Opened 14 years ago

Last modified 5 years ago

#5140 new enhancement

Mail GUI enhancements — at Initial Version

Reported by: humdinger Owned by: bga
Priority: normal Milestone: R1
Component: Applications/Mail Version:
Keywords: mockup Cc:
Blocked By: Blocking:
Platform: All

Description

This ticket is the result of discussions on the [http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku-development/Working-on-Haikus-Mail-app dev mailing list] and [http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku-cdt/Mail-GUI-and-Queries-was-haikudevelopment-Re-Working-on-Haikus-Mail-app cdt mailing list].

Mail's current GUI is wasting space by using disabled text boxes and unnecessary labels and a "To" field that isn't normally needed. It all looks a bit untidy. Also, attachments are hidden in the text at the end of the mail.
Since reading and writing mails have slightly different requirements, the interface will reflect that.

Reading mails

Current GUI: Mail reading, current GUI

Proposed GUI: Mail reading, proposed GUI

  • Labels aren't needed - besides the "Account" info, as that isn't immediately obvious. This, too, can be omitted if there's just one mail account set up.
  • Right-clicking a field highlights it and produces a context menu for "Copy to Clipboard", "New Mail to {sender name}", "Add {sender name} to People" etc.
  • The status pop-up let's you set a (custom) status, as it's also available from the menu "File | Close and | Set to...".
  • The "CC" button only appears if there's a CC set (and also the "To" button when "To" and the receiving account differ, think mailing lists). The pop-up menu offers all entries in a list, choosing one will open a reply-to-mail-window with that recipient filled in.
  • The pop-up menu for the decoding setting will provide the current elaborate items, e.g. "ISO West European (ISO-8859-1)", but is shortened as shown when it's selected. At the top of that menu should be a 3-item history of the last used codepages for quicker access. Plus the default "Auto" on top.

Writing mails

Current GUI: Mail writing, current GUI

Proposed GUI: Mail writing, proposed GUI

  • The "To:" text box is not as wide. Some may see this as a problem. It isn't: if you put more that one contact in, it gets quickly too small anyway. Add to that resizing of the window.... Plus:
  • Text boxes with truncated contents get a bubble help showing the list of recipients.
  • The account and encoding info are shortened.

Attachments

Instead of hiding an attachment in the text at the end of an email body, an attachment bar is displayed above the message body.

Proposed GUI (reading, one line attachments): Mail reading (with attachments), proposed GUI

  • The normal context menu on files: "Open With...", "Save As...", "Save All..." (when writing a mail, also "Delete", "Delete All")
  • If there are more attachments that won't fit in one line, automatically extend the bar vertically. Max. 3 lines of attachments, then add a vertical scrollbar.
  • In the read-mail GUI the attachment bar background is gray, as it's read-only. When writing, it's the usual white signaling editability.

Proposed GUI (writing, more lines with attachments): Mail writing (with attachments), proposed GUI

Change History (6)

by humdinger, 14 years ago

Attachment: Mail-reading-original.png added

Mail reading, current GUI

by humdinger, 14 years ago

Attachment: Mail-reading-3-cc.png added

Mail reading, proposed GUI

by humdinger, 14 years ago

Attachment: Mail-writing-original.png added

Mail writing, current GUI

by humdinger, 14 years ago

Attachment: Mail-writing-3-1.png added

Mail writing, proposed GUI

by humdinger, 14 years ago

Mail reading (with attachments), proposed GUI

by humdinger, 14 years ago

Mail writing (with attachments), proposed GUI

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