2.1.3 Discussion Points

["W. Michael Petullo" <mike flyn org>]

Greetings!

I have some comments about balsa 2.1.3 that I would like to discuss  
with you folks.  I deploy balsa for several novice users for use in  
their homes as their primary email interface.

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1.  Handling of attachments is awkward for novice users.  For example,  
I have a messages that has the following listed under the "Message  
parts" tab:

mixed parts
	alternative parts
		(text/plain)
		(text/html)
	biketran.txt (text/plain)

I have found that users have trouble with this interface.  Switching  
between the "Content" and "Message parts" tabs seems to confuse people.

An alternative would be to replace the "Message parts" tab with a  
combo-box.  Rather than display MIME types (text/plain), I think we  
should display the associated icon for each type.  Something like this  
might be a simpler way to display the information above (imagine this  
as a combo-box):

View email as HTML [ envelope icon ]
View email as text [ envelope icon ]
View biketran.txt  [ text icon]

Choosing a combo-box option would instantly update the email window.   
There would be no switching between tabs.

=====================================================================

2.  Many of the menus seem unnecessarily complicated.  For example, the  
following options had me confused:

Mailbox->Empty Trash
Mailbox->Commit Current
Mailbox->Commit All

Message->Move to Trash

When using IMAP, "Move to Trash" does not move a message, it marks it  
to be deleted.  "Empty Trash" does not have any affect on IMAP  
mailboxes, "Commit .*" must be used.  Can't we come up with some type  
of policy requires only a "Move to Trash" action or otherwise  
simplifies things?

Also, Message->View Source could be removed and wrapped up in the  
combo-box idea above.

Several other menu items could probably be removed or moved into the  
preferences dialog (threading options, etc.).

=====================================================================

3.  The address book interface could use some improvements.

Dnotify or a similar (platform-independent) mechanism could be used to  
replace the "Re-Import" button on the balsa address book (at least for  
local address books like gnome-pim).  I have a patch vs. 2.1.0 that  
does this.  I would be happy to clean it up and port it to 2.1.3 if  
anyone is interested.

As an alternative, we could tear out balsa's address book code entirely  
and instead rely on gnome-pim.  I've never really felt comfortable with  
balsa/gnome-pim's interaction.  There seems to be something redundant/ 
confusing about it.

=====================================================================

4.  The remote content within HTML emails is not displayed.  This  
includes <IMG src=...>, etc.  I could imagine security and privacy  
reasons for this, but the bottom line is that it breaks a lot of users'  
ability to read email that they receive from legitimate sources.  I  
think this policy needs to be discussed.

=====================================================================

5.  Balsa 2.1.3 does not support SSL.  Is there plans on implementing  
this?

Thanks!

--
Mike