Re: [Evolution] Evolution 2.0 UI proposal

[Brett Johnson <brett hp com>]

On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 16:44, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:

> Here at Ximian we have been brainstorming a bit about what happens
> next in the Evolution world.  One of the ideas that has come up is a
> substantial overhaul of Evolution's UI.

Wow!  Excellent work!

>       * You no longer see all the types of folders at once.  You
>           switch between calendar, mail, tasks and contacts by
>           clicking on the buttons at the bottom.

This is a great idea!  It's currently very clumsy to have to open Local
Folders & Other Contacts to get to my calendar/contacts/ldap.  I like
this solution very much.  It seems like using tabs might be better from
a HIG standpoint though.  Less confusing, as folks generally don't
expect a button click to drastically alter the entire view modally (and
the tab abstraction is pretty universally understood).

>       * The calendar allows you to see multiple calendar at once.
>           Also you can subscribe to web calendars and see them in the
>           pane on the left as well.

OK, I'm drooling now...  This might incent me enough to even use Evo's
calendar (if I could get it to reliably sync with my palm, it'd be a
done deal ;o).  Excellent!

[...]
> (Please note that, although it's
>           not obvious from the mockup, we would still have a mail
>           folder tree, the same way we have it now.

And the tree will still be collapsable, right?  Please?  Pretty Please? 
And we'll be able to configure the heirarchy (i.e. which folders appear
under the "On ..." headings)?

>       * The shell's APIs would be drastically reduced to just
>         a couple calls and it would become a lot simpler to 
>           implement new components.

Wonderful!

>       * The summary.  While the summary is neat, there is a general
>           feeling (at least amongst the developers) that the mail and
>           calendar summaries are not tremendously useful, and that
>           weather and RDF and weather information is better suited for
>           a specialized application.  Also we are trying to reduce the
>           amount of code we have to maintain, and this seems like a
>           good candidate for trimming.

The summary won't be missed by me.  To me, it's just a bit of non-useful
fluff that gets in the way while my IMAP folders are updating... 
Excellent choice IMO.

>       * The shortcut bar.  It's been shown that only a relatively
>         small part of the Evolution user community actually uses it, 
>           and we feel that it unnecessarily complicates the UI.

Amen.  I'm glad to see that "because Outlook has one" is no longer a
good reason to include a UI element in Evolution.  Another excellent
choice.

A couple observations/nits/suggestions/requests:

Would it be possible for Evolution to finally honor the gconf
/desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style preference (i.e. whether to
display text/icons/both)?  It's one of my pet peeves about evo, that
whenever I install a new version, I have to go edit the
/usr/share/.../ui/*.xml files to get rid of the *$^*#@ redundant text
next to the toolbar buttons.

What's the purpose of the shrunken navigation bar? (or perhaps a better
question is what's the purpose of the non-shrunken bar ;o)  Why have a
strange, non-uniform interface for this, when a simple, standard tab
interface is so familiar to users (and fits perfectly with the concept
of different sections/views that you're implementing)?

Cheers!
-- 
Brett Johnson <brett hp com>
   -  i  n  v  e  n  t  -