Webmail Upgrade Coming on August 21st, 2017!

[kmcchi]

Is the preview pane gone? There used to be an arrow in the lower right corner for opening and closing the preview pane. I hope not--it is (was?) a useful thing.

It still exists but depends on your layout. It sounds like you may be in "List" view which no longer has the preview pane.

Click the Gear icon at the top left of the message list and check out the Widescreen or Desktop layout. Widescreen is a 3-column layout with large preview pane on the right, and Desktop is the layout you're probably used to with the message list on top and the preview pane on the bottom half.

Clicking on the gear option (top right not left for me) doesn't produce any Widescreen, Desktop (or List) options I can find ... What I want sounds like Desktop with the ability to toggle preview on and off via the little triangle on the lower right.

[drew.phillips]

Clicking on the gear option (top right not left for me) doesn't produce any Widescreen, Desktop (or List) options I can find ... What I want sounds like Desktop with the ability to toggle preview on and off via the little triangle on the lower right.

Make sure it's this gear icon you're clicking (in the widescreen view), not the settings one at the top right. In the other views it'll also appear above the message list in a similar position.

In any case though, it looks like the triangle to show and hide the preview pane was removed as I no longer see it in Desktop view. There's likely a reason, I'd guess it has to do with differences in the user interface code itself where the Desktop and List views are now two distinct things and it's no longer possible to have the desktop view hide or show the preview pane on demand.

screenshot-webmail.sonic.net-2017-08-22-10-46-02.png (38.97 KiB) Viewed 3193 times

[Tertiumquid]

STARS:
The new version has the server starring un-read emails. Which I will get used to by re-purposing how I think about stars. So no worry.

FLAGS:
I do miss the "importance" Flag that used to be on the right hand side of the list view, just to the right of "Size". It would put a Flag in that column. That gave me two levels of importance (turn the whole line red with "Important" Label and/or the importance Flag. Any way of getting that column to return?

BTW: Anyway you cut it, Sonic webmail is waaaaaay mo betta' than gmail.

[drew.phillips]

STARS:
The new version has the server starring un-read emails. Which I will get used to by re-purposing how I think about stars. So no worry.

FLAGS:
I do miss the "importance" Flag that used to be on the right hand side of the list view, just to the right of "Size". It would put a Flag in that column. That gave me two levels of importance (turn the whole line red with "Important" Label and/or the importance Flag. Any way of getting that column to return?

BTW: Anyway you cut it, Sonic webmail is waaaaaay mo betta' than gmail.

I'd like to address each of your points, but can you confirm which layout you're using?

Do you have 3 columns with the preview pane on the right, or is the preview pane below the message list?

The post just above yours has a screenshot showing the icon to click to open the layout options. It'll be the same icon in all the views, just above the message list (not to be confused with the big Settings icon at the top right of the screen).

Thanks!

[motet]

Would it be possible to add keyboard shortcuts to switch layouts?

[Tertiumquid]

Duh....I found the Flag (its under the little of the two gears (the one on the left atop the checkbox column in list view).

[Tertiumquid]

Drew....Stars, Flags: It's all good. Got it figured out now.
Sonic is great.

[yfio]

When in list view on the new webmail, if I double-click on a message to open it, nothing happens. I am using Firefox 52.3. The prior version of webmail opened the message into the main window the same way as SquirrelMail does.

This was an intentional change (background and discussion here) because in order to support double clicking, there was a half-second delay in the previous version before a message would load in order to wait for a double click.

It looks like they may bring it back in a future version, with the trade-off being an additional 0.4 second delay to display the message in the preview window and having the message opened twice.

If it's requested enough, we can test the changes and backport that feature in sooner, but in the mean time you have a couple of options.

If you don't like or want to use the preview pane, click the Gear icon at the top left corner of the message list and choose the "List" layout. This eliminates the preview pane and brings back double click.

If you like the classic layout with preview pane, or the new 3-pane widescreen layout, pressing the "Enter" key with the message selected opens it in a new window. There's also a button you can click at the top right corner of the message preview window that looks like 2 windows stacked on top of eachother (to the right of the icon depicting an arrow pointing to the right) which will also open the message in a new window.

I understand that it's convenient to double-click a message to open it, and that most desktop email clients use this behavior, and it's especially annoying when something that used to work goes away so we apologize for this change.

I'm glad that you are apologizing for this change, and hope that you put back in the double-click functionality ASAP. Having to select an email, then move my hand from the trackball to the keyboard and press "enter", then move my hand back to the trackball takes way more than the supposed 0.4-0.5 seconds being saved on display.

And an alternative with selecting, right-clicking, and "... More"/"Open in new window" (actually a new tab, at least in Chrome) is pretty much equally bad overall, although without having to use the keyboard. Selecting an email and then clicking the "2 windows stacked" icon in the preview area opens the email in a new window, but needs another reposition and click to enlarge the window to a useful size; it is overall a lot more moving and clicking, and elapsed time, than a simple double-click was.

Is there a simple way to use yesterday's version of webmail instead of this very dubious upgrade?

[kmcchi]

Clicking on the gear option (top right not left for me) doesn't produce any Widescreen, Desktop (or List) options I can find ... What I want sounds like Desktop with the ability to toggle preview on and off via the little triangle on the lower right.

Make sure it's this gear icon you're clicking (in the widescreen view), not the settings one at the top right. In the other views it'll also appear above the message list in a similar position.

In any case though, it looks like the triangle to show and hide the preview pane was removed as I no longer see it in Desktop view. There's likely a reason, I'd guess it has to do with differences in the user interface code itself where the Desktop and List views are now two distinct things and it's no longer possible to have the desktop view hide or show the preview pane on demand.

screenshot-webmail.sonic.net-2017-08-22-10-46-02.png

Thanks. (I needed to logout and back in to see the new mail.) Agree with motet ... I really miss the ability to toggle preview on and off easily. I use it to quick scan messages, but find it distracting to leave it on. It is a hassle now to go between preview/non-preview modes and it would be really great to have this functionality back.

Also, it now takes three clicks to get to "open in new window" (starting with right click on message) and I'm pretty sure it used to take two.

[motet]

I notice now when displaying an HTML message (which is most messages for me) it momentarily renders it as plain text with a bunch of HTML tags before erasing and rendering the HTML. Purely cosmetic, of course, but rather hokey and unprofessional looking.