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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: E-Mail Scrolling in KMail/Kontact
From:       Diego Moya <turingt () gmail ! com>
Date:       2005-03-23 17:51:18
Message-ID: 11ee049405032309517433b82b () mail ! gmail ! com
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Here's my take on this subject:

- Unless you can provide a new interface as efficient as the current
one, the old behaviour must still work in the new design (at least the
basics: up/down scrolls through text of current message, left/right
moves to previous/next message). Secondary details might change,
though.

- The interface shouldn't be changed unless the new design is  an
improvement (or at least not worse) for everybody.

- KMail developers should agree that the current interface *has* a
severe problem for newcomers, and it's just not an educational one but
also a consistency one. If we analyze it with the Knowledge Gap model,
we find that the error is that the new user already *has* knowledge
about how a list should behave, but this knowledge conflicts with the
provided interface. Having a list (the messages panel) that doesn't
behave like a list is inconsistent with the rest of KDE.

- Adding a preference to select among two broken modes will *not* fix
the problem. (BTW, that's one of the reasons why I always have ditched
KDE for my personal use - this usually is the preferred "solution" for
usability problems in KDE apps, but it rarely is the best one. I see
KDE as a "make your own GUI", but not everybody is a good Interaction
Architect. OK, now I've finished my rant and go back to the problem).


S=E9bastien is right in that every listbox should be able to navigated
with up/down keys. Sven is right in that, as long as there are two
vertical scrollable panes, one of them will be awkward to use.

Of course, this means that there MUST NOT be two up/down panels. So to
achieve the right solution one of the two must be changed to something
else, a widget that doesn't raise those strong expectations of up/down
navigation.

A possible solution is the "thread arcs" widget found in Gnumail. This
interface was developed by IBM for the ReMail prototype (see links
below). It has good research support done on real users, and better
yet, it presents a *horizontal* axis for previous/next messages, so
it's best suited for Kmail's left/right keys.

GnuMail:
http://www.roard.com/screenshots/gnumail-threadarcs.png

Remail Thread Arcs:
http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/threadarcs.html
(includes link to IBM research report on thread arcs).


I've done a mockup of a possible solution on how Kmail could use
Thread Arcs. The messages pane is changed into a dropdown selection
box showing information for the current mail. This way you still have
access to the history list, but the main navigation is now done with
left/right and moving into the current thread. Under the selection box
is the thread arcs widget and aggregated information of the whole
thread (see describtion in the IBM research paper).

As you see, creating an interface that does the *RIGHT THING* and
solves all problems is usually a lot of work!

["kmail-mockup.jpg" (image/jpeg)]

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