[horde] [imp] default reply behavior in dimp/imp

[Ralf Lang]

Am Montag, 5. September 2011, 22:53:18 schrieb D G Teed:

> I don't follow what you agree with in those comments.
> 
> Horde is used by many people who are occasional users of dimp. They do not
> know that unlike Outlook, Thunderbird, hotmail and gmail, in dimp, there
> is only one button shown for reply. 

Hallo Mr Teed,

when answering you now I hit a button "antworten" (reply) in kontact, one of 
the desktop clients available in Kolab and the default of the KDE desktop. 

It's exactly labeled as in dimp and it behaves the same: I got a mail from the 
list and I am answering to the list.
Besides the button there is a dropdown offering me to sender, list or all 
recipients. The only difference in dimp is that the default does not show up 
in the more detailed options again. I also used outlook at various customers 
and looked out for alternatives under windows. I don't have the time to check 
out evolution (the gnome default) right now but I think it behaved similar. 
This means there are other mailers around which follow the same design 
decision. 


> This singular button removes the
> user's
> initial selection
> over the scope of the reply, again, unlike any other mail agent interface.

See above. Still, I don't think it reverts anything. It does exactly what it 
says.

> One cannot design an interface that is unorthodox and claim correctness.

Well, many did before. Apple does it all the time. Heck, even firefox has its 
settings menu in different places when running in different OSes and they 
think this is right. 

> It is like the famous quote of a proud mother watching a group
> of soldiers: "Oh look! Our Johnny is the only one in step".

This is leading down the wrong path. Let's stick to arguments rather than 
rhetorics.

> Due to this unconventional design, we are currently enforcing traditional
> mode on horde webmail (traditional has reply/reply all), which is a pity
> because dimp is cool, and the mobile interface is also very nice.

Yes, that's really a bad situation but how does this differ from dynamic? I 
just went to this thread in traditional view and hit the "Antworten" reply 
button. It defaulted to reply to list.



-- 
Ralf Lang
Linux Consultant / Developer

B1 Systems GmbH
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