See in-line
On Jan 10, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Brian Kirsch wrote:
Hi Mimi,
Overall this looks like a good solution however, I do see a couple
of issues.
First moving the testing of accounts to when the user hits the OK
button is problematic as we
discussed yesterday since multiple accounts may have been added.
This would mean if I created
two IMAP accounts and one SMTP Account all three would need to be
tested when the user hits OK.
This is complicated from both a developer standpoint (I would need
to store and resolve the errors for
each of the accounts) and the users standpoint (multiple account
errors to resolve vs. fixing one account).
In my opinion, we would be better served by limiting the testing to
one account at a time.
Oh, I think the addition of the DONE button upon successfully
entering and testing the account takes care of this issue. Okay only
tests for the currently selected account. Click DONE after everything
checks out is what closes the dialog.
Also, even if the test failed the user should be able to hit OK and
keep the current settings. Perhaps, the server was down or the user
lost the internet connection. Theses are temporary situations that
the user knows will be
resolved. We should not inhibit the ability to save the settings.
Ack. Good point. This almost pushed over to the dark side and made me
want to just cut the Auto-configure feature altogether. But after a
little bit more nudging in photoshop, I think I have a layout that
will work with separate 'Auto-configure', 'Test', and 'Okay' buttons.
See mock-ups and description at: http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/
view/Journal/AccountSetupWorkflow
The other issue I see is with outgoing accounts. Right now with
this model we are removing the ability to assign
a specific outgoing account to an incoming account since the drop
down is going away. This is fine but what
happens if some one creates more than one outgoing account. In this
design there really is only one outgoing
account which would apply to all incoming accounts. So if you agree
we should allow only the modification of the
default outgoing account in the Account Preferences UI.
Discussed this with bkirsch. What does it mean in Preview to assign
an SMTP account to an Incoming mail account?
+ It would allow us to automatically configure the 'Send as' field on
Reply emails.
Could we simulate the above experience by having users associate an
email address with each SMTP account?
Regarding error / progress messages in the bottom half of the
dialog they would mimic the current testing dialog
i.e. progress bar, verbiage. In the case of IMAP folder creation
the verbiage would be "Configuring Chandler IMAP Folders'.
The error message would be "Unable to set up Chandler IMAP Folders:
$REASON". The $REASON would be the
error response from the IMAP server.
bkirsch and I discussed that implementing a pop-up for progress and
error messages would be easier for Preview.
-Brian
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