Re: [Evolution] Evolution 2.0 UI proposal

["D. D. Brierton" <darren dzr-web com>]

Sorry for lack of threading - I deleted the original message by mistake.

> The most important changes are:
>
>       * 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.
>
>       * It kills the all-in-one tree view, which currently makes it
>           difficult to reach for your calendar or contacts folders,
>           since they are hiding between all the various mail folders.
>           You no longer need to hunt for you calendar folder scrolling
>           through the tree to see what your schedule is like, you just
>           click on an easily accessible button marked "Calendar".
>           Much better navigation.  (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.  Calendar, Tasks
>           and Contacts, however, would be just flat lists.)

There has been some discussion as to whether the "buttons at the bottom"
could be better implemented as tabs. Whilst I've found the proposals and
discussion of them exciting and interesting, I'd like to point out a
potential drawback both with what is proposed above and with the
suggested tabbed interface:

By removing Calendars, Contacts, and Tasks from the folder tree, and by
either using buttons or tabs to switch between different components, you
effectively isolate those components from one another even more than
they are already. Now from a developers perspective that might make
perfect sense - Evolution is a shell which embeds components which are
pretty separate from one another. But from a user's POV it actually
seems to preclude implementing some functionality which is often
requested.

Some things which are often requested, and which it seems have been
agreed to be desirable, even if they won't get implemented for a long
time (maybe not until an Evolution 4.0 or 5.0) are:

      * dragging a meeting invitation from mail to a calendar;
      * dragging a contact onto a meeting to invite them;
      * dragging a mail message into contacts to add the recipients to
        the address book, or perhaps jointly into a contact list.

There are doubtless many other things that have been discussed in the
past, and many others that no one has even thought of yet, which also
fit the above pattern.

What it seems we need are complex views where the different kinds of
information Evolution stores are simultaneously visible, and an
interface that allows actions to be triggered by dragging one type of
information onto another type. The suggested tabbed UI in particular
would seem to make that much more difficult, but the proposed UI isn't
much better. Whilst I agree that the current UI could be greatly
improved on, at least having everything in one folder tree would allow
for a UI where actions triggered by dragging and dropping between
different information types is possible.

I do know that at the moment Evolution can't do the things I'm talking
about anyway, and maybe won't be able to do so for quite a while, but it
would seem a shame to change the UI in such a way that it would have to
be changed yet again if such functionality were to be one day
introduced.

Thoughts?

Best, Darren

-- 
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D. D. Brierton            darren dzr-web com          www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
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