New interface is SLOW

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

...
FM is not a 'dynamic' website. It requires a reload of the complete page to perform an action. ... A dynamic website can send http requests in the background (based on actions performed by the user, or some periodic function) ...

FM does it in some place in the new interface. E.g. it periodically sends backup copies to be saved in the Drafts folder while composing an email. Also I think when a user switches between plaintext and html composition it is done without reloading the entire page, and I think there are other places they do it. So they are at least partially dynamic, and they do have some AJAX in the interface.

(This dynamic changing of the page makes it more difficult to do Javascript tweaks, so some of my tweaks fail in the compose screen unless I do something to cause the page to reload, such as going to "preview" and back to compose).

[erimess]

Originally Posted by newcrest

Yes, it was fine yesterday but when I logged on today it was just plain text.

Since this is spread across two threads, I'll add it here to that everything seems fine today and was, as I hoped, a temporary glitch.

[groanerton]

Originally Posted by erimess

Since this is spread across two threads, I'll add it here to that everything seems fine today and was, as I hoped, a temporary glitch.

i just logged in and nothing was fine.

PLEASE fix this!!

the old interface is there, its just that the stylesheets are completely borked.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by hadaso

The new interface is much more efficient in many respects:
In the old interface, to file a message in a folder I had to look through a long list of folders in a drop-down menu. In the new interface I just type 2-3 letters from the folder's name.

I can appreciate someone like you liking this ability. I don't need it. Having this feature is a nice idea - I'm aware people have different needs. But did having this feature require a change in the look? Did it require dropping all the stylesheets? Something I have noticed is that whenever something is created from the ground up (usually because it can't be "tweaked" any longer as is, and to take advantage of technologies - same answer I hear everywhere), for some reason it seems to end up meaning completely changing the look and taking away certain features, etc. I'm not a programmer but I kind of get the idea of it being difficult to take the old and keep tweaking it, but I don't get the idea of why everything has to change. I've seen this a lot, where they want to add some new features, but then completely change the look and everything about the site. Starting from the ground up doesn't require those things.

(For instance, don't anyone try to tell me that adding those features or starting from the ground up means you had to make a lousy hard-to-read font for reading emails and eliminating any way to change that option, that I can find. No other email has that lousy font. And the stylesheets were taken away, which at least contained some option about what the fonts looked like. So I lost a feature that was important to me, even if you gained one.)

In the old interface I had to repeatedly scroll down drop-down menus to perform actions I need to perform on emails. In the new interface I could add custom buttons for actions I use more often than others and hide actions I never use.

Great, but that's just one more thing that appears to require knowing how to tweak the js. I've heard about a lot of these great things you can do and how much more customizable it is, etc., but I've looked through the options menu, which looks the same to me), and the account preferences hasn't added anything terrible useful. What I see is the disappearance of certain things. I can only conclude from everything I've seen here that all this great stuff requires the js tweaking.

Now where exactly does that leave the average user? Just because I like an email that has lots of good options and am willing to pay to get them doesn't automatically make me some geek that knows how to do that stuff. Fastmail already had some great options, and I paid THEM for them. Granted, some of the main stuff I like and am paying for is still there. But some is not, and now I'm paying the same but expected to tweak js to get stuff back. And I'm probably more geeky than many of the users.

And so far, regardless of how many times I've commented about it, only one person has even given me a link of how to do one thing - everyone else just says all the great things it can do but just assumes we know what the heck they're talking about. How the heck useful is that? And now if I want some of this great stuff, I have to waste my time going and figuring out how to make that carp work. (Not that I really mind learning new things - I just don't have time to screw with it.) I've already wasted enough time coming over to the forums, that I really don't have time for. And why should I have to spend my time even coming here to figure out that I can actually do stuff with this thing? What use is that to people who don't have time or wouldn't be able to figure out how to tweak anything.

They just haven't introduced as many variations on color schemes as were accumulated over the years for the old interface.

"As many..."? That's the understatement of the year. There's practically none. And while the plain blue it comes with is fine, it still doesn't change that lousy font, and when I first got Fastmail there weren't as many as there are now, but certainly more choices than what the new has. And that is one of the things I liked and was paying for, and they took it away. Yeah, I saw something (somewhere else - maybe one of the newsletters, I don't know) about being able to do something to get access to the stylesheets or something, and I tried reading it and just went "What the heck are they even talking about???" And I gave up on it immediately because it already sounded so overwhelming that I just didn't have time to deal with it. If you understand it and like that short of thing and have time for it, great, but where does that leave everyone else?

The fact that some customers don't like the change doesn't mean that all customers or even most customers don't like it.

From everything I can tell, the ones who love it are the ones who know how to tweak it. At least that's the impression I'm getting here. So it appears to have turned into something that only people with time and willingness to tweak js will like. For the rest of us, it appears more limiting and with less customizability. That's how it appears to me when I go to it. I wouldn't have a clue what percentage of people do or don't like it - what I also don't know is what percentage of users have even weighed in with an opinion for any of you to know either.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by groanerton

i just logged in and nothing was fine.

PLEASE fix this!!

the old interface is there, its just that the stylesheets are completely borked.

Hmm... my stylesheets are back. But it was less than an hour ago that I even checked my email today so maybe something has to play "catch-up." You might try waiting another hour or so and see what happens. I don't know that much what I'm talking about, but it seems logical that if it's working for me that it hasn't just disappeared permanently.

[erimess]

Well, here's something else I just noticed. The drop-down box for the choice of sigs is gone. I have to assume it's going to automatically attach the one belonging with the personality, but I don't always want it doing that. I have one basic personality that I use for 90% of everything I do, but do use different sigs for some things.

That is a huge loss for me. I have places I post where I use my default personality but have different sigs that I use that I was able to pick from that drop-down box. And I don't have enough personalities to be able to create a different one for all those. But I'm looking all over this compose screen and see no way to change the sig that I use.

Well, even if I could get used to the lousy font and put up with some of the other stuff, that's a change I absolutely cannot deal with. What a great feature to have dumped. So there's another one I loss while some of you gain stuff you want. And that is a HUGE, HUGE loss for me.

How many more of these things am I going to find? And I won't find them until I get in a situation where I want to use them. How many features have been lost? How many do I have to do some tweak to get back?
How many things that I was PAYING these people for do I have to start tweaking myself to get back? HUH?

OK, if I was ticked off before, that one REALLY ticked me off.

Stop stealing stuff I'm paying for!!!!!!!!

[erimess]

And for that matter, why does this lousy forum keep asking me to log in again? I'm getting tired of that too! If it's timing out, it's timing out awful fast, and I'm tired of logging in every time I go to post. Sheesh.

[David]

Originally Posted by erimess

And for that matter, why does this lousy forum keep asking me to log in again? I'm getting tired of that too! If it's timing out, it's timing out awful fast, and I'm tired of logging in every time I go to post. Sheesh.

I don't know, it never happens to me (perhaps something is misconfigured at your end) And FYI this is not a lousy forum.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by erimess

... The drop-down box for the choice of sigs is gone...

It's under the message, along with the drop-down to choose a folder and several others (there's a "show more options" link there. After it's clicked one time the drop-downs remain visible across sessions).

[erimess]

Originally Posted by David

I don't know, it never happens to me (perhaps something is misconfigured at your end) And FYI this is not a lousy forum.

Thank you for you useless comment. It didn't use to happen to me either until the last few months.

And the forum isn't any more or less "lousy" than any other forum -it's a forum. But when one is ticked off over the forum they say things like "lousy forum" as part of the mood and not necessarily as an opinion. I'm quite sure you have done that yourself. Don't take it so personally, sheesh.

[erimess]

Originally Posted by hadaso

It's under the message, along with the drop-down to choose a folder and several others (there's a "show more options" link there. After it's clicked one time the drop-downs remain visible across sessions).

OK, thank you, I found it. I will say this is one of the few posts to actually give me some useful information instead of just having a hissy with me for being unhappy or telling me I can learn to tweak in 10 minutes, so I do thank you for that.

I will say, however, that I had a hard time finding it even after you told me. That's cause it's very, very, very tiny and certainly not obvious at all. Because the other day I looked all over trying to find something and did not even see that.

Perhaps there would not be so many complaints if they wouldn't make options like that so difficult to find? Cause I'm the kind of person who tries to look things over thoroughly, and look through the options. Heck, I even read TOS's!

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by erimess

Perhaps there would not be so many complaints if they wouldn't make options like that so difficult to find? Cause I'm the kind of person who tries to look things over thoroughly, and look through the options. Heck, I even read TOS's!

To that respect, there is nothing that can beat the interface of gmail (and most of the other Google products). They are amazingly easy to use...