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

[From: Riku Voipio]

Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> About the threading we have discussed this on this mailing list, so you
> can read in this discussion-thread the possibilities and POV being
> taken. One of the conclusions is that a fully threaded view wastes too
> much screen space. Most people just need grouping "discussions", so that
> is one possibility indeed. 
Like gmail does? :) Gmail seems to use screen estate very well.

1) the splitted-pane (or even triple-pane!)approach of tradional email 
clients
vs gmails list of discussion and per-discussion view
2) gmail only shows  the latest 50 messsage, no need to fit all
messages to the same list/treeview.
3) discussions waste less screen space than threaded views.
Also, all the quoting of previous messages is folded away by default.
discussions are a great way to read mails in todays top-posting culture...
4) If you have more than a few screenfulls of mails, you probably want 
to use
freetext search anyway.


Admittedly gmail approach might be tricky offline usage. With server
side support, it should be work well with slow network links. I still think
it serves as a better UI to aspire to than thunderbird/outlook style ui.