Mail Issues Meeting, 12/14/00
We discussed the problems associated with Bug 49753. When the Account
Level is selected in Mail, the Thread Pane and Message Pane are blank
and often confusing for users.
As a minimum, we agreed that we need to put informative text in the
Thread Pane when the account level is selected. "There are no messages
available at the level. Select the Inbox to view your mail."
If time/resources permit, we would like to use the right mail pane to
provide useful information to the user when an account level item is
selected in the left pane. This useful information would be called
"Account Summary" view.
Option 1 - IF WE ARE UNABLE TO IMPLEMENT THE "ACCOUNT SUMMARY" VIEW
1. The first time that mail is launched, the Default Account should be
expanded. The Inbox for the default account is selected.
2. Put informative text in the Thread Pane when the account level is
selected. "There are no messages available at the level. Select the
Inbox to view your mail."
Option 2 - IF WE ARE ABLE TO IMPLEMENT THE "ACCOUNT SUMMARY" VIEW
1. The first time that mail is launched, the Default Account should be
expanded. The Account Level is selected. The new "Account Summary" view
is shown in the right pane.
2. Future Usage. When Mail is launched, accounts should be
expanded/collapsed as the user last left them. If the default account
was left expanded, the Inbox should be selected by default.
3. Account Summary View. Not 100%, but most agreed we would like to see
links to mail tasks, such as "Read my mail" and "Setup a new account".
Other possibilities include displaying account folder information,
displaying useful help tips, or a combination of account folder
information and links to mail tasks.
It was also discussed that many folks commented they would like to see
the "Total" and "Unread" columns returned in the Folder Pane. We would
like to provide the column selector widget in the "Mail Folders" pane so
that users can add "Total" and "Unread" columns if desired. They would
not be displayed as the default.
