[maemo-developers] Modest/TinyMail problems (continue from the blog comments)

[From: Aniello Del Sorbo]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Sergio Villar Senin <svillar at igalia.com> wrote:
> Aniello Del Sorbo escribiu:
>> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Marius Gedminas <marius at pov.lt> wrote:
>>> On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 05:23:29PM +0200, Luca Olivetti wrote:
>>>> En/na Philip Van Hoof ha escrit:
>>>>
>>>>> So I can only recommend checking out the code and trying to implement
>>>>> them.
>>>> No, I won't, for 2 simple reasons: 1) I'm not a C/C++ coder (I can make
>>>> the occasional patch if there's no other way, but I really hate those
>>>> languages) and 2) I already can use a program that already does what I want.
>>> Out of curiosity, what is the program that can deal with 26,000-message
>>> folders and runs on the Internet Tablets?
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Marius Gedminas
>>>
>>
>> Probably he's talking about Claws mail, but I am not sure about this.
>>
>> What I wanted to say is that I find useless, for Modest, to deal with
>> such large databases
>> of e-mail.
>> The Tablet is not a substitute for your desktop.
>
> That's an interesting point Aniello and I mostly agree with you. Thing
> is, we're still improving Modest, and we'd like it to deal gracefully
> large email folders, but there are several UI requirements here and
> there that makes it difficult.
>

I perfectly understand those requirements. And I strongly agree with
them even if I can only imagine them.

> My opinion is that managing such large email folders is not a target for
> any mobile device, at least for the short term, because they're not
> prepared for that and secondly because they're not designed for that.
> Your primary email device should be still your desktop PC/laptop.
>
> Br

Exactly my point.

As for the UI requirements, I usually tend to follow this principle
(that is the same they follow when building a new parking lot):

if there is no horizontal space, go vertical.

That is, use views.
When the mail application starts the user is mainly interested in an
overview of the unread mails. When a folder is selected, show the
folder view and (if threading was supported) if a thread has been
selected, then focus on it.
Much like the iPhone version of Google Reader does: when I select a
feed, it shows me that feed and that's it.
The default version (designed for the desktop) shows plenty of
informations even when the feed is selected. Fine.
The mobile version cannot afford it (and you can see how much info is
packed on the small screen of the tablet when using the default
version) and they designed a new one.

The tablet new mail application could do the same. Provided a fast way
to thread the folders has been found, just show that thread (when
selected) and put a "Back" button.

Of course, this is just a hint, not an order :)

-- 
anidel