menu to pick a sig is GONE. That's a major loss in my case. Do you understand "GONE" versus "MOVED"? If not, look the words up in the dictionary.

So I'm getting a little tired of people thinking I just have "to get used to it," when there are missing features, and that I now have to go re-program the stupid thing myself if I want my features back.

[neilj]

Originally Posted by erimess

I just discovered the drop-down menu to pick a sig is GONE.

Click the 'Show message options' link on the right under the message body textfield (this setting should be remembered by your browser).

[adwade]

In response to erimess's two posts above...Ditto! Well said, indeed.

[rabarberski]

@erimess: Glad you got all that of your chest !

Now - apart from responding to everything you wrote, which would take a lot of time and lead us nowhere - if you just would post a short/large list of all the features that you are missing we might point you to potential solutions.

As you might have noticed, you were already given a solution to the one missing feature you actually mentioned (apart from the missing stylesheets).

[Pfolson]

Originally Posted by erimess

And as I also explained to him, that's the reason I got the newsletters and have it set on "chatty." That's what they were supposed to be for, but I'm supposed to magically know there's important information missing from them. Oh, so he found an old one that mentioned they were changing stuff -- yeah, I would see in the newsletters all the time that they were messing with this, that and the other thing. So I ignore them cause it usually means some minor tweak that I can ignore. There was nothing that caught my attention to say they were going to be making some MAJOR change that I better pay attention to. At least not in any newsletter, and I did read every single one of them.

Really? You read every single newsletter? And you saw nothing in the Nov. 27, 2008 newsletter that suggested a major change? Not even this?

For the past year, we've been working on a large overhaul of our web interface. With the help of some great designers as well as feedback from our users, we're now ready to release the interface for more general beta testing.
Beta site - http://www.fastmail.fm/beta/
Overall features
Professional look with cleaner layout, reduced clutter and small icons to simplify some actions
More consistent layout between screens (eg navigation bar always available, common sidebar)
Javascript used to improve user experience (although it still works fine without)
More semantic HTML makes future stylesheet (look and feel) customisation easier
Significantly improved mobile display on modern mobile devices (eg iPhone, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile)
Mailbox screen
Much better keyboard support - navigate using keys j/k/x/o/Enter, action menu via . (fullstop), search email via / (slash), search folders via , (comma)
Better auto-sizing to screen size to display more of the message subject
Cross folder searching available
Advanced search syntax available (eg. from:john subject:dinner since:"1 week ago")
Message read
Much better keyboard support (like mailbox screen)
Attached messages shown inline
Attached images as thumbnails
Better integration with file storage to save attachments
Compose
Address book auto-complete and address tokenisation
Improved HTML editor
Auto-saving of drafts
Background upload of attached files
Improved spell check
Separate reply/forward quoting options
Default font face/size for HTML email
For more details, please see our new interface wiki page. To report bugs/issues, please see our new interface bugs page. We encourage all users to give the new interface a go and report any issues on the bug wiki page.
We plan to eventually roll out the new interface to http://www.fastmail.fm so all standard logins use the new interface. Depending on feedback, that should occur in the next month or two. We plan to run the old interface for 3-6 months after the changeover, but will eventually decommission the old interface.


Hmm. I guess you and I just have a different interpretation of phrases like "large overhaul" and "will eventually decommission the old interface." That sounds pretty major to me.

Anyway, I'm done with this argument. You continually claim, in thread after thread, that you have no free time. But as you prove over and over, you sure have a lot of time to post long replies here, attacking and arguing with and calling "stupid" anyone who has a different opinion, offers a suggestion or tries to provide help.

My parting words on this: You need to give yourself more credit. Your posts show that you are clearly an intelligent (if somewhat short-fused) person. You don't have to "learn programming" to tweak Fastmail. You have to create a file, then cut and paste some text into it. That hardly qualifies as "programming." If you spent just a third of the time figuring out how to accomplish that cut and paste as you spend here calling people "arrogant" and "stupid" and telling them to look things up in the dictionary, you'd have it all figured out in no time, I'm sure.

See ya.

Paul

[Mystakill]

I believe I've stated this before, and I'll state it again: Fastmail is provided as a *web service*, and not as an *application* which can be installed on a computer and never changes. Virtually all web services are in a constant state of redesign and redevelopment to best serve the needs of (most of) their customers and potential customers. All web service providers are fully aware that not all of their customers agree with all of their changes, and that some amount of "churn" is inevitable.

Name me any web services provider which hasn't changed their interfaces or options dramatically over time and you'll find yourself with a web services provider who is no longer relevant (or in business).

Change is inevitable. Get used to it. Accept the help that's being offered here, on the wikis, and from FM, but don't attack your fellow FM customers because you're frustrated with the changes made by *FM*. If you don't like the answers, the help, or the service, then please feel free to find one that best suits *your* needs.

[webdesign101]

"Find one that best suits your needs"
Whoops. Probably not a good thing to say.

I had to chuckle this morning when I woke up to find the old Fastmail had been returned into service with its stylesheet back up and operating.

As I stated in an earlier post..
"But I do think they need to listen to what is being said here. The old Fastmail stopped working properly today, so this is the go/no go day."

I have no idea how many of the people on this forum work for Fastmail, but it doesn't take a genius to see what's happening. Probably the same exact thing that happened to Google in 2005.

When Google files its taxes, it clearly shows that 95%+ of their revenues come from paid business advertising in their adwords/adsense program. What most of the world doesn't realize is that Google only has approximately 200k advertisers a month using that system (OMMA magazine). For Google to make the 5-6 billion they do every 3 months, some of those advertisers have to be pretty big whales. In 2005 Googled angered one of those whales and suddenly realized the predicament they had created.

Eric Schmidt did an interview ( http://tinyurl.com/2efh6ae ) with a young reporter from CNET that resulted in Mr. Schmidt's private life being Googled and reported in an article. Mr. Schmidt threw a hissy fit and blackballed CNET for a year. CNET smiled and said OK, we're pulling our advertising. The blackballing lasted a month with Google apologizing profusely afterwards. Google suddenly realized, just like Egypt suddenly realized, just like Libya suddenly realized just like Fastmail has suddenly realized. You serve at the whim of your paying public.

You can tell us to leave... but whose going to pay your monthly server fees when we do? My guess is that, turning off the stylesheet yesterday resulted in a 1% loss in paying customers. My guess is Fastmail is still bleeding customers today. My guess is the reason the old Fastmail has continued well beyond its shutoff date is that when it goes the lights go out. Just like Google, you will find bad customer service can start a cascade (love the irony of the term) of lost revenue that will never be recouped.

[Pfolson]

Originally Posted by webdesign101

You can tell us to leave... but whose going to pay your monthly server fees when we do? My guess is that, turning off the stylesheet yesterday resulted in a 1% loss in paying customers. My guess is Fastmail is still bleeding customers today. My guess is the reason the old Fastmail has continued well beyond its shutoff date is that when it goes the lights go out. Just like Google, you will find bad customer service can start a cascade (love the irony of the term) of lost revenue that will never be recouped.

Wow, you certainly seem to have an inside track on what's going on. Either that, or you're making wild guesses based on nothing but your own opinions.

I'll repeat, or rephrase, comments I've made on other threads. None of the average users, myself included, have any idea of what's going on at Fastmail, business wise. All we know is that there is a certain number of angry old interface supporters -- somewhere between 30 and 50 or so -- who are kicking up a fuss on EMD. We also know that's a very small percentage of Fastmail's total user base. We have no way of knowing how many dozens, hundreds or even thousands of users are perfectly content with the new interface, because they're not posting here.

You're also failing to account for Opera's involvement, and what's going to happen when they roll out their new Fastmail-based, Opera-branded mail service, and how many thousands of new customers are going to come flooding in at that point -- customers who never saw the old interface and could not possibly care one iota less about it.

Paul

[Mystakill]

Originally Posted by webdesign101

"Find one that best suits your needs"
Whoops. Probably not a good thing to say.

The intent wasn't to incite ire; it was merely to point out that you do have other options than FM.

Originally Posted by webdesign101

I have no idea how many of the people on this forum work for Fastmail

All company representatives, from FM, Google, TrueDomain, etc., have a "Representative of:" tag added to their information block on the left. You'll notice that I don't have one, as I'm just a customer.

Originally Posted by webdesign101

As I stated in an earlier post..
"But I do think they need to listen to what is being said here.

I'm sure that they're more in tune with what the majority of their customers are thinking, as these forums are not their primary support venue.

As for listening, the vast majority of these changes, including the new interface itself, *were* driven by customer requests. Even the "new" interface has continued to evolve since it was made available over two years ago. I was one of the first people to decry a number of the initial changes, but once I started tweaking the interface myself with Stylish and Web Developer and a number of others joined in, Bron added functionality to allow us to make those changes from within their interface. Many other changes and improvement have followed, primarily based on user input, including mine. (You may have missed the revision numbers present in the beta interface, but there were a significant number of changes made over the past couple of years, prior to rolling it out to all FM customers)

Originally Posted by webdesign101

You can tell us to leave...

*I* can't tell you to do anything. It was merely a suggestion to follow if you could not resolve all of your issues after consulting with both FM and the forum members here.

For what it's worth, I suspect that a good number of us are here for some of the more unique features that FM provides, such as virtual domains, subdomains, aliases, personalities, family/business account management, SIEVE scripting, tweakability. Yes, the interface is part of it, but it's far from all of it for me.

[Pfolson]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

For what it's worth, I suspect that a good number of us are here for some of the more unique features that FM provides, such as virtual domains, subdomains, aliases, personalities, family/business account management, SIEVE scripting, tweakability. Yes, the interface is part of it, but it's far from all of it for me.

Indeed, I think you're right.

The people who keep predicting death for Fastmail when the old interface is taken away are also forgetting another point: Many Fastmail customers seldom, if ever, go near the web interface. They're using Fastmail with POP or IMAP on a desktop client, or on a phone, or whatever. Those folks almost certainly don't care what color the background is or where the Delete button is located.

Paul