Morgen, bkirsch, and I have been going back and forth on the various
merits, necessities and downfalls of having OOTB mail and sharing
accounts in the Accounts dialog.
1. OOTB accounts cause weird bugs when Restoring Settings... Users
end up with duped accounts. Empty OOTB ones + the ones that get
restored.
2. This is especially problematic if you can't delete OOTB accounts
(which you can't - because the accounts dialog barfs if it has 1
accounts), because you can't get rid of the extra accounts, unless
you patiently re-fill out the OOTB accounts and delete the restored
accounts.
3. Non-delete-able OOTB accounts are also not-so-great for people who
don't want to use email or want to use a different kind of sharing
account. They end up with perpetually empty accounts that they can't
get rid of...
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2007-May/007298.html
So why have OOTB accounts at all?
+ Well if we didn't have any OOTB accounts, the accounts dialog would
look fearfully empty when you first pop it up.
+ It gives the user an immediate sense of what the different account
options are.
+ Helps to direct users towards the Chandler Hub sharing account so
that they don't have to wonder about Chandler Server.
However, a few things have changed that make it possible for us to
have the best of both worlds: OOTB accounts can now be deleted
because Morgen has made it so that the accounts dialog is happy to
exist without any accounts in it.
That means:
1. Duped accounts as a result of Restore Settings ain't so bad
because users can just delete empty OOTB accounts.
2. People not interested in having mail or sharing can delete those
accounts if they want to.
3. People using Chandler Server or WebDAV sharing accounts can delete
the Chandler Hub sharing account.
Which means that none of the 3 scenarios above turn out to be that
bad *and* we get to keep OOTB accounts.
I think this means that: Extra Incoming mail account when restoring
settings http://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9161http://
bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9161 doesn't really need
to be fixed for Preview.
The resulting changes to the Accounts dialog UI are minimal:
+ You will no longer see the word (Default) next to any of the accounts)
+ OOTB accounts are delete-able.
+ Email and sharing pulldowns will default to the 1st account that is
filled out. (I think this was always the case.)
Mimi
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