I have some quick comments on Mahogany, having just used it for the first time (after extensive experience with Outlook Express, Outlook, pine, and Eudora). I hope they prove more useful than whiny.
Before I begin, let me say that I am tremendously impressed with this piece of software, and while I'm not yet ready to switch over to its fulltime use, it's really not far off from that point. The interface is non-clunky, things are snappy, and no bad surprises so far. Hooray! 1) Aesthetics. 1.1) When resizing the window, the window does not repaint itself. This is awkward and visually unpleasant. 1.2) The carat disappears when typing text; the carat should remain solid while the user is typing. 1.3) When selecting a block of text, the carat should be at the end of the selection, not the beginning. 2) Layout 2.1) The "No recipients" bar takes up a very large amount of real estate for no apparently good reason. The interface should be small, tight, and polished. 2.2) Composition windows appear to wrap text at 80 characters, but present no visual indication of the point at which this happens. Why not open a fixed-size window fixed to the maximum width of the message to be composed? This would be more elegant. 2.3) It is very easy to cause the word-wrapping engine to fail, outputting lines longer than 80 characters (simply revisit a previous line and start typing!). It may be easier to simply not do any word-wrapping at all until the message is being sent. This is what Outlook and company do. 2.4) "To", "From", "CC", and "BCC" are not clearly displayed in the composition window. 3) Usability 3.1) The program would ideally retain Outlook's popular key combinations (Control-M to check new messages, Control-Enter to send a new message) to make converting to Mahogany easier. 3.2) I use IMAP over SSL, as do many IMAP users. "Using SSL" should be an option in the initial setup. (I was SUPER impressed by the setup wizard otherwise!) 3.3) When creating a new IMAP account, the program should volunteer to download the folders for the account at that pointn. 3.4) Mahogany should also only display MAIL folders instead of every single blinking file in the user's folder. 3.5) The name of the IMAP master folder should be the user's mail server name (or a user-settable name) and not "IMAP Server". Some users (like myself) havemultiple I MAP accounts. 3.6) When composing, if a new IMAP message comes in, it freezes the composition window until the new message is fully downloaded. This is very frustrating. NEVER interrupt the user. 3.7) Standard Windows editing key-combos (Shift-Delete for CUT, Shift-Insert for PASTE, Control-Insert for COPY, and Control-Z for UNDO) do not work, frustrating word processing. 3.8) Drag-n-drop text editing doesn't work (not a big deal). 3.9) Dragging and dropping a file onto the composition window doesn't add it as an attachment to the message. (mildly more serious) Most of these should be pretty easy to fix. (Hopefully!) The little polish bits (like w/r/t the carat) are key to making a product that is nicely usable. I think Mahogany's core is pretty solid; it's only these polish bits that are needed to bring it to an everyday-user level of usability. Thanks for making a great product, and I hope these comments serve you well to help you focus on making a better experience for users. Yours, David E. Weekly [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See! http://www.vasoftware.com _______________________________________________ Mahogany-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mahogany-users
