New Beta Webmail

[danboyce]

Nice new interface!!!

[kgc]

Thanks Dan, I'm glad you like it.

[km6xu]

It has only been an hour, and I see a number of defects with the new webmail.

Sadly, the fetching of e-mail addresses from one's aliases is broken.
I have already had an embarrassing moment when I sent an e-mail to "Kim,"
only to find out that it didn't use the e-mail address for my alias "Kim,"
but instead fetched an ancient "Kim" from my address book. Oops.
One can sort the address book on first name, last name, and display name.
What is display name? It obviously isn't the alias. How to sort on the alias?
I found that the "add new contact" has room for a "nickname," but no,
that isn't the alias. Come on, which alias for alias is the real alias?

'The address book is clunky and cumbersome; I sure hope that it gets fixed.
One can backup their address book to a .vcf, but how about a .csv?
I just took a look at the .vcf file, and my 600+ aliases are gone! Not good!
There appears to be no means to manage the file format. Help!
It would appear that after April 22, we will have no choice but to accept
a corrupted or otherwise screwed up address book. Sadly, Verizon's
tools went out to lunch, so I was relying on my Sonic address book for sanity...

The new GUI doesn't show as much data on the screen as did the old one,
necessitating a lot more moving around of the mouse. There are goofy
oddities that one will eventually tolerate, like clicking on "advanced,"
and having it bring up "advanced search." And I hadn't seen anything
'HyperCard' since I donated my old Mac Plus to charity twenty years ago.

The e-mail world long ago devolved to "top-posting" and now even I do it,
yet a "reply" places one's .sig at the bottom of the included text,
even if one sets the "start new message above original,"
and it even adds an unnecessary "--" just above the .sig. I cannot for
the life of me figure out how to change the placement of the .sig,
get rid of it for a reply, or get rid of that stupid "--" just above the .sig.

The old webmail only recently managed to save a draft in a rather clunky fashion,
and this new webmail does it much more gracefully. I suspect that the shortcuts
will be popular once one gets used to them. The new webmail handles
HTML-impregnated e-mails far more gracefully that did the old one.
I guess somebody realized that rouge .jpg files won't end the world as we know it.
And what is that graphic in the empty mail window? It looks like a Kensington
trackball from the mid-90s. Another funny thing: upon setup, it asked for
what I had to guess would be my "reply to:" address (I use my own domain name,
which is hosted by Sonic), but the upper right corner of the new webmail does not
show the reply to; instead, it shows the actual address at Sonic. What's the point?

Let's hope that a lot of this stuff gets sorted out while it is "Beta." I'm underwhelmed.

[kgc]

The e-mail world long ago devolved to "top-posting" and now even I do it,
yet a "reply" places one's .sig at the bottom of the included text,
even if one sets the "start new message above original,"
and it even adds an unnecessary "--" just above the .sig. I cannot for
the life of me figure out how to change the placement of the .sig,
get rid of it for a reply, or get rid of that stupid "--" just above the .sig.

There is a drop down option to control when a signature is added. You choices are "never", "always", "new messages only" and "replies and forwards only". But you don't have the option of changing where the signature is placed. The "--" before a signature if not part of an RFC somewhere might as well be much like ">" signifying a quoted line of text.

[Mark Walsh]

There is a drop down option to control when a signature is added. You choices are "never", "always", "new messages only" and "replies and forwards only". But you don't have the option of changing where the signature is placed. The "--" before a signature if not part of an RFC somewhere might as well be much like ">" signifying a quoted line of text.

Kelsey, first off, thanks for all that you do at Sonic! I don't know where or how this new webmail is being developed, but it seems like April 22 might be a bit to soon to cut the cord to the old one. I am really freaked out about the possible loss of my 600 aliases. Any resolution there? Will aliases ever work again? Any way to get a .csv file?

For the life of me, I can't find this "drop down option." The drop-down option that I see when one is composing an e-mail allows one to select editor type, priority, return receipt, delivery status notification, and where to save sent messages. It appears to be a good design, but I don't see anything about the signature. If I click on "edit identities," I soon end up on the page where I can edit my signature, but none of those selections that you mention are there. Furthermore, when I 'back arrow' to the e-mail being composed, the signature (and that goofy "--" that I can't figure out how to permanently eliminate) is applied for a second time.

Also, it is unclear how to delete multiple 'marked' messages. There is a star and a flag, both of which allow one to 'mark' e-mail messages, but when that is applied, the delete box gets grayed out. Ditto for moving selected e-mails from the inbox to a selected folder. There must be a way!

I am fine with the "> " that precedes included text, but I am sure that not being able to configure it will annoy the heck out of somebody.

I like the new "graymail folder," but again, would like to be able to delete the 'marked' entries en masse, rather than one at a time as that would be really cumbersome to do 50 times a day.

[kgc]

Kelsey, first off, thanks for all that you do at Sonic! I don't know where or how this new webmail is being developed, but it seems like April 22 might be a bit to soon to cut the cord to the old one. I am really freaked out about the possible loss of my 600 aliases. Any resolution there? Will aliases ever work again? Any way to get a .csv file?

Thanks Mark! I'm pretty sure we're going to push the date out. There are some bugs and issues that have been raised that we would like to fix before we complete the migration - it is just a question if we can address them in time.

The new client does not currently make use of aliases although it does have the concept of "nickname" which is more or less equivalent. However, it doesn't search the nicknames as part of the auto-completion process in any of the appropriate fields. I suspect that if that was fixed and the address book import tools were fixed to copy the alias to nickname field that it would resolve this problem for you.

The current version of the software we're using does not support CSV for import/export but it looks the like current beta version of it (upstream of us) does so this is something that you could expect us to support in the future.

For the life of me, I can't find this "drop down option."

Settings -> Preferences -> Composing Messages. At the bottom of that window is "Signature Options" where you'll find "Automatically add signature"

Also, it is unclear how to delete multiple 'marked' messages.

You can select multiple messages using CTRL or SHIFT click and then use any of the action buttons, the delete or d key on your keyboard or the context menu available on right click. Out of all of the feedback and questions we've received this one is the only one that surprises me. These are standard GUI behaviors that date back at least as far as I can remember (I should ask my uncle if this originated on the Xerox Star.) In going along with the trend of web applications having increasingly desktop application like behaviors this just made sense to us. The only solution I can come up with apart from introducing a "web 1.0 modality" to the application is to have a brief video tutorial.

The help page is also pretty terse still since we didn't know what kind of things people were going to need help with.

[aw]

Out of all of the feedback and questions we've received this one is the only one that surprises me. These are standard GUI behaviors that date back at least as far as I can remember (I should ask my uncle if this originated on the Xerox Star.) In going along with the trend of web applications having increasingly desktop application like behaviors this just made sense to us.

I think you just answered your own surprise. Web applications having desktop-like behaviors is a relatively new (and IMO good) trend, but many people aren't used to them. While they may have been ctrl-clicking in Outlook for 15 years, the ability to do that on a webpage is new enough that many don't know it's possible, and therefore are searching everywhere for the checkboxes.

[Guest]

For the life of me, I can't find this "drop down option."

The signature drop down option is in Settings > Preferences > Composing Messages [Signature Options]

Also, it is unclear how to delete multiple 'marked' messages. There is a star and a flag, both of which allow one to 'mark' e-mail messages, but when that is applied, the delete box gets grayed out. Ditto for moving selected e-mails from the inbox to a selected folder. There must be a way!

You would flag the emails you want then on the bottom of the Inbox display you should see a Select popup menu with both up/down arrows. Choose Flagged and the delete button should become undimmed.

[Guest]

But you don't have the option of changing where the signature is placed. The "--" before a signature if not part of an RFC somewhere might as well be much like ">" signifying a quoted line of text.

That's correct, because the delimiter is NOT "--", but instead "-- " (note the extra space). And, if a signature is present the delimiter should always be used.

[Guest]

Is it really necessary to drop all the old simpler styles of your email? Many of my 'older' friends who love Sonic, may not be very happy with this.
One thing I would like: to be able to have the log in page remember my address and password, and I was not able to do this.
2. Very difficult to create a 'group email list'. Was not able to delete people from the group, or add new ones.
3. Simple is better..... why change what works for so many ?