New sonic.net webmail application

[elbow53]

Love the new browser look and feel. Would like cursor to go to top of email thread when replying or forwarding.

[kgc]

Like Sonic. a lot. Thank you for having this forum. But I do wish . . .

Thanks! We really appreciate constructive feedback. To answer your points.

1) Saving Password, aka "Rember Me" - This will be enabled when we push the new version out, hopefully in the next day or two.

2) Checkboxes on Message Lists - This was a big surprise to me. I didn't realize how much people like using checkboxes and/or are unaware of (or don't realize that they should try) CTRL/SHIFT-Click as standard GUI usage. In response, there will be checkboxes on the message list. I'm not sure if this will come out in the next release or not but will be in place before it is moved to production.

2) Checkboxes part two (move to folder drop down) - this is available in the "full message" view, but not with the preview pane/message list. I'm less enthusiastic about enabling this from the message list but only because of problems with the layout and screen real estate. However, the point is valid and we'll see what we can come up with.

3) Checkboxes part three (Contex menu issues) - can you elaborate what isn't working?

4) Attachments (Download All) - Would you want to download them all as a single zip archive or as individual files?

5) Composing from reading an email - this will be in the next release.

5) To/From/Subject Cache - do you mean that your browser will remember what you've entered in as subjects but not to/cc/bcc? to/cc/bcc are auto completed from your address book - this is probably incompatible with letting the browser do it.

[adame]

Love the new browser look and feel. Would like cursor to go to top of email thread when replying or forwarding.

Thank you! Getting the cursor to go to the top of an email can be specified in the settings section of the new webmail.

To do this: Click the Settings icon near the top-right corner (it looks like a gear), select "Composing Messages" on the next section, then under the "When Replying" section select "start new messages above the quote" and click Save. It will default to this behavior on future replies.

Hope that helps!

[vita]

Like Sonic. a lot. Thank you for having this forum. But I do wish . . .

Thanks! We really appreciate constructive feedback. To answer your points.

1) Saving Password, aka "Rember Me" - This will be enabled when we push the new version out, hopefully in the next day or two.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

2) Checkboxes on Message Lists - This was a big surprise to me. I didn't realize how much people like using checkboxes and/or are unaware of (or don't realize that they should try) CTRL/SHIFT-Click as standard GUI usage. In response, there will be checkboxes on the message list. I'm not sure if this will come out in the next release or not but will be in place before it is moved to production.

Awesome, thanks!

2) Checkboxes part two (move to folder drop down) - this is available in the "full message" view, but not with the preview pane/message list. I'm less enthusiastic about enabling this from the message list but only because of problems with the layout and screen real estate. However, the point is valid and we'll see what we can come up with.

Yes, I understand the point about real estate . . . (which wasn't a problem in squirrelmail . . .)

3) Checkboxes part three (Contex menu issues) - can you elaborate what isn't working?

I tested it again...while the other context menu expanded list items come up quickly, the Move To expanded lists takes a couple of seconds. When I was impatient, I would click on the Move To rather than wait for the expanded list, and the entire context menu blips then disappears

4) Attachments (Download All) - Would you want to download them all as a single zip archive or as individual files?

Either would be great.

5) Composing from reading an email - this will be in the next release.

Thank you.

5) To/From/Subject Cache - do you mean that your browser will remember what you've entered in as subjects but not to/cc/bcc? to/cc/bcc are auto completed from your address book - this is probably incompatible with letting the browser do it.

I think it is the browser autocompleting the to/cc/bcc because it remembers addresses that are not in my address book. Useful feature. Thanks again. By the way, I wasn't just trying to soften my complaining when I said I liked Sonic a lot. The fact of this forum and the sonic responses further illustrate why I have never regretted choosing sonic, unlike when I previously chose other providers. and in case no one says this enough -- I LOVE how little spam I get!

[lr]

I hope this is the "official" thread for the new webmail. If it isn't, please let me know.

I just did some network usage measurements on the old versus new webmail. This test was done from a location with a very fast network. The client is Safari 6.0.4 on a Mac with OS X 10.8.3. There are no accelerators or web caches, other than the caching that's inside the web browser. The network usage measurement was done by running tcpdump on the outgoing ethernet link of the Mac, and then filtering the output to only include packets that are to/from web*.sonic.net (which includes things like DNS and such). The number of packets is obvious (just ethernet packets, with a normal MTU); for the total traffic I count the total length of the ethernet packets (so a single-byte payload will count for about 60 bytes, which is fair if you are measuring network traffic). There was no imap client running on the machine at the time. The test workload was: Starting at http://webmail.sonic.net, log in to the webmail of choice, scroll down to message #45 from the top (the mailbox contains 2500 messages), forward that message, type three lines of text (the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog), attach a 15kB .pdf file, hit send, then log out again.

Using squirrelmail: 665 packets, 267685 bytes.
Using the beta webmail: 1221 packets, 681207 bytes.
The ratio is between a factor of 2 and 3.

Did anyone at Sonic actually perform such a measurement before deploying the new beta webmail? If yes, do you disagree with my numbers?

And here is the set of question where I demand an answer from technical or executive management at Sonic: If someone did perform these measurements, and in spite of them decided to not only deploy the new webmail but also pull support for the older webmail, what does that tell us about Sonic's support for people who are using slow (non-Sonic) networks for their transit? And if no one performed such measurements, do you think it's responsible to replace a functioning application without doing some performance validation on it first?

[mary]

Selecting messages. When I find several headers all together of messages I want to delete, I find I can single-click the top one, then hold SHIFT and scroll down the list to select them all -- then hit DELETE to delete them all. No need for checkboxes for this.

However, if I hesitate while scrolling down, a box pops up with details about one header, which obscures the list of other headers. Could you get rid of this box, or at least tell me the name of it? It happens a lot in Windows Explorer too, and I'd like to look it up and get rid of it there also.

[dane]

Try clicking the first, then shift-clicking the last, it will highlight the range in between. Then, hit delete, on your keyboard or the icon. This is easier than selecting each - but assumes you are getting way more spam than you should be. Assure that you've got SpamAssassin enabled in Member Tools.

You can also control-click multiple individual items, just like checking a box, then hit delete.

[dane]

I hope this is the "official" thread for the new webmail. If it isn't, please let me know.

I just did some network usage measurements on the old versus new webmail.
...

RoundCube has more interface elements, which result in more data transmitted initially. But, after first use, these items are cached, so the penalty is not as bad as your testing the first time would indicate.

[Guest]

Try clicking the first, then shift-clicking the last, it will highlight the range in between. Then, hit delete, on your keyboard or the icon. This is easier than selecting each

Hi, Dane, good to see you.

All I need to do is click the first, hold Shift, then use the Down Arrow to go down one header at a time (which adds it to the selected range with no clicking needed) till I find one I want to keep. Then I release Shift, click Delete, and the selected ones disappear. (If I hold Shift while pressing Delete, there's a pesky confirmation box asking "Do you really want to delete those messages?")

Btw, scrolling down by the arrow also marks each message as Read; I wish it didn't do that.

[dane]

Yup, that'll work. Shift-click basically selects a range, so you can just select the first and the last message, and it will highlight all in between for action, then hit delete.