[dev] UI feedback

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:

> Zitat von Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:
>
>> Using the interface over the weekend, these are my thoughts (on imp):
>>
>> * Padding has not grown at me.  At all.  It is wasting space on the  
>> screen and is distracting.  We need to get rid of it.  (For the  
>> record, I had raised these concerns in the original feedback.  I  
>> didn't feel the need to raise them again the 2nd goaround, since it  
>> would have just been repetitive of the original feedback).
>
> The padding was already reduced in the 2nd round, so I assumed that  
> we all are (more or less, but at least sufficiently) happy with it.
> I don't think we will really find a padding that everybody is happy  
> with anyway, so I only see another theme as the only option, like  
> mentioned in my earlier reply. I personally find it less distracting  
> *with* the padding, especially for the inexperienced user. Those are  
> the users who complained most about the current design, advanced  
> users care more about functionality than design.

I guess we will agree to disagree on this.  But I'm not going to rock  
the boat as we are getting closer to release.  What inevitably will  
happen is that I (or someone else) will introduce the more compact  
design you mentioned previously to fix these issues.  The unfortunate  
side-effect of this is that this means that I will not be tweaking the  
default display once released.

>> * Shouldn't the search icon appear before the search box rather  
>> than after?  As currently styled, there should probably be some  
>> sort of separator between search and logout.
>
> I think the idea is to make that a submit button (and of course also  
> mark the search field). As such it makes more sense after the input  
> field. That functionality isn't implemented yet though.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, although my preference would  
probably be before rather than after the box.  But various UIs are all  
over the board when it comes to this positioning, so its not an issue.

>> * There's also no discernible indication that the preview header  
>> can be toggled.  Or that the From/To/Cc/Bcc names are associated  
>> with a context menu.
>
> Since they have context menus, shouldn't they have a popdown icon  
> anyway, for consistency? Consistency is also the reason that I  
> removed the default underline, because those, and the address book  
> links in the compose window, were the only active elements that used  
> those markup.

I think we used to have popdown icons for each address, but it was a  
usability nightmare (especially when you had more than a few  
addresses).  I believe it was sort of a compromise solution to remove  
the icons but keep the popdown feature.  I understand consistency, but  
I felt that the old way we handled this was acceptable.  Users had an  
indication they could click on names and the popdown was not  
unexpected behavior.

>> * Is there a reason the font was changed?  I'm finding the current  
>> serif font (at least on Windows) more difficult to read - it is too  
>> narrow.  I much prefer the old font we were using.
>
> Serif? The default font is Arial now and looks pretty well on all  
> platforms I have tested so far.

It looks like Verdana was removed from the font list.  IMHO, Verdana  
is easier to read than Arial.  IIRC, one of the drawbacks of Arial is  
that at smaller sizes (such as what we are using), it begins to look  
narrow.  Verdana displays wider at these small sizes - this is one of  
its main design characteristics.

FWIW, Verdana is apparently available on 99.7% of Windows machines,  
98% of Macs, and 68% of Linux.  So removing it because it is not  
widely supported would be an incorrect assumption.  Our old method of  
using Verdana and falling back to Arial seems more appropriate than  
the current solution.

>> * Popdown menus should automatically trigger on icon hover.  Don't  
>> think this was part of the previous theme, so this is instead a  
>> feature request.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. The hover effect that is used in the  
> topbar? I'm fine with using that in the IMP popdowns too, but I  
> didn't change any of the existing code so far.

For something like reply/forward, the popdown menu should  
automatically be triggered when hovering over the popdown icon.  This  
is different from the topmenu, since there the popdown menu is  
triggered when hovering over the main text (although I noticed that  
hovering over the popdown arrow in the top menu does *nothing*, which  
seems very counterintuitive).

We don't want auto-popdowns for these buttons, however, since the auto  
action taken by the default button is almost certainly the correct  
action for most users.


Other feedback I forgot to mention:

* There is no mailbox size/message location anymore in dynamic view.   
I know some people debate the existence of this, but I find it  
tremendously useful.  And at a minimum, all users benefit from knowing  
the size of their mailbox.

* Topbar actions with submenus should do some sort of reasonable  
action when clicking on the parent (e.g. clicking on "Preferences"  
should go to the preferences page of the current application).

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]