Another Hannover Preview
I'm supposed to start my show n tell stuff, but I have a little something I want to get to first.
Mary Beth posted a new blog entry a couple of days ago about the new Launch design for what used to be bookmarks. But in the process, she also provided us with a screen shot of some mail client that's presumably the Hannover client:
This is pretty cool stuff, but there's a couple of elements that don't fit in yet with my prior request for radical simplicity
Item 1 - I like the new navigator, but what's with some of those options? Why are Drafts and Sent so far up the hierarchy? I can imagine wanting to review my sent mail, but that's a pretty exceptional situation -- particularly given the general email habit of copying history into replies. I can look at a reply if I need to know exactly what I said. So why not move this to a less-prominent position, since it will be used relatively rarely. Same with Drafts, especially since I'd wager that less than 10% of email users ever actually save a draft before sending. I can't back that up with hard statistics (though I'd be willing to research that with IBM's backing) but if we look at real world use, I'm pretty confident that it's not an important day-to-dat aspect of Notes users in general.
Which leads me to wonder, why not move those rarely used elements either to the bottom, or out of the menu altogether? I bet if I have a lot of folders, and I expand them, then Tools scroll out of that frame. But if those were moved to some other location, and Tools was moved ABOVE folders ('cause it will have a static number of entries, whereas I know people with hundreds of folders) then you could avoid forcing the user to scroll in most cases.
Junk mail, if it's stuff sorted because of spam filters, is not particularly important. UNLESS dragging a received mail to the junk folder has some special meaning (like it creates a rule automagically.) In which case, leave it there, but lose the action bar item.
Item 2 - The new category twistie for the threaded view. I love this. I'm actually using the Windows OS +/- graphic in my own app. My only question is, when I click on it, does it open 1 level of the hierarchy, like most categories/threads do? Or does it open the COMPLETE hierarchy, like @Command([ViewExpandWithChildren]) (or asterisk, for you old-schoolers?) If it's the latter, perfect. If it's the former, your click-count is going to be WAY too high.
Item 3 - Action bar. I dig the reduction in options. But can I click on "Reply" (not the arrow) and have it create a reply? This is VERY important to me, and was a major first feature of the OpenNTF mail template. (I think it was the first thing we did after reply/forward flags, literally the number two feature of the whole effort.) Again, check out the implementation on the OpenNTF mail template. It's fully-configurable. And the only reason we never turned it into a policy is that I'm convinced that if OpenNTF published a template for the Domino Directory, no one in their right mind would use it.
Why, by the way, are these all text? I understand part of the reasoning -- text is often more descriptive. But in my own recent work, I've been making action bar descriptions OPTIONAL, based on an environment flag for the user. Think of it as a beginner vs. advanced mode, much like both IE and Firefox offer. It's a breeze with the programmatic labels on actions...
Why not do the same thing? If those actions were, say, 24x24 graphics instead, advanced users would not get lost, but would definitely see the interface as less cluttered.
At least, those who also like Toolbars would.
Item 4 - The Form header. I don't know if this is just in this particular screen shot, but I notice that this doesn't really tell me that I originally sent the mail, which is pretty cool. It DOES tell me about the thread context, which is BRILLIANT but it doesn't give me any context in the actual message pane. If I haven't expanded the + in the view, it would be nice to have some sense of context in the form below. I know people have tinkered with this before (it's what the "show current thread" is really all about in an embedded view) but some presentation of it here would be great.
Also, are there any plans for all that whitespace to the right? I like white space and try to avoid the coders habit of "use every pixel", but that's an awful lot of unused table cell in that header.
Item 5 - Okay, Size as the last column makes sense. But are you expecting emails measuring in petabytes? I'm not. I don't imagine too many Notes users are. So that column doesn't need to be so wide. But I know why it is... because the template developer clicked on "Extend last column to window width." This points to a larger issue, much like the sortable column header issue: we need the ability to say something other than the LAST column grows to fill the window. I know you can do this, because I do it all the time with tables. The Table is "fit with margins" and I set fixed sizes on the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th columns, while allowing the 3rd and 5th to grow as needed to fill the margin definition. This works GREAT today (I'm sure some people have complaints, but not me) and I should be able to specify the same behavior in view columns in Hannover.
Item 6 - Search text. This is really cool. But what is it going to do? It's on the toolbar, which implies a certain degree of universality. But I think it needs to be smart. If the current window is any db that's FT indexed, then do an FT search. It's the best option. If it's NOT, then I'm thinking it should be the same as a Ctrl-F in a view today -- that is, search the view columns themselves. BUT, there's about a million variations on this, so I tend to lean towards pointing to some advanced options, whether in the result, or with a drop-down arrow in the text box itself.
First, and most important, it should tell me whether I'm doing an FT search. I've been thinking about the conflict between the simplicity of design that I've been advocating, and the presentation of features that a lot of people need. I don't know yet how to do it. (Believe it or not, I'm leaning towards a thing like "Clippy", where Notes helps pops up in certain circumstances and presents loads of options that you may not know, OR your admin may have disabled -- full-text search on your mail being number one on my list!)
Second, whatever the style of search taking place, it would be great if the result screen included some options. For instance, "jump to first result" (like type-ahead) vs. "filter current view to all results" (like FT search.) There is some meaningful presentation of options that should probably be enacted on your result screen, much like Google does today. If you have to refine your search, you can put in your key term, and then click on "advanced" and get a pretty comprehensive set of options. Notes should have something like this, and the expanded Search Bar is inadequate today (but points in the right direction.)
Third, give me some options to easily enhance my results. The current "advanced" FT search provides really powerful options (have you ever done a search by form? My GOD but that's a cool way to find stuff!!!) but it's only useful when I've FT-indexed. Some kind of indicator on the search would be useful here.
(By the way, it occurs to me that I've always address Ms. Raven on a first-name basis. I've never intended to offend, so if I have, my apologies!)
Comments
Posted by Colin Williams At 01:19:41 AM On 06/01/2006 | - Website - |
I might sound odd, but it is really upto the way individuals like it - so if they give control to the end users on what the navigator should contain and in what order, it will be perfect for everyone.
Posted by Ganapathiram Natarajan At 04:16:08 AM On 06/15/2006 | - Website - |
#1. I am willing to accept that I am the exception, but I spend TONS of time in my Drafts and Sent view. I'd say I have 10-25 emails in my drafts folder at all times. I get quick ideas all the time like "I need to tell Ed about X" and I quick start the email, but come back to it later when I have time to complete the thought. I also look in my Sent view probably 20 times a day to find a message that I know I sent to "my boss" or "person X on that project I am working on".
#3. I don't think there is "alt text" for the action bars, but I may be wrong, so we can't (not should you) do text only, because screen readers for the visually impaired can't read the images, they need to read the text.
Posted by Alan Lepofsky At 10:10:21 PM On 05/30/2006 | - Website - |