Specific questions on the new interface

[Mystakill]

Originally Posted by neoforum

Oh God, not again! Some companies, like Google

You mean the same Google which is always changing things and killing products if they don't take over an entire market sector? Really?

Originally Posted by neoforum

Would Dell announce that next year's computers will come only with "enhanced" Dvorak keyboards and that Qwerty will no longer be supported after 2 years?

How about when Dell removed PS/2 ports from most of their corporate systems, rendering all PS/2-only KVM switches obsolete overnight? We had to buy new KVMs here when that happened, which took several months and lots of money to remedy.

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by sflorack

Seriously, this is your proof that the new interface is confusing and needs to be relearned? A 9" shift of your eyes from the left to the right?

It's one of several items among many that I cited to explain what's true for me, not as "proof" of what must be true for you. And I never said the new interface is confusing. For someone who had never used fastmail, it's perfectly adequate. But it does require relearning for someone who was familiar with the old one.

Try driving a Scion xB and see how long it takes you to learn to look to your right, in the middle of the dashboard, to see the speedometer and odometer instead of looking right in front of you where it is in most cars. Learning to look somewhere other than where you expect to see something can actually take a long time. I bet that if your next OS upgrade included a "fun" new "edge of the month" feature where it started moving the taskbar to a different edge of your screen every month, you'd think nothing of spending hours researching how to turn that feature off. I certainly would.

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

You mean the same Google which is always changing things and killing products if they don't take over an entire market sector? Really?

I really just meant to refer to the Google home page. I haven't looked into their other services much; maybe they're not so careful about them. I do use Google Calendar, Maps, and Reader, and I've generally found these to have very stable interfaces. Maps has certainly had various features added, which is great. New features are fine when they don't require the interface to be reworked. They have actually moved some of the buttons around in Calendar a couple of times, and I've found that a little annoying, but those changes weren't nearly as different as the new fastmail interface.

And I totally agree that Google abuses its power as the near-monopoly of search engines and thereby kills businesses that rely on Google to be discovered. But their home page interface has remained the same for years. I guess they care about keeping their search customers happy but not so much about the people whose content they index. If they could take more care to consistently direct searches to relevant small businesses over time, so much the better. But with everyone scheming to do "search engine optimization", I suspect that's easier said than done.

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by neoforum

But it does require relearning for someone who was familiar with the old one.

I'm not denying that it would take a few sessions to get reaccustomed to where things are. I'm just having an issue with seeing how this is automatically a negative thing. Buttons weren't moved/hidden or their colors changed solely for the purpose of confusing people.

Learning is normal, so I don't understand the resistance. I can't imagine the mean emails Microsoft receives from some forum users each time they put out a new Office suite.

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by neoforum

New features are fine when they don't require the interface to be reworked.

I know this is not necessarily what you mean, but essentially what you're suggesting is "ANY change of an interface or software program, even if it's for the better, is bad."

[neoforum]

Originally Posted by sflorack

I know this is not necessarily what you mean, but essentially what you're suggesting is "ANY change of an interface or software program, even if it's for the better, is bad."

More like, any *enforced* change of an interface with a large base of users that's substantial enough to require them all to reorient themselves is unwise. If the interface is really that much better, everyone would stop using the old one on their own.

Are there any features you think are spectacular or revolutionary in the new interface? Maybe you could clue me into something that would make it feel worth the effort to switch over.

[Mystakill]

Originally Posted by neoforum

I really just meant to refer to the Google home page. I haven't looked into their other services much; maybe they're not so careful about them. I do use Google Calendar, Maps, and Reader, and I've generally found these to have very stable interfaces.

The Google home page hasn't changed much because it doesn't really need to. That's just their "front door" though.

I use a number of their other services as well, and functionally they're fairly stable. However, each of them has been continually evolving since their introductions. Minor tweaks, modifications, and beneath-the-hood rewrites have been done on all of them. Since Google slips them in without much fanfare, and because most people don't notice the minute changes made over time here and there, the perception is that nothing has changed.

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by neoforum

If the interface is really that much better, everyone would stop using the old one on their own.

No offense to my fellow FM users, but I think you give the general population way too much credit.

Originally Posted by neoforum

Are there any features you think are spectacular or revolutionary in the new interface? Maybe you could clue me into something that would make it feel worth the effort to switch over.

It's been quite a while since I've used the old interface; I switched to the new one within about a month or so of it's release. Off the top of my head, I regularly use cross-folder searches, keyboard shortcuts, address auto-completion, and I like having folders listed on a sidebar during message view for easy filing -- all new interface changes.

[Shelded]

I agree with you if the new interface can't sell itself, maybe that says something important. As with anything, it seems there are 40% who love it, 40% who hate it, 20% who swing either way. In this case I have no knowlege of the true %. But the new interface is here to stay, even if I am unsure if I will stay. Meh about the automobile examples, consider how how MS Office discarded a familiar menu & toolbar and gave us the "better" fluent ribbon. I bought it anyway although it's a huge productivity loss. MS did this to acquire new users who adopt the fluent ribbon easily. They knew old users would fuss -- but buy anyway. I hated Office 2007 so much I even bought Office 2010 for its incremental improvement of the ribbon.

Most of the function/feature gripes you began with are things which bug me, as well as the retraining annoyances. It's nice to see that most can be fixed with code. It's crummy that it challenges a programmer to fix it. My retraining is harder because I use both old and new interfaces and there is quite a difference.

BTW the old interface had keyboard shortcuts and they worked fine, but most are broken now. I liked the old method of address completion, not the new one which obscures and makes cut-paste-copying difficult.

The new interface adds cross-folder search. Use it for that. Probably the other things are small things of no importance one way or the other once you code the CSS to fix things. If you don't experience a major difference in response time, use the new interface.

But don't expect this interface to be the permanent face of the product. For one thing, it's only got a handful of colors to wear, and nobody's adding much to the wardrobe. Most users will not tolerate that long. They'll go find some prettier face.

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by Shelded

IBTW the old interface had keyboard shortcuts and they worked fine, but most are broken now.

Okay, allow me to clarify. I like the new interface because it has FUNCTIONING keyboard shortcuts.

[Shelded]

Ohhh, now I understand better
Hey, you know, I cannot tell you when the ctrl-space shortcut menu broke. (Does anyone know that story?) I rarely used it. So I am a mouse guy as much as possible (I even RIGHTclick a lot ). I probably won't use the shortcuts on the new system either. But they are nice.
----
I'm sure it's just me?, but the G hotkey does not activate Manage as it is supposed to. And why is there none for the Options? This kind of stuff just fuels my continued impression the new interface is not ready to launch at us.

[johanborg]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

Also, Opera are currently developing/testing a full AJAX interface as we speak, so this "new" (2 year old+) AJAX-lite interface is just a transitional step. Due to that, I can't imagine that Opera would invest a whole lot of time and effort backporting the tweaks into the existing interface.

First, it will take a while before we get the AJAX interface polished and complete enough to become the default interface. Second, even when that happens we will need a HTML interface for situations and browsers where AJAX is not ideal, including our very own Opera Mini client, so we expect to maintain both in parallel.