Re: [Usability] Evolution 2.0

[Ettore Perazzoli <ettore ximian com>]

Hi,

> Well let me be the first one to beg you to break evo up into seperate apps. 
> The monolithic ui is just plain hard to use. Menu-merging prevents users 
> from developing muscle memory, and there really is no good reason why evo 
> needs to exist as a monolithic app other than thats how outlook worked. 
> Seperate apps that integrate well together would be a huge improvement. 

Hehe, I knew this would come up.  ;-)

First of all, I'd like to point out the changes that we are proposing
actually steer pretty substantially in that direction.  By implementing
these changes, we are going to get rid of a lot of the architecture that
is currently in the shell, which means that the components will run more
independently from each other.

And if we do this architectural work, the Evolution components will be
able to run without each other.  The shell will be so minimal that it
would hardly do anything at all, so you could run a shell with the mail
component in it, a shell with the addressbook in it, and one with the
calendar in it.  I.e. you'll actually have three separate apps.

On the other hand, I am not sure we want to altogether give up the
ability to integrate the components in the same app.  It does have a
usability advantage over strictly separate apps, since you can have all
the groupware-related pieces of information in the same spot and you
don't have to mess with multiple windows.  (Also, it's necessary for
Connector to keep working, but we can ignore that for now.)

BTW I am not sure about the muscle memory problem.  If you have three
separate apps, then menu items are going to be in different relative
spots in the three apps...  So it doesn't sound like it's any better
than the menu items being different depending on which state (calendar,
mail, etc) the app is in.

On the other hand, having calendar, mail and addressbook in the same
view (as in Anna's mockups) helps usability since the folder selector
pane and the view pane are always in the same spot and you don't have to
mess with the WM when switching e.g. between your schedule and your
mail.  Also you have the "New" button always in the same spot, the
search bar is always in the same spot, and so on.

If you are using calendar, mail and contacts at the same time (as it is
the case with many Evolution users), then using separate programs for
them is more awkward than having them all nicely integrated in the same
UI.  If you want, it's a bit like browsing the web with tabs vs. without
tabs.

-- Ettore