Re: Some hints for usability improvements



În data de Vi, 17 Feb 2006 la 10:52 Peter Bloomfield a scris:
> On 02/14/2006 11:01:28 AM Tue, Cyrille Mars wrote:
> > I'm using xpn as a news reader (http://xpn.altervista.org) and  
> > one thing I really like is One-Key reading. By default it's set  
> > to space. When you press space the message windows scrolls  
> > down, at the end of the message if you press space again you go  
> > to next unread message. I don't know if i'm clear as english is  
> > not my native language but reading all new message with only  
> > one key is realy nice and it would be great if balsa  
> > implemented the same behavior.
> 
> You're very clear!  I believe one-key reading can be implemented.  
> Balsa uses PageUp, PageDown, CursorUp, and CursorDown to scroll  
> within a message, so a couple of different implementations are  
> possible:
> - continue to use just those keys, but interpret an attempt to  
> scroll down below the end of a message as a request to chain to  
> the next unread message;
> - add space-bar as an addition to PageDown for scrolling, and  
> chain to the next unread message only if the space-bar is used to  
> try to scroll below the end of the current message.
> 
> The first is simplest, but a user might be surprised by jumping  
> to a new message just because of hitting PageDown too many times.
> 
> Opinions?

Since I'm still using Sylpheed on one of my machines (the low-memory one) I tried to see if it implements this "one-key" reading. To my surprise, not only it is implemented, but it is also extremely handy. I usually read only the new mails from a hierarchy of IMAP folders and using only the spacebar to read them all is nothing short of a real gem of usability. Of course, I still press Shift-N (which is the shortcut for jump to the next unread mail in Sylpheed) from time to time, but that's only because it's such an old habit to think that I need to press another key combination to jump to the next unread mail after I'm done reading the current one. 

My suggestion would be to implement this one-key reading *exactly* as described by Cyrille. Currently spacebar opens the selected mail in a separate window, which is what Enter does too (correct me if I'm wrong). To implement the "one-key" reading Spacebar should scroll down a page in the current mail preview pane and, after reaching the bottom of the current mail, it should move to the next unread mail. In Sylpheed there's also a confirmation dialog involved when the new mail is in another folder. But the confirmation button is selected by default and you just have to press spacebar one more time to confirm moving to the next unread mail in another folder. Brilliant. 

I really like this feature. And how can you not? It's simple, efficient and works like a charm. I'll pray for it to be implemented in Balsa too. You'll love it! 

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