Matthew Thomas wrote:
> Peter Janes wrote:
>
>> Matthew Thomas wrote:
>> ...
>>
>>> Please don't have a three-level hierarchy (mail/news --> account
>>> -->identity). People will get lost. Just let people create multiple
>>> accounts which happen to use the same servers -- that would achieve
>>> the same thing, wouldn't it?
>>
>> Isn't multiple accounts for the same servers *more* confusing? I
>> don't want to see eighteen different (but essentially identical)
>> accounts in my sidebar; I do want to see a number of identities at the
>> top of the addressing pane in my Compose window.
To clarify my point here: an advanced user shouldn't be punished, usability-wise,
for a workaround that an average user isn't going to notice or care about in the
first place. We already have a pulldown that allows a user to select the 'From'
address for mail and news; why does it have to be limited to just the addresses
associated with the mail/news accounts that are configured? (Especially since such
support already exists.)
> Sorry, but someone with eighteen accounts is *way* outside the part of
> the Poisson curve which I'm concerned about. If you have eighteen
> accounts, you'd probably be smart enough to understand a UI which
> presented them upside down.
Well, 18 was a made-up figure, but it's not unreasonable, either. If I
want to filter (potentially junk) mail, it's entirely possible to have a
large number of identities:
- [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED], just for
posting to different areas of news.mozilla.org.
- a user wants to post from home but have followups to his work address,
and vice versa (assuming no access to the mail servers)?
- My ISP provides multiple "family" addresses, aliased to the same
incoming mail account--what do I do if the dog wants to post to
alt.cats.woof-woof-woof on news.bar.com? (OK, a separate profile might
work for the dog. 8^)
Not to mention the sidebar space taken up by the extra accounts, even if
compressed. I'm subscribed to a combination of 30 different folders and
newsgroups; your suggestion will add another 18 lines of useless (i.e.
duplicated) information.
Having considered it some more, I'll agree that presenting a three-level
hierarchy to the user is probably a bad idea. But parallel settings
might be a valid way to go:
mail/news --> identity
mail/news --> account (with a "default" identity per account)
mail/news --> identity
For what it's worth, it's also possible that a user might want a *small*
number of identities, i.e. one. Why require the user to set up a new
(duplicate) identity for each new news server if you already have an
identity for his mail server (the most likely case)?
Peter J.
(Followups to .mail-news, since I think I redirected this into
.directory with my last post)
