[imp] suggestions, IMP 2.3

[Jon Parise]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 01:43:59AM -0500, Troy Grady wrote:

> Overall, 2.3 is certainly a welcome update to an already indispensable 
> piece of software.  A few items for the suggestion box:

Comments like these are always welcome.
 
> 1)  Selecting/refreshing a mailbox is still a little confusing given
> that there are three ways to do this on any particular screen.  On
> the INBOX screen, for example, you've got the INBOX button on the
> toolbar, the mailbox <select> box, and the mailbox refresh icon.  On
> an INBOX message screen, you've got the toolbar INBOX button, the
> mailbox <select> box, and the "back to INBOX" hyperlink.  You could
> do all this with just the <select> box and a "go" button next to it.
> Which brings me to...

I see your point here, but I'm not sure removing any of those
affordances would make the interface any easier to use.  In fact, it
might make things a little harder to use.  The best argument I can see
out of all of this is the removal of the 'INBOX' item from the menu.
It's really not necessary with all of the interface elements we offer
for changing folders.  However, users always like to get back to the
place in which they started, and that 'INBOX' link is really the
simplest way.
 
> 2)  ...a "go" button for the mailbox <select> box.  On a few occasions, 
> users have locked up the IMAP server by scrolling rapidly through the 
> mailbox <select> box.  The "onChange" in the <select> box fires a login 
> attempt with each <option>, so even a single user can bury the server with 
> login requests just by holding the down-arrow key while the select box is 
> highlighted.  Removing the onChange and adding a "go" button fixes this, 
> and also provides for (1).

I agree with you here, and I just committed a small patch that adds a
little folder icon next to the folder listing.  I couldn't get a "go"
button (HTML button) to display nicely there, and I think the icon
makes a lot of sense for that part of the interface.

I'm not sure how I feel about the "onChange" stuff, however.  I can
see arguments go either way on that one.
 
> 3)  Paging through searches on medium/big mailboxes is slow.  I gather 
> that this is because IMP does not save search results as state, but rather 
> re-searches each time you page through the search results.  So even 
> when the search results are small, the paging is slow if the mailbox you're 
> searching is big.  Which brings me to...

I can't speak to this point.  I haven't worked on any of the mailbox
paging code.  Chuck has handled all of that to date.
 
> 4)  ...big mailboxes.  In my brief test drive, IMP 2.2.3 outperforms IMP 2.3 
> on big mailboxes by a wide margin.  We have some ~30,000-message 
> mailboxes, and IMP 2.2.3 is actually the only mail client that can access 
> them.  (Outlook Express, for example, fails downloading the messages 
> somewhere around 10,000.  And who wants to download that many 
> messages anyway?)  Accessing such a mailbox with 2.2.3 takes about 30 
> seconds, while 2.3 takes over 2 minutes.
 
Interesting.  I've found IMP 2.3 is to faster, in general, in this
respect.  More feedback in this area would be welcome (from all
users).

> 5)  I'm using IE 5.0 for Mac, and I can't tab into the "message" <textarea> 
> in the compose window.  The cursor makes a full circle of every other 
> element on the page but never hits the "message" box.  This works fine in 
> 2.2.3.
 
That's strange.  Could you try mucking with the HTML (specifically the
JavaScript and 'tabindex' attributes in templates/compose/compose.inc)?

-- 
Jon Parise (jon@csh.rit.edu)  .  Rochester Inst. of Technology
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~jon/  :  Computer Science House Member