On Nov 6, 2006, at 12:40 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:
I see. I think I understand better.
I wonder though if users will be troubled that 'stop syncing this collection' is not really the same thing as 'going offline'.
To me they are not the same thing. But again this is a grey area.
Apple Mail allows users to 'Go offline' for individual accounts. Is that analogous to the idea of 'Taking a particular collection offline'?
Yes, I guess you could say that. Though it is not really the same since there is usually one mail account for a server. Taking an account offline in general ceases all communication with that server.
The ability to take a collection offline to me is the equivalent of taking an IMAP folder offline. The rest of the folders for the account are still synced.
Would it help if the menu item said 'Take offline' rather than 'Go offline'?
Share>>Take offline
+ Selected collection
=====
+ All
+ Shares
+ Email
I really don't see how this hierarchy would apply to mail. There is no relationship between a mail account and a collection. For example mail could appear in both the dashboard and the 'In' collection. What would it mean to take the 'In' collection offline in relation to mail?
Mail could also appear in a custom user collection having been dragged from the 'In' collection.
The issue is the sharing paradigm we are using with collections does not really apply to other network protocols.
It seems at this point a brief chat between the service layer developers and the design team may be required to solidify our offline strategy. Of course anyone else who would like to participate is welcome to join in.
I am also about to check in the online / offline mail code which includes a temporary menu item under the mail test menu that toggles mail online / offline.
In offline mode:
1. No IMAP or POP mail is downloaded.
2. Clicking the test account button pops up a dialog warning the user that they are in offline mode.
3. All SMTP mail is queue and sent once the mail service is back online.
-Brian
Mimi
On Nov 6, 2006, at 11:35 AM, Brian Kirsch wrote:
On Nov 4, 2006, at 2:46 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:
My bad, I kept going on the bug when I should have been posting comments to the list ;o)
In reply to Brian's comment below, the proposal I put forth in the bug would unify 'Go offline' for sharing and email by allowing the user to essentially suspend syncing of all shares. I think unless we can unify these concepts for Preview, my sense is that it will be too confusing to make 'Go offline' for email available for the end-user. However, we can certainly keep it in the Test menu for developers.
Hi Mimi,
I think it is worth taking a bit of time to get this right for preview. I agree that we want a unified concept of go online / go offline. It would make no sense to me to have the ability to take email offline while sharing is still online. It should be one action for Preview where go offline takes everything offline. That is the easiest concept for users to understand and is also the easiest task to accomplish from a development standpoint. It is also the origins of bug 6553 where developers wanted the ability to test Chandler without network operations via a --offline flag. If based on user feedback something more complex is desired then we can revise for Chandler 1.0.
It seems to me the concept we have for Sharing of taking specific collections on or off line may be the wrong terminology and thus refining will make this decision clearer.
When selecting a collection for sharing there is the take online / offline toggle menu item. But really what one is saying is no longer sync this specific collection. Yes the collection is 'offline', but the rest of the app is online which I think is a confusing concept for novice computer users. By changing the sharing verbiage to better reflect what is happening it may clear up the offline / online discussion.
We are not taking sharing offline but are telling the sharing service to not sync a specific share. Again, the rest of sharing is online as are the other Chandler network services. Instead, the wording could be something like "Disable syncing of 'In' collection' and 'Enable syncing of 'In' collection'.
Changing this wording paves the way for the addition of a 'Go Offline' File menu item that takes the entire app (email, sharing, rss, etc) offline.
That's my two cents :)
-Brian
Yes, but in Chandler the mental model we're trying to promote is that Sharing
is all things Communications and agnostic to protocol. Sharing includes:
IMAP, POP, WebDAV, CalDAV, RSS and eventually IM, SMS, VoIP etc.
If we have a single 'Go offline' menu that includes email and sharing, I think
it be confusing to have it under the File menurather than the Share menu.
Especially because all the Sync related stuff for both Email and Sharing are
under the Share menu.
I think the key issue is not which menu header to place the offline toggle
under but how will the toggle work. Right now the online / offline toggle is
very specific to sharing of individual collections. As stated earlier this is
not the right model for mail or RSS or VOIP or any of the other sharing
protocols outside of CalDAV / WebDAV.
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