>>Who said anything about "draft"? I was referring to incoming >>messages. > >You didn't specify and the cursor is typically not a navigational >tool for incoming messages, but an editing tool. You don't typically >edit incoming.
The cursor may imply editing, but it also has the use of selecting, which is entirely appropriate for incoming messages. The arrow keys are most certainly navigational. >>You have received a message that is more than on page long and you >>hit the down arrow to move down a few lines (No, I don't like using >>"Page Down" when all I want to see is the next few lines). Instead >>of scrolling down those few lines, nothing happens. Why, because >>the cursor is actually at the bottom of the message, instead of the >>top! > >You can speed the cursor to the last (or first) line with alt-arrow. >Then go down your few lines. For an incoming message one is not going to edit, is there any advantage for having the cursor placed initially at the bottom? Would it hinder anyone who _doesn't_ navigate line-by-line via up/down arrow keys as Tim does? If not, then by default it should be at the top so those who do work that way have less work to do. Why should I have to always be hitting alt-arrow for every message? With the cursor at the top everyone wins. (Maybe there is something in the PowerMail code that expects the cursor at the bottom, say when replying, to initiate a selection. But we won't know unless CTM speaks up. In any case, I doubt it would be impossible to recode.) >It's not PowerMail you have a problem with, it's a systemwide OS >guideline that you want to break with. The "cursor" was never meant to >be navigation tool, unless you're editing. The interface of Mac OS X is >not primarily based on Unixen, which may be your inspiration here, but >on sound Mac OS tradition. I question you wanting to enforce a break >with a widespread convention for an application-specific solution in >presence of other better adapted tools. > >Use the navigational tools there is instead. Besides speeding up the >cursor movement and page down/up you can also hit the space bar, which >is very accessible. If you are at the end of the message you will only >see a few more lines or move down one page. Systemwide... Looking at several of my applications, they all allow navigation with the arrow keys. In this mode, there's also no full page jump. When the cursor reaches the bottom, they either try to keep the cursor in the middle of the page (Apple's Pages, Adobe InDesign; I believe PageMaker too, but it was less neurotic about it being in the absolute center), or jump just a few (5-6) lines (Apple's TextEdit), or even go line-by-line (Bare Bones TextWrangler, Apple's Preview for PDFs and images, MarinerWrite, Firefox, Apple's Finder in list view and column view!). Space bar is not an option for browsing messages because the full-page jump is too jarring. It's not that it's not accessible. It's not that it's impossible. But I find it far less efficient when reading text. My hands working on "auto-pilot" I find myself asking: did I jump a page down in this same message, or did I just jump to another message entirely? And line-by-line movement works very well for scooting down a message you know will be just one or two lines more. Further, space bar to move a full page at a time and alt/option-arrow key to do the same is redundant. (I'd personally prefer that the up/down arrow keys would scroll a message line-by-line, but that doesn't work with their function of moving between messages, and I'm not sure offhand what I would remap to where, or if that is a better overall solution. Nevertheless...) So I think the implementation that needs to change here is PowerMail's. PowerMail should place the cursor at the top of the message by default, so those who want to scroll line-by-line with the up/down arrow keys can do so. Space bar should scoot just 5-6 lines of text at a time, not a full page. Alt/option-arrow keys should be the full screen's worth of text page up/down. All this in single message view. Chris --
