Hello Marck, On Wednesday, June 12, 2002 you wrote: >> will the next versions of TB support the RFC-2369 List-* kludges of >> the mailing lists?
> Yes - just as *this* version already does! (see "Sepcials | Mailing > list"). This clearly indicates one thing, I was thinking for a long time. For a successful program it isn't enough to have powerful features, strong abilities or good standard support. There is also one very important factor -- the user interface. You may wonder why many people use MS products, despite the fact that they are not powerful, clumsy, unstable. It's the interface -- they are easy to use, colorful enough to make nice impression, but also not too colorful and clear enough not to be unreadable. In my opinion Ritlabs should find someone to redesign and modernize the interface. Not a programmer. Not a guru. Someone whose job is to design interfaces for ordinary users, who knows about users behaviors, who studies their habits. This is a good challenge for version 2.0! Major drawback is: we have functions but it's hard to access them. OTOH the menus are too complex and sometimes placed illogically. The right-click user menu is too complex too. Some features, especially the ones closely bound with messages (like adding a memo, performing the actions based on list-* kludges, creating filters, crypting, decrypting, signing and perhaps some others) should have icons that would appear when applicable. Sort of "context" buttons. For example: when a message is a message from a mailing list (has appropriate headers), there should appear icons for performing actions connected with a mailing list. Here should be an icon to easily add a memo to a message, and there should be an indication that a message has a memo added (yes, I know I can add it to message list, but in that form it take too much space!). There should be possibility to dock the memo window somewhere on the screen -- but it would appear only when there is a memo attached to a message. There is a lot of space for that on a "message header" place, below the list of messages. The idea taken from Outlook: to dock a window with favourite contacts from addressbook. A very user-friendly feature, especially for those who often write to the same people. And again: yes, I know that I could use an arrow next to new mail button, but not everybody knows that, you cannot use drag and drop there, you cannot modify information from there. If it was in a docked window, I could have. Look at view/display -- useful features. The ones accessible by alt-click are used by me very often, but using advanced filtering, and filling in all the criteria is too troublesome, especially that you fill them only for one usage. This time for a solution look at Gravity: you name a filter set and the you can quickly activate it many times. *Extremely* useful. Of course activation could be in menu, but there should also be a small toolbar with this so that I could have it handy. For features that are sophisticated enough to stay only in menus, the icons by menu entries would make navigation easier (as well as icons in context menu). With all these and many more improvements there wouldn't be situations like this: Ricardo M. Reyes RMR> I'm sorry, you are absolutely right. I was looking in the RMR> 'Specials' submenu in the pop-up menu (the one you open with the RMR> right button of the mouse) and not in the 'Specials' option of RMR> the main menu. The user got confused by too complex and non-intuitive interface. Why having a powerful program, when you need to search for the features for ages? In the end I'd advise people interested in this matter to look at the TopStyle program and its interface. Very configurable, and nice to work with. The same I could say about ACDSee 3 interface. Dockable widows, configurable interface. What do you think? -- / Krzysztof Trybowski pgp 0xF8C68208 /--/ To get my pgp key, put / / www.thebat.i.krakow.pl uin 4350719 /--/ "send_key" in subject. /_ Using The Bat! 1.60q [reg] under Windows 2000 5.0 build 2195. ______________________________________________________ Archives : http://tbtech.thebat.dutaint.com Moderators : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
