Jennifer Glick wrote:
>
> A draft proposal spec for a "Labels" feature has been posted to the
> Mozilla Mail/News spec page. Feedback wecome.
<http://mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/labels/>
There are already two ways of marking up a message to distinguish it
from other messages.
The first method is to set its priority. Currently this can only be done
by the author of a message, but there is an RFE to allow the recipient
to do it as well <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84274>.
This would be better than a `Labels' feature in five respects.
1. Unlike labels, the interface for changing priority would be very
simple -- you wouldn't need Yet Another Pref Panel for it, just a
`Change Priority to' submenu in the `Message' menu.
2. Unlike labels, changing priority would be compatible with other mail
clients and previous versions of Mozilla -- an IMAP message with
priority changed to `High' in Seamonkey, for example, would also
show up with High priority when viewed later in 4.x or in any other
mail program which understands the Priority header.
3. Unlike labels, the Priority of a message could be negotiated between
the author and the recipient. Someone may trust particular authors
(e.g. managers, family members, or sysadmins) to set message
priority appropriately at composition time, while using a filter to
apply Normal priority to all other incoming messages. (A
fill-in-the-blanks example of such a filter could even be provided,
turned off by default, when a mail account is set up.)
4. Unlike labels, Priority is not likely to be confused with the Labels
feature in the Finder. (Another way of avoiding this confusion would
be to make the Finder labels and the Mozilla labels one and the same
thing, but I can't imagine that happening in a hurry.)
5. Recipient-side priority changing would be considerably simpler to
implement than labels would.
The second method of marking up a message is to flag it. Currently (as
in 4.x) this is just a boolean toggle, which is not very expressive. But
this could be easily extended to (for example) add a note to a message,
or to add an alarm reminding the user to reply to the message at a
certain time. (Such features would not be available to authors, only recipients.)
Again, this would be more interoperable than a Labels feature would; if
you flagged an IMAP message to remind yourself to reply to it in a week,
but in a week you happened to be reading your mail via Webmail at an
Internet kiosk in Costa Rica, the message would still appear flagged in
the Webmail display. (You just wouldn't get the exact reminder that
Mozilla would give you.)
So I think adding a Labels feature would be misguided, when there could
be other less complex, more interoperable, and (in the case of flagging)
more useful mechanisms for achieving the same purpose.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component default assignee thing
<http://mozilla.org/>
