Re: [Evolution-hackers] Integration of ximian-connector-setup with mail configuration for Exchange connector

[Anna M Dirks <anna ximian com>]

Hi Sushma!

Greetings from Australia! It is nice to see you again, even if it is 
only electronically.

On Nov 25, 2004, at 2:19 PM, Sushma Rai wrote:

> I am looking at a requirement of integrating
> ximian-connector-setup, tool used for setting up
> exchange account, with the evolution mail configuration.

Cool, it is good that someone is working to fix this!

> ximian-connector-setup reads Outlook web access (OWA) URL,
> user name and password, and then auto detects global catalog
> server, user name, user e-mail IDs.

So all of this information will be filled in automatically intro the 
first page of the assistant after the user selects the server type?

> Integrating this into evolution mail configuration,
> requires the server type to be asked first, and this
> change would be common to all types of accounts.

Hmm! This is a really big change, then, isn't it?  My main concern 
about this is that the sort of server you are using is not strictly 
part of your identity, exactly. Your identity usually means stuff like 
your name, your address, your signature, the name of your company, etc. 
The sort of server that you are using is not part of your identity, it 
is a property of the account that you are adding, right? (What I am 
sort of implying here is that we need to change the workflow a little 
bit, I think -- putting server type on the "identity" page seems wrong 
to me.)

Michael, Jeff, Surf, Other Mail people -- what do you guys think about 
having a "Server Type" page first in the druid, before the identity 
page. The page would be something like this:

"What type of account do you want to add?"

<radio button>IMAP
<radio button>POP
<radio button>Exchange
<radio button>Groupwise

etc.

The advantage of doing it this way is that if we us radio buttons 
instead of an option menu, we can list all of the account types so that 
they are visible without needing to expand the option menu. Also, this 
would prevent us from needing to put something on the "Identity" page 
which is not strictly related to identity.

> I have attached 2 images, which are just the prototypes,
> which show how the druid would look like. I have not
> taken care of any usability guidelines such as padding,
> accelerators, separators, font size, alignments etc

If you need any help with the HIG stuff, please let me know.

> The "Receiving options" page, would be the 3rd page for
> Exchange server type, and would remain as the 4th page
> for other server types.
> And for exchange server type, "Receiving options" page
> would have only "Checking for New Mail" and
> "GAL/Active Directory" sections as in the image-2 (recv-options.png


This looks pretty good, basically. There is of course some HIG stuff to 
be done, and some thinking that needs to go into how to phrase the 
labels exactly, but all in all -- good work!

cheers, Anna