Re: [Usability] Mail clients put the Subject field in the wrong place

[Samuel Abels <newsgroups debain org>]

On Sa, 2005-09-17 at 21:51 +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> 2005/9/16, Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>:
> > Hynek was using Evolution, a mail client that -- like most mail clients
> > -- puts the Subject field above the message body in the composition
> > window. As long as mail clients do that, and as long as humans go
> > through forms top-to-bottom, it won't be surprising that they usually
> > don't use the Subject line to summarize a message that they haven't
> > even written yet. As a result, e-mail recipients worldwide will keep
> > suffering Subject lines of the form "Re: something" and "(no subject)".
> 
> I wonder if the situation would be better or worse if the subject
> field were at the bottom, as the usual thought after completing a
> message is not "hmm, how would I summarize this message" but rather
> "it's done, where's the send button".

Maybe what he meant is that the subject line should be at the top of the
message header rather than below the sender/recipients. Which IMO makes
sense, because pretty much every article states the author below the
title. Unlike mail clients. A more article-like header could make the
title more recognizable and even more pretty, IMO. A small mockup:

http://debain.org/stuff/mail_header.png

The same in the mail editor; IMO, moving the subject line to the top
would be nice.

-Samuel