[Users] [Bulk] Re: Claws config needs much better documentation

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:39:08 +0200, Michael Gmelin said:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:08:56 -0400
> Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:

> > Fair enough, but when a part of the program departs from the
> > behavior norms of user software, for gosh sakes, DOCUMENT IT, and
> > document it prominently.
> 
> Well, Claws deletes the currently selected message - which is standard
> behavior for UI applications. Moving the cursor keys does not open a
> mail, but changes the selection

That behavior is configurable. The surprising part is, if you configure
it to not pull the body on changing the message, instead of blanking
out the body of the previous message, it keeps the body of the previous
message.

>  - which is standard behavior for many
> file managers and other programs where changing the selection does not
> open a file. It might be unusual for a mail client - but then again,
> clicking an email actual opens it, just moving the selection with the
> cursor keys doesn't. I don't quite understand how somebody could just
> not realize this immediately - I mean you are using the cursor keys
> and realize that the selection changes, but the mail shown doesn't.
> It's very obvious and I doubt that anybody who is not getting this
> will actually read the documentation before stumbling over this (who
> is reading documentation software before using a program these days
> anyway
> - if ever, unless they hit a problem which would be too late in this
> case).

As someone who accidentally deleted because of this, let me explain how
it happened. First, I get 500 nonspam messages a day, so I move fast.
My mental algorithm for deleting a message is that if I see anything in
either the body or the subject indicating I'm not interested, I just
press d. Also, keep in mind my desktop Claws is configured to pull the
body upon highlighting the current message. So I deleted a piece of
spam after reading both the subject and the body. The highlight moved
to the next message, but I was still looking at the body, and saw it
waas the same. A quick look at the subject showed it and the sender
different, and I thought "Oh, one of those virus-generated spams that
changes its subject every time", and pressed d again. After four of
these I was thinking it's a pretty prolific virus. After five, I
realized I had skipped a step somewhere, went back, undeleted the
messages, and discovered the bodies changed when I pressed Enter or
clicked the message.

> 
> That said, I have a very simple suggestion that might solve this and
> increase usability at the same time - it definitely would get the
> attention of new users so that they understand that something's
> different:
> 
> Change the message list, so that the mail currently shown in the
> message pane is marked as well as the currently selected mail. Keep
> the standard selection color in case both refer to the same mail
> (selected mail is also the one shown). When moving the selection
> using the cursor keys, keep an outline around the currently shown
> email and use a different color for the selection bar. If you hit
> enter, the previously shown email gets deselected, and the selected
> entry uses the normal selection bar again (I hope you get the idea).

If it were me, the only change I'd make to the "lazy body download"
method would be that, if the highlighted message's body hasn't been
downloaded yet, show a blank body, not the body of the previous and
completely unrelated message.

SteveT

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