[imp] Re: [core] Feedback regarding Horde mail

[Jan Schneider]

Hi Ned,

Zitat von Ned Schumann <a1.schumann at olympus.net>:

> Dear Horde Developers,
>
> We are a small ISP who depends upon the talents of the Open Source
> Community and are grateful for what you have produced. Our support staff
> recently reviewed Horde with a view to replacing our Courier-based
> SqWebmail. We decided not to switch to Horde for the reasons listed below.
> In case this feedback might help with future product development I have
> forwarded to you our staff's conclusions.

Thanks for your feedback. Constructive criticism and usability feedback 
is always appreciated. I'm cc'ing the IMP mailing list because this is 
the place where such things should be discussed, and you're actually 
talking about IMP, not Horde, in your message.

> Review 1
> ********
>
> Horde is a feature-rich webmail program which has some good points:
> 1 Highly customizable - Horde can open to the inbox or to a folder list etc.
> 2 Auto refreshes - One can see the Inbox (3) new-message count increase
> without refreshing the browser.
> 3 It does not seem to time out.
> 4 It has email filters.
>
> However I feel is a more complicated interface which is not very intuitive.
> The bad points:
> 1. Most of our customers use a POP 3 email client and only use Webmail as a
> temporary work-around to view mail when away from home. 2 Our current
> WebMail is easier to use and less confusing. 3 Because it has fewer options
> our current WebMail is easier to learn, to explained and to use.

It's always a tradeoff between feature richness and a simple layout. We 
try to do both as well as possible. There has been some discussion in 
the past to allow a user preference that sets the user "level" 
(beginner, intermediate, profi) and enables certain features, settings 
and UI elements depending on the level.

> 4 There is no Address book currently in Horde, although I believe one is
> available.

Exactly, Turba: http://horde.org/turba/

> 5 The Sent-box does not seem to work. I can't seem to store a copy of email
> that I send.

Then something has been setup wrongly, see below.

> 6 The show all headers option will not include the full header with the
> email is forwarded

Again a tradeoff. Including all headers would overwhelm the average 
user. But you can forward a complete message as an attachment to keep 
all headers.

> 7 It would be difficult to write a help document to cover all of the
> possible configurations.

A tradeoff to a flexible, feature rich solution.

> 8 Our current login screen is simpler and more straight forward. Just type
> in your email address and password.

That's also possible with IMP, if you set it up correctly. It's 
actually the default setup.

> 9 Most recent emails show up at the bottom of the page in Horde. I was
> unable to change this. It is better to have them at the top like our
> current Webmail.

You can sort the message any way you like. And you can even set a 
default sorting criteria and order for all users.

> 10. It will be easier to use our current WebMail to move mail from folder
> to folder. Horde has a copy option that may confuse customers. 11 Horde

I don't know your current solution, so I can't tell if there was 
possibly an easier way to move messages in IMP.

> seem to show the first unread message, rather that the most recent message.
> This may be confusing to a customer.

True. Probably a matter of taste.

> 12 Many of the markers do not seem to
> be useful.

Not sure what's meant with "markers".

> Review 2
> ********
> I am _extremely_ impressed with this product. However, I'm almost worried
> that there are _too_ many features.

I take this as a compliment. :-)

> Case in point:
> Clicking on the Horde icon above the Mail icon on the right hand side of
> the screen, then clicking on the layout icon at the top right, lets me
> apparently add services to look at and use ... but it seems extremely buggy
> and counter-intuitive to me. Also, under the 'Accounts' button I would

It's hard to make the portal configuration flexible and at the same 
time intuitive. Suggestions to improve the usability are welcome. 
"Buggy" is not a very helpful error description though. Of course 
that's not the purpose of this review.

> appear to be able to add in more mail servers to check with this, yet it
> seems broken. Do we have the ability to disable certain portions of Horde
> like this? Or are we doing that right now? If so, we need to do it better
> so that things like this are hidden completely.

This feature, as many others can be turned off by the admin and the 
users. That special feature should work fine though and does for 
everybody else.

> Also, in terms of usabilty, sometimes it's not clear that you can click on
> something. For example, under the options section you click on the name of
> a section to reach those options ... yet the name color isn't much
> different from the background color of the title-bars above it. It truly
> just looks like text on the screen. Easy to read but no 'click here to do
> this' kind of visibility/button present. This may confuse some people.

This could easily be tweaked by altering the CSS stylesheets. You could 
even create your own theme that can be chosen by the user. And you can 
force users to a certain theme.

> It would also appear that I can log in and check webmail this way from
> multiple computers at the same time with no penalty/logging out on the
> other machines. I'm curious to see what this would do if I manipulated
> files simultaneously in both windows.

That's how web applications work.
> As a web-app though, this is some really impressive software. Very clean
> and responsive. Seems to work fine in Safari and older versions of Internet
> Explorer. Haven't done enough Firefox/Netscape testing but I expect no
> problems.
>
>
> Review 3
> ********
> It is not as straight-forward and user-friendly as the currently used 
>  webmail.
>
> Pros:
>
> -The multiple options and refinement of option control. -The layout or
> appearance.
> -I like being able to read my icons/options in Czech.
>
> Cons:
>
> Considering the type of questions I usually field from customers, few of
> whom find even the simple management tasks simple -- here are a few details
> I think they'll have trouble with.
>
> -Moving messages to another folder.
>
> Our current webmail is very simple, but customers need help. In Horde, you
> need to select the location the message is being moved to, then select
> Move. However, it isn't obvious the "Messages to" refers to the folders.

Again, I don't know how your current solution solves this, suggestions 
are welcome.

> -Finding the folders.
>
> Having to click on the +- to reveal the folders, will require more
> instruction, and less remembering for the common user just trying to
> prevent mail-clog on their own. [Those that need to move large files one at
> a time, in order to get mail to desktop, requiring moving it between
> folders].

There is a user setting (that can be turned on by default like any 
other user setting) to expand all folders automatically.

> -The Message: you have not set up folder.
>
> Checking to have a sent-mail message saved, delivers an error message "you
> have not set up a "sent mail" folder.
> Or composing a message, then selecting "draft", and receiving the error:
> The folder "drafts" was not created. This is what the server said: Invalid
> mailbox name.

IMP hasn't been setup correctly then. If creating of folders don't 
work, all other folder related features won't work either, like 
sent-mail or draft folders. Once this has been fixed, you can create 
folders fine and these features will works correctly.

> But it isn't clear how to create the folder. Clicking on Choose Action /
> Create Folder, delivers an error message.

Jan.

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