First Beta Webmail Updates Released

[kgc]

We pushed out the updates to the beta webmail system yesterday afternoon. This version includes several notable changes.

• Checkboxes for selecting messages as an alternate to CTRL/SHIFT-Click or keyboard hotkeys
  Friedlier to small resolution displays (tested down to 1024x768)
  Phone/tablet specific templates which are suitable for touch screen use
  Importing of CSV address books
  "Remeber Me" functionality to save password

And a lot of other miscelaneous bug fixes pulled in from uptream and fixed locally as well.

At this point, we still consider it to be a work in progress but is our first major step towards integrating customer feedback into the new webmail client.

[virtualmike]

Looks great. I found a couple of nits, though.

- The Larry skin looks better on my iPad than the Sonic Mobile skin
- With the Sonic Mobile skin, I can't get to the basic preferences (e.g., Settings, then Settings button doesn't work)

More testing later when I try it from my work computer.

[kgc]

Looks great. I found a couple of nits, though.

- The Larry skin looks better on my iPad than the Sonic Mobile skin
- With the Sonic Mobile skin, I can't get to the basic preferences (e.g., Settings, then Settings button doesn't work)

More testing later when I try it from my work computer.

The desktop skin does look better, but expecting users to know about things like "two finger scrolling" isn't really a good option for us. Anyway, a work in progress.

There are some issues navigating the settings on the mobile skins but so far as I know, only becuase it doens't expand the tabs out by default which leads to some confusion. IRRC, you can still open them all up though.

[km6xu]

Sadly, aliases are *still* broken, and there are some folks in my address book that can't be found by any means unless I used the old webmail (in which I can still get things done more quickly).

Also, now when I open an e-mail and click 'reply,' there is no included text! Is there a new setting somewhere that I need to check?

[km6xu]

Jeff at Sonic encouraged me to follow up. And yes, even after a reboot, reply is still broken (no included text), but thanks to Jeff, I took a look around, and saw that many things have been improved, especially in the preferences. I would encourage anybody who hasn't looked at the preferences in a while to go and take a peek. Some more things:

I see that there is a means to import .csv files. Please please please also make a .csv writer (a lot easier than a .csv reader). My Android (Verizon) phone can import the .csv file, though I would like to know of any suggestions out there either for merging .csv files, or for keeping them in sync between Sonic and Verizon. My e-mail address book has almost a thousand entries, and having two continuously diverging address books is a hassle.

One's address book can only be shown in chucks up to 200 entries. If one has a reasonable internet connection, it doesn't seem like showing more at a time would be a problem. Why the limitation?

I am glad to see Sonic making plain text the default rather than succumbing to the world of HTML. This new client seems to be a nice balance, allowing one to see the HTML baggage that fills so many legitimate e-mails.

Sadly, it seems a little late regarding top-posting, a battle that was lost in the 1990s. It was a shame that so many e-mail clients back in the day by default pushes one to top-post. In Sonic's explanation, it should have been mentioned that top-posting also does not discourage one from being lazy, and many never excise any included text from their reply, not even when responding to something that goes onto an e-mail reflector with many users. As a result, we end up with "me too" postings followed by a thousand lines of included text, making it a pain for each and every person on the list, particularly those with mobile devices.

[Guest]

Sadly, it seems a little late regarding top-posting, a battle that was lost in the 1990s. It was a shame that so many e-mail clients back in the day by default pushes one to top-post. In Sonic's explanation, it should have been mentioned that top-posting also does not discourage one from being lazy, and many never excise any included text from their reply, not even when responding to something that goes onto an e-mail reflector with many users. As a result, we end up with "me too" postings followed by a thousand lines of included text, making it a pain for each and every person on the list, particularly those with mobile devices.

Blame Microsoft applications that started this behavior. Whenever I use a client that has sane quoting, I will pare things down like a lot of forum software and clients like Thunderbird; but truth be told, I also quote the entire thread at work because that's what people expect.

[raillard]

The new checkboxes have a bit of a problem: If you carefully click on top of the checkboxes they get selected properly, as expected, but if you click outside a checkbox, even by a very tiny distance, that single message gets selected with a checkmark, but the rest of your selected messages loose their checkmarks and become deselected again.

A couple of other observations: Most webmail systems have a single checkbox in the column header over the other checkboxes for selecting/deselecting a whole webpage of messages at once. That can be handy if one wants to delete a bunch of older messages by the pageful.

In IE8 the selection and deselection process takes almost a full second per click on a checkbox. It feels faster in Opera 12, but still slower than I'm used to using Sonic's earlier webmail systems.

[cindylm]

Unfortunately, this version is all but useless on Safari on my iPad. (Also unfortunately, the iPad is all I have to use, due to a rather thorough robbery.)

The login box takes up the whole screen...?!

I go smack into my inbox and can't see email addresses, just subjects and user names. Everything is stretched all the way across the screen, with no columns. I click on "settings," and get a long, blank page.

I'm going back to atmail for now. I wish I had the time to do real beta testing but, alas, I don't.

Cindy

[km6xu]

Dang, Cindylm, I am sorry to hear about your loss.
If there is a hell, it's fires wait for folks who do stuff like that.

I use Google Chrome, and this new version of webmail doesn't let
me drag an e-mail from my inbox list to one of the other folders.

I am using the new webmail most of the time, but when I have to
find some people in my address book or do something in a hurry,
I still have to use the old webmail.

[cindylm]

Thank you, km6xu.