Re: [Evolution] mail client application]

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 14:28 +1000, Nick Jenkins wrote:
> > There was Anjal, but that project is already abandoned in favor of
> > Evolution Express (coming soon in 3.0).
>
> I had not heard of Evolution Express before. For anyone else in a
> similar situation, here's some info with some screenshots if you scroll
> down a bit:
> http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/evolution-express-for-meego.html
>
> There's some nice stuff in those screenshots, some of which could be
> just as beneficial if included in the standard Evo shell. For example,
> some of the following ideas look good:
> * Trend towards getting rid of the status bar in component screens where
> it's not useful, so as to maximise screen space. Presumably this could
> be extended further to have temporary messages appear for current
> operations, such as what Chrome does when you mouse-over a link, and
> then the status bar may not be needed at all.
> * A set-up wizard for popular email providers (gmail, yahoo, etc), that
> already knows their server types, addresses, and encryption settings -
> saving many users from having to know this stuff.

As a sys-admin I just want a simple auto-config mechanism so a client
can just know what its domain's SMTP & IMAP servers are.  But I've been
waiting for that a *long* time.  ACAP is long dead. :(

> * Getting rid of the "cancel" button from the mailer toolbar (personally
> I've never once used this toolbar button, and it can be done anyway
> using the "cancel" button after the current operation message). This
> would also solve https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=305425 and
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336292 .
> * Having tabs instead of separate pop-up dialogs in the appointment
> editor, for recurrence / free busy / Alarm.

+1  I've always found the Evolution appointment editor to be a confusing
construction; even after using it for years [a decade?].

> * Moving the search box up a little into the main toolbar, perhaps
> allowing the area it's in at the moment to be removed to increase
> vertical screen space for the list of messages.

You loose the "Show: All Messages..." select entirely.

> How do other users of Evo feel about the above items for the standard
> interface? I could not easily find pre-existing enhancement requests in
> bugzilla that covered these things.

Eh. I think targeting small screens makes sense.  But there are also
*large* screens.  Small is the current cool, but most work is done on
large screens;  cool shouldn't remove features from workable [I'm not at
all implying anyone is doing so;  Express & Meego look *awesome*.]
-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org> LPIC-1, Novell CLA
<http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com>
OpenGroupware, Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, OpenLDAP, Samba