Hi Allie,
> Microplanet Gravity does a good job of that. In fact it's
> superior in quite a few respects to Forte' Agent and I was using
> it instead of Agent for some time. Forte' Agent's superior basic
> usability features won out in the end. It's just so nice and
> *comfortable* to use.
Tried Gravity a few times with various versions, and always came
back to Agent before long. I have no use for many of its fancy stuff
(graphic database and the like), and it seemed to be a tad buggy.
Agent, on my systems (yes, even on those notoriously buggy early
versions of Chinese Windows), has always been rock solid.
> Gravity seems to have the edge now in the mainstream
> circles. Agent seems to have the edge in the hardcore, savvy user
> circles although other clients like X-News come into the picture.
I tried X-News a while back, and it stayed on my system much longer
than Gravity. It has some innovative features that truly make the
newsreading experience enjoyable. The big minus? It's an online
reader and the author makes clear he has no intention to add true
offline capability to it. I need an offline reader, so it's out
after I switch to Win2k.
I guess I'm simply spoiled by Agent. When I try a new one, I expect
nothing less than what Agent could provide, and any feature (that I
use) missing in the new software appears to be glaring to me. It's
not fair, I know. I just couldn't help it.
> I vividly remembering getting frustrated in how to to
> setup Agent for e-mail and to create a few folders. Unbelievably
> unintuitive at the time. :-)
Really? I can't believe it. I must have used it for too long to
remember.
> You do have a point there although TB!'s method of dealing
> with multiple accounts is quite uncommon. The interface is also
> elegant and very clear in design.
I like that, too.
ML>> I agree, however, that if somehow RITLabs could find a way to
ML>> smooth the learning curve of TB, it could be more easily
ML>> recommended to casual users.
> Funny, what attracts me to TB! is how much you can do with
> it with relative ease and not having to learn too much to do so.
> We tend to confuse a poor help system with difficulty in learning.
> Take the templates and filtering for instance. Very powerful and
> easy to learn. Poorly documented however. If you're not willing to
> experiment and learn through simple trial and error, you're pretty
> much in the cold. :-(
> TB! needs a good help file. This would take it a long way.
I agree with you that TB's help system could use a lot of help, and
a good one would take it a long way. I meant more than that by
saying RIT needs to smooth the learning curve for TB. Some of its
features are simply non-intuitive, and a new user find herself
pressing F1 all the time, no matter how exhaustive and helpful the
Help System is, she might get frustrated.
Example no. 1, you can't search messages without a search string
(can't search by date only). Yeah, it could be worked around, but
it's unintuitive.
Example no. 2, how do you sort the folders? Yeah, it can be done,
but it's unintuitive, and the result is a bit awkward (the system
folders--Inbox, Outbox, etc.--are sorted, too). It's also very
different from most other email software where folders are
auto-sorted.
I appreciate TB gives me the power to control exactly how my folders
should be lined up, but I think auto-sorting should be default, or
at least there should be an option to allow auto-sorting.
Example no. 3, filters. TB touts its filtering function as the best,
and it's indeed the most powerful among all I've tried. But I
couldn't understand why it force you to move messages to a folder
when the filter is applied. I just couldn't figure out a way to set
up a filter that could be applied to various folders without moving
the messages (to assign colors to some messages, e.g.).
I could be prooved wrong, but I think people attracted to TB are
mostly looking for their 2nd (3rd, etc.) email clients. Those who
touch computer or use the Internet for the first time would mostly
go for the freebies already on their system. Therefore, to
understand their expectation is important. Unless you're MS, you
can't force people to learn your tricks.
Also important, is for TB to provide a better mail import
capability. It takes too much trouble to switch over from OE5 (the
wizard works, but needs too much hand tweaking), and it's a big
hurdle for many people.
ML>> There're some other users who don't want to learn anything new,
ML>> and I think they would be better served by OE or its peers.
> True. But without even going into TB!'s more powerful
> features, it's default, very basic, design philosophy of control
> over what one is sending to the recipient is a great one. What you
> see before you hit the send button being what the recipient will
> get, combined with effective means to optimize this are
> distressingly rare qualities among the clients out there including
> the leading ones. In fact the leading ones, ie, OE, Outlook and
> Eudora fall flat on their faces in this regard and hence I avoid
> them like the plague.
That's an interesting observation. You mean OE, Outlook and Eudora
can't format the messages correctly? Are you referring to HTML mail?
Could you be more specific?
--
Best regards,
Ming-Li mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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