Beta Test New Webmail

[Wazoo]

When I first opened the beta webmail I noticed an inconsistency between which folder is displayed and which folder is identified in the box next to the "Open Folder" button. The folder displayed indicates "Held Mail", while the folder identified in the box next to the "Open Folder" button is "Inbox". In fact the contents displayed were that of "Inbox". It is easy to fix by merely forcing a selection through the use of the "Open Folder" button, but for the sake of minimizing confusion I thought I'd mention that the inital conditions can be a bit inconsistent.

In a "display" issue such as this, it would be important to define the browser and version number in use ....

[StevenUnderwood]

When I first opened the beta webmail I noticed an inconsistency between which folder is displayed and which folder is identified in the box next to the "Open Folder" button. The folder displayed indicates "Held Mail", while the folder identified in the box next to the "Open Folder" button is "Inbox". In fact the contents displayed were that of "Inbox". It is easy to fix by merely forcing a selection through the use of the "Open Folder" button, but for the sake of minimizing confusion I thought I'd mention that the inital conditions can be a bit inconsistent.

In addition to Wazoo's question, what do you have set to open when you login? I have it set to the Inbox and everything shows properly using IE6.

[Juneappal]

The layout on Safari is very weird for me.

http://www.zipcon.net/~ami/webmail.jpg

I am not totally sure this is unintentional, but it is unpleasant.

[Wazoo]

The layout on Safari is very weird for me.

As compared to what?

I am not totally sure this is unintentional, but it is unpleasant.

An explanation of what you are actually complaining about would be helpful. But, as this is a product bought elsewhere, major issues, layout suggestions, etc. would normally be targeted to that applications developer .... the Horde/IMP FAQ/Support site is listed in the SpamCop FAQ found here, links at the top of this page. Sure, a lot of this can be re-written, modified, per installation, but as it seems that most if this install is "default" at the moment .... the actual developer ought to hear some of these kinds of complaints ....

For future reference, your graphic includes a major portion of what appears to be a Session ID .. that kind of data should be munged prior to posting publicly.

[jefft]

I'll give it a shot, make notes, and get back to y'all.

(oh, and I'll be testing https://delta2.cesmail.net/ [note the "s"] instead ... unless that's completely not useful for you.

Thanks... the issue is that the individual pages for webmail are made out of lots of parts. Within each part, different buttons, even things you can't see, are marked with keyboard shortcuts. Some keys even have multiple things assigned to them, which means that the first shortcut assigned gets precedence. I don't know of any single place where shortcuts are assigned.

That said, if there are shortcuts that were in the old system but aren't here, let me know and I'll see if I can add them back. I added back the Alt-T which selects Report as spam.

Alt-a selects all messages as described earlier in this thread (while updating the current status on problems seen in the previous beta which fizzled).

Just for the record, the reason the previous beta failed isn't totally in our control. The previous beta webmail used certain features which made webmail totally unusable under Mozilla Firefox. This was apparently confirmed to be a Firefox bug. At that point, we had to wait for Firefox to fix the bug and the upgrade to be fairly widely deployed. Even though it was Firefox's problem, I didn't think that breaking every Firefox user and forcing them all to use IE was a reasonable option.

4. Request made a year or two ago: add a To header to the Date/From/Subject/Size headers. That's because we have strict control on the addresses registered under our domain. "Non-existent" addresses such as info[at] / webmaster[at] / whatever[at]) are reserved exclusively for the use of spammers . It would save the time needed to open some of the spams with Subject headers that look like valid mail.

This isn't likely to happen. It's simply not useful to most people and clutters up the screen. Also, we really discourage catch-all domains like you have set up because you end up receiving hundreds or thousands of spams that could have been trivially rejected just by asking your domain host to only accept valid email addresses. Catch-alls were fine 10 years ago, but aren't any more.

[earlerobinson]

That said, if there are shortcuts that were in the old system but aren't here, let me know and I'll see if I can add them back. I added back the Alt-T which selects Report as spam.

The two shortcuts that have been completely eliminated are: alt-g, to logoff, and alt-m to go to the held folder.

-er

[jefft]

My wife's account has had its color scheme changed to "Blue and White." We didn't do that, but I had identified our logins to JT, so maybe he changed it? Or made a more global change? But my account (which previously had "Purple Horde" selected, then that selection got deleted somehow) is still exhibiting the "white on white" problem (specifically in the message composition screen), and when I check my Options, none of the schemes are selected. Yes, I know I could fix the problem myself by selecting one of the schemes, but this is indicative of potential problems for other users, which is the point of testing out a Beta in the first place.

I can also confirm that the "Blacklist" won't open up in the Beta...it produces an entirely blank HTML page without navigation.

David,

On your account, you have specifically chosen hi-contrast. That theme was pretty broken and I removed it, but you still have it selected in the database. Just pick something else.

Your wife's account was fixed when I fixed nearly everyone's globally.

[DavidT]

As compared to what?

Take another look at their Safari screen shot....it's pretty obvious. In the graphic that Juneappal provided, there's a wide band across the top of the interface that contains only the "Open Folder" button and the drop-down list of folders. I'm sure that's what they're talking about, and it's not good.

DT

[Wazoo]

Take another look at their Safari screen shot....it's pretty obvious. In the graphic that Juneappal provided, there's a wide band across the top of the interface that contains only the "Open Folder" button and the drop-down list of folders. I'm sure that's what they're talking about, and it's not good.

Yeah but ..... Screen size/resolution not mentioned ... no account myself, so once again, I can only go with data offered .... no idea what the background was ... thus the question ...

[jefft]

Nothing is worse than changing hotkeys that are already well established. The new version as done away with alt-g to logoff. Now one must click with the mouse. Similarly, alt-m no longer moves to the held folder. One can do alt-l, h, CR, more keystrokes. Why? The alt-b, to return to the folder in which one was is gone, too. An alt-i will work to return to the inbox but that doesn't help for the held folder, which now requires 3 key strokes rather a single one. Finally, alt-e launched the erasure of the messages in trash and that shortcut has disappeared, too. Oh yes, the older way of checking all messages has been changed for no good reason at all.

OK, Alt-g is fixed for logout. So is Alt-m but it won't work until the site goes live and on the correct domain.

The layout on Safari is very weird for me.

.

I am not totally sure this is unintentional, but it is unpleasant.

Your screen isn't wide enough to display the whole bar. On wider resolutions, those top two bars are side-by-side.

Which brings up: do we really need the "Report spam" button? It's really just a link to another site, it has nothing to do with webmail. It's basically a bookmark. People could bookmark that page in their web browser themselves and we could remove this button. In the past, this link was special because you could do stuff you couldn't get to on the regular SpamCop site. But, www.spamcop.net lets you do everything this does and more since it has cookie logins available.

[DavidT]

Screen size/resolution not mentioned

Ah, yes, you've hit the nail on the head with screen size (window size, to be specific). It seems that without the extra "SpamCop Menu" on the left, if your browser window is less than 1000 pixels wide, things in the menu bar across the top start wrapping, just as shown in that Safari shot.

I just got the same effect in Firefox by narrowing my window width a bit less than 1000 pixels. Things get worse if you turn on the SpamCop Menu on the side.

Here's the menu using Firefox with a window width of 800 (there are still plenty of people with 800x600 screens, aren't there?):

With the SpamCop Menu enabled, the minimum window width to avoid any wrapping of the menu items is around 1200 pixels, but I suppose this is much better than making people scroll horizontally, so people with lower resolutions will just wind up with multiple lines of menu. Here's what I get at 800 with the side Menu turned on:

One more thing...about the Welcome/login screen:

If the background of the lower portion of the screen is going to be white, I'm hoping that you'll change the color of "the news page" link? (yellow on white = not enough contrast)

DT

[jefft]

Ah, yes, you've hit the nail on the head with screen size (window size, to be specific). It seems that without the extra "SpamCop Menu" on the left, if your browser window is less than 1000 pixels wide, things in the menu bar across the top start wrapping, just as shown in that Safari shot.

I just got the same effect in Firefox by narrowing my window width a bit less than 1000 pixels. Things get worse if you turn on the SpamCop Menu on the side. I'll post a screenshot later.

It depends on your text size, too. On my system, with default text sizes, I can make the window much narrower than 1000 pixels before things start to wrap. Crank up the text size, though, and you run out of room.

JT

[DavidT]

It depends on your text size, too.

I'm using the FF defaults...I've never touched them. It might also be affected by your "Display Resolution" setting for your monitor...I've got mine set at 96, which is more or less "normal" for a 17" LCD (I think).

DT

[earlerobinson]

OK, Alt-g is fixed for logout. So is Alt-m but it won't work until the site goes live and on the correct domain.

Thank you! Can you add back in the alt-e to erase the trash folder contents, too? I realize that you do this automatically after so many days. But, if we do it ourselves that reduces your resources utilization.

-er

[Wazoo]

Ah, yes, you've hit the nail on the head with screen size (window size, to be specific).

Suspected this as an issue, as no one else had brought it up before .....

Here's the menu using Firefox with a window width of 800 (there are still plenty of people with 800x600 screens, aren't there?):

Several systems, a number of laptops here .. that's the max ...

I tried a survey/poll here a long while back, looking forward at that time to the 2.1.x release of this application .. not a lot of replies made ... but the 'sample' certainly include a major slice ... see Screen sizes / resolutions

[tingo]

I'm using the FF defaults...I've never touched them. It might also be affected by your "Display Resolution" setting for your monitor...I've got mine set at 96, which is more or less "normal" for a 17" LCD (I think).

Don't know about other browsers, but with Mozilla you can use your mouse's scroll wheel to adjust font size up and down on the fly.

[Wazoo]

Don't know about other browsers, but with Mozilla you can use your mouse's scroll wheel to adjust font size up and down on the fly.

Actually, this also depends on just what you've got the "wheel" programmed to do .....

[jabberwock]

links to Held Mail and Report as spam:

I am getting 404 Not Found message for the URL: /horde/imp/spam_report.

Using FF1.5, in WinXP. Just starting using the Beta.

[Wazoo]

links to Held Mail and Report as spam:

I am getting 404 Not Found message for the URL: /horde/imp/spam_report.

Using FF1.5, in WinXP. Just starting using the Beta.

But did you read the previous postings in this Discussion?

Not going to argue, as it's your browser, your experience, but ... the provided URL would seem to be incomplete .. although once again noting the "not until live" description offered up in previous posts ...????

[Juneappal]

The layout on Safari is very weird for me.

http://www.zipcon.net/~ami/webmail.jpg

I am not totally sure this is unintentional, but it is unpleasant.

OK - I'll try to be more thorough.

My screen resolution in the screenshot is 1024x768. My other monitor has a resolution of 1920x1250, but has the same problems, so I don't think the resolution is the problem.

The top of the page is a blank light grey bar, except for the single "open folder" and pull down menu on the far right.

Below that is a dark grey bar. Below that is a tan bar. When I first load the page, the tan bar contains tiny icons for Inbox, compose, reply and a handful of other features, with no labels. When I hit reload, the tan bar goes away, replaced by black, and the labels appear. With labels, the icons still take up less than half of the height of the dark grey bar, so there is a fair amount of dead space.

When I open any particular message, the toolbar described above remains on the screen. Another toolbar appears to the right of the first with message specific functions. I have to scroll a full message width over to the right view it.

It is weird compared to the layout on the old webmail. It seems to have all the same elements as the old one, but they are not placed on the page in the same fashion, and the current placement has lots of dead space (as in the screen shot I posted) and requires lots of scrolling left and right when I am viewing a message. I couldn't tell from the followup from my original message if this is intentional, but it shouldn't be.

I realize one can't design for every browser, but Safari really doesn't have many layout problems - this is the only site I know of that fails this badly.

p.s. Thanks for the tip on the Horde id - I assume that by this point it has expired, so I won't go back and mung, but I'll be more careful in the future.

[DavidT]

My screen resolution in the screenshot is 1024x768. My other monitor has a resolution of 1920x1250, but has the same problems, so I don't think the resolution is the problem.

Screen size and window size are two different things, and from your screenshot, I can see that you aren't allowing the browser window to use the entire available width of your screen (1024). If you do that, I'm fairly confident that the primary menu at the top will "unwrap" back to a single line. Your Safari window is only about 856 pixels wide. Please take a look at the graphics I posted and you'll see that when a browser window is that narrow, the buttons will wrap.

I'm assuming you're using a Mac, and Macs do entirely different things with window sizes. IIRC, the Mac interface doesn't have the "Maximize" button found in the corner of the windows in Windows. On a Mac, you pretty much have to manually size a window to cover the entire screen, in that the "Zoom" function button found in the corner doesn't do that (it has different effects in different programs). This is one reason I prefer the Windows OS over Mac. When I'm at a Mac, I waste a lot of time simply dragging the windows larger.

Links:

http://et.sdsu.edu/pkerry/pc2mac/window.htm#maximize

http://macosx.com/tech-support/maximize-wi...rtcut/5473.html

http://www.xvsxp.com/interface/max_vs_zoom.php

DT

[jabberwock]

But did you read the previous postings in this Discussion?

Not going to argue, as it's your browser, your experience, but ... the provided URL would seem to be incomplete .. although once again noting the "not until live" description offered up in previous posts ...????

Sorry, that post was in error...forgot to authorize scripting for NoScript add-on in my haste. Right now I can't seem to access "delta2.cesmail.net/horde/index.php?..." (post Login) to double check it (site is authorized in NS); I get a completely blank white screen. Is that a sympton of the problem involving the Style Sheet? Can it be corrected in the same manner in FF as in IE? (I did read through all 4 pages. URL cited in my post from "Not Found" msg was checked against Address Bar.)

Also wanted to ask if it would be possible to have a <return> link in the Global Options menu back to the full (opening) Options menu?

[DavidT]

Right now I can't seem to access "delta2.cesmail.net/horde/index.php?..." (post Login) to double check it (site is authorized in NS); I get a completely blank white screen.

I'm not seeing any problems with the "You have been logged out" screen using either FF or IE. Not sure why your screen would be blank.

Also wanted to ask if it would be possible to have a <return> link in the Global Options menu back to the full (opening) Options menu?

That's done using the drop-down menu, selecting "mail" which are the initial options presented....in the beta.

DT

[Juneappal]

I'm assuming you're using a Mac, and Macs do entirely different things with window sizes. IIRC, the Mac interface doesn't have the "Maximize" button found in the corner of the windows in Windows. On a Mac, you pretty much have to manually size a window to cover the entire screen, in that the "Zoom" function button found in the corner doesn't do that (it has different effects in different programs). This is one reason I prefer the Windows OS over Mac. When I'm at a Mac, I waste a lot of time simply dragging the windows larger.

Conversely, when I sit down at a pc, I waste time because the windows are always too damn big!

So I verified what you're describing, but I don't like it. The old webmail would allow me to make the window very narrow. Since many messages are wrapped at 70-80 characters (~= 550 pixels) I narrow the window to that width and keep it open on a third of my screen. With the old webmail, that worked great. With the new one, though, if I do that I can't see the buttons that I use most (when viewing a message):Delete, Reply, Forward, & Report. To have those available, I have to expand my window over most of the screen, which seems like a huge, PC-style waste of pixels, particularly when the messages are hard wrapped and I am left with 375 pixels of white pace (width, that is).

I greatly prefer having the a horizontal scroll bar appear when the window is too narrow - it truly baffles me how Windows users can stand to have their windows cover the whole screen - that is the single thing that makes me most uncomfortable when I work on a PC.

Sorry if I sound snappy - I do appreciate that you're working to make things better and taking input from users - truly.

[DavidT]

Sorry if I sound snappy - I do appreciate that you're working to make things better and taking input from users - truly.

Not sure who that's directed at, in that *I'm* not "taking input from users" -- I'm just a user like you. Maybe you meant that for JT?

DT