Google Blogoscoped asks the question 
:
what if Microsoft, not Google, had created Gmail? What would be the differences in that web mail client for users today? What if we apply some of the same design rules that brought us Hotmail, for instance?
The answer is entertaining.
Here is a teaser, but as the post unfolds the mock-up screenshots get better and better:
Head on over and have a look for yourself.
Coverflow mock-ups seem to be all the rage (see yesterday’s “Coverflow for people”).
Today hot off the Quicksilver forums comes a Coverflow mock-up for a new “Leopardised” Quicksilver interface, created by Foood:
Hmmm…. I’m in two minds about this. When does that delicate balance so beloved by Mac users between aesthetic appeal and functional utility become unstuck? It must be somewhere around this point.
I think I’ll stick with my Cube, slightly tweaked (see the before and after shot below) for larger action icons to each side, which stops me having to squint too much.
Fancy fooling around with your own Quicksilver interface, but don’t want to go the whole Coverflow hog? There are some pointers in an old Hawk Wings post.
Tags: coverflow, interface design, not apple mail, not mail.app, Productivity, quicksilver
Over at Betalogue, Pierre Igot, who has an eagle-eye for flaws in Apple’s user interface design, unloads on the behaviour of Mail’s Sent mail folder .
He points out:
Sending mail is a pretty essential process. When it comes to e-mail, it does not get much more basic than this. But for some reason, Mail 2.0’s user interface makes the process unnecessarily complicated and non-intuitive. The interface is OK (although still very inelegant) when things work as expected. But as soon as something fails, it’s a disaster.
What really annoys him is the way that the label of the Sent mail folder changes to “Sending…” when outgoing mail is being processed.
It’s ugly, he says, and it’s stupid. If you click on the “Sending…” folder, it displays all your sent messages except the one that is currently being sent. So where is it?
That’s the heart of the interface design failure:
It’s not in the “Sent†box, as we have just seen. It’s no longer in the “Drafts†box either…. So where is it? Well, that’s the kicker: It is nowhere. It is not in any visible part of the user interface in Mail. While the message is in the process of being sent, it effectively disappears from the user interface altogether and stays in some kind of UI limbo, until it’s finally sent—and then it miraculously reappears in the “Sent†box, as expected.
And don’t get him started on what happens next, especially if a message fails to send.
Read the whole post at Betalogue to find out how silly Mail is when that happens.
Sven-S. Porst is playing it cool. While I gush on about the many reasons to love Mail.app, he is more restrained.
He uses Mail, even though it “may not be the best Mail application around” and even though the lozenge icons in Tiger Mail make him “puke over my keyboard just for reading my e-mail”.
One thing annoys him more than anything:
the fact that it automatically sets the sender address for new messages based on the message that is currently selected in your inbox.
This means that he often sends out email from an inappropriate alias.
Luckily, it is easy to stop Mail.app doing this and to set an unchanging default email address for all your new emails.
The option for this can be found in the Composing pane of Mail’s Preferences:
By default, Mail sends new email with the sender’s address drawn from the last mailbox you were viewing. Clicking on the drop-down menu allows you to specify a different email address that Mail will then always use when you compose a new message.
Sven-S. argues that not seeing this option before is Mail’s fault, the result of poor interface design. The “Send new mail from” title for the option is misleading, he says:
So what does that look like? Right, like a feature for people who are using several accounts. But that’s not me. To simplify things, I’m essentially forwarding all the messages from my various accounts to a single place and I’m just querying that one (and the other ones just need to exist because apparently you need to set up a whole account for Mail to be able to use different sender addresses). So all the messages I have in my inbox already live in a single account. And if Mail just used the address associated to that account, everything would be nice and dandy.
Personally, I like the way Mail handles this. More often than not, I want to compose a new message with my work alias when I have been reading work email, from the blog address when reading Hawk Wings emails. But for those with different tastes or email configurations, this tip may prevent you puking on your keyboard.
Tags: accounts, Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, email addresses, interface design, mail.app, sender address
CNet News carries a gallery of screenshots of the latest Outlook beta with commentary.
The fourteen images cover everything from the main window (see below) to the Compose Window (featuring a message in plain text!) to various preference options.
In the main window the most notable new thing is the To-Do Bar on the right of the window:
The beta continues the Microsoft design philosophy of overwhelming the user with options and buttons. Compare the Contact card in Outlook 2007b2 to the interface in Address Book:
See the screenshot of the Compose window toolbar for a further example.
According to a separate report on CNet , Office 2007 is now scheduled for release in January 2007 (or maybe later ).
Fire and Fury carries a screenshot of a compose window (the new Outlook?) from Office 12.
The author has gone over it and highlighted at least eight different styles in the interface.
It’s a horrible mess. Just the kind of thing that Mac users like to pooh-pooh.
Go on, take a look. Rejoice in the simple elegance that is Mail.app’s interface. Enjoy yourself. I did.
Tags: dog's breakfast, interface design, microsoft, not apple mail, office 12, outlook |
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