Re: Balsa 2.2.0 end user impressions



Am 19.07.04 13:53 schrieb(en) joacher gmx de:
I'd like to have a "size" column in the folder tree window, displaying
the
whole size of the folder. Mozilla has this feature, even easily
configurable.

This is a *really* good idea, I strongly support to implement it!

A "Save" button should be available for the main window, not just for the
message window. The only way to save messages within the main window is
"Message -> Save Current Part", which is confusing. I want to save a
message
and no part of whatever. Saving messages also lags explicit
functionality:
Saved messages don't contain their header lines (is this meant by
"part"?),
which feels a little bit too "noobish" for such a highly configurable and
therefore professional mail client. Second, the file name should default
to
<subject>.eml in the save dialog.

Hmmm, do you really want to save whe whole *message* ant not all *parts* (or a subset of parts)? I must admit that I never saw a reason for saving messages including the header... But it should not be too complicated.

The order of "To, Subject, CC" should definitely be changed to "To, CC,
Subject" or, at best, to "From, To, CC, Subject" ("From" = Identity
chooser).

IMHO the header order is somewhat a matter of taste... I must (yes...) use a winbloze box at work, and it was *really* confusing for me that other mua's use a different sorting than Balsa. As for the From: chooser: this would be a real improvement!

The attachment handling isn't very efficient, too. By attaching a file
Balsa
suddenly displays a huge attachment frame, wasting a lot of space.  I
always
check attachment filenames three times to ensure I don't send the wrong
sensitive document to a person which isn't meant to see it. So it's
important to me that I can check the filename reliably. The displayed

The same applies for forwarding messages as attachment... you'll se just message/rfc822, and that's it!

In my opinion, use the organization of Mozillas compose window but
integrate
Sylpheeds tabular attachment view into mozillas simple attachment field.
This would deliver the most powerfull solution.

Didn't try Sylpheed since a while, and I don't have a running one here. Maybe you can provide a screenshot that illustrates this idea a little more?

IMHO, the whole compose/attachment stuff needs *heavy* reworking. We put a great effort to make things more transparent for received messages (I hope it is ;-)), but this issue got somewhat lost. I remember there was a discussion a while ago when it emerged that the icon view is depracted, with the conclusion that the current situation is sub-optimal.

It might be an idea to replace the icon view by a table, including information about content type, description, and a check button to select whether it shall be a "real" attachment or a reference (external body), and maybe even with a selector (or a button) to *force* the content type of an attachment to application/octet-stream, e.g.

Content Type   | Description                                 | Ext. Body
message/rfc822 | From: Joe Hacker Re. Balsa UI improvements  |   [ ]
image/jpeg     | file /home/user/pictures/picture of mom.jpg |   [ ]
text/plain     | file /net/share/some/large/text/file.txt    |   [X]

First, each identity needs it's own SMTP configuration. There are some
reasons. The first is privacy, another is the fact, that some (my!) SMTP

Hmmm, why privacy?

server simply doesn't accept "faked" sender addresses. Or did I get the

I guess this is meanwhile a "standard" anti-spam configuration, so, yes, this needs to be fixed. The only workaround would be installing an MTA yourself and configure it to relay messages for all your identities, but this is of course difficult.

identities. This means an own tab for SMTP configuration. The identities
configuration panel could move to it's own tab within the standard
preferences, too, there is no logical difference between configuring

<ot>
You should be aware of problems with this concept when you are sitting behind a firewall, e.g. when you plug your notebook into a university/ company/whatever network. In order to prevent spammers from working from within the net, they will usually block port 25, so you must use the mta relay in the firewall/dmz, and go back to your problem above...
</ot>

To make it clear again: Complaining about weaknesses of balsa lays in the
nature of this discussion and does not express disrespect about any
contributors or their effort.

This investigation and all comments are really welcome and valuable. I guess there are many points which long-term balsa users dislike, but we got somewhat used to them...

Cheers, Albrecht.


--
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Albrecht Dreß  -  Johanna-Kirchner-Straße 13  -  D-53123 Bonn (Germany)
      Phone (+49) 228 6199571  -  mailto:albrecht dress arcor de
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