'What an Ex-Windows user doesn't get'

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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    What an Ex-Windows user doesn't get
From:       Ralf Nolden <nolden () kde ! org>
Date:       2004-01-17 21:00:18
Message-ID: 200401171300.19301.nolden () kde ! org
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Hi,

during my vacation here in the US with my relatives, I managed to wipe down XP 
from one of my cousin's computers. He himself is kind of the average windows 
user, deals with spam, viruses, doesn't know how to burn CDs and doesn't have 
any clue how computers work (filesystem ? what do I need a filesystem for ?)

Ok, to make a long story short, I installed SuSE 9.0 on the machine. Where he 
had problems with are mostly usability problems in KMail. I tried to compare 
his KDE 3.1 kmail with current CVS so I just list what could be made better.

- setting up his accounts:
	- he didn't figure out what a pre-command is -> Move that to an "expert" tab 
or something, plus anything that you wouldn't need, such as security :)
	- users usually only have a password for the pop3 server and not for the 
smtp. For them, setting up the pop3 server is the most important. Therefore, 
I suggest switching the tabs in the Network settings, so Receiving comes 
first, then Sending.
	- enable interval mail checking: He thought he could set that to hours or 
even say, 1 day interval. The current option only allows minutes and that up 
to 4 digits, so the maximum would be 9999 minutes. Who has ever dealt with 
minutes easily realizes that everyday people count their time in hours as 
soon as the number of minutes exceeds 60 and in days when the hours exceed 
24. So I would like to make that feature more suitable for everyday use. 1 
minute intervals are the minimum currently as a default, I would suggest 
setting that to 1 hour, which is not reasonable for us network people where 1 
minute makes more sense but for the average user this would be enough

- sending/receiving mail:	Outlook and Outlook express have only a limited set 
of default toolbar buttons but those have a good description and make use of 
Icon and Text by default. Especially the "Send and Receive" button is *very* 
prominent as the first button in the toolbar and that is what every user is 
searching but doesn't find. Essentially, I have to agree with Microsoft's way 
of dealing with Sending and Receiving - connect those two into one button; 
perform receiving first and then sending. Most ISP's who would require a 
password for sending don't allow sending if you didn't receive your mail 
first, resulting in an error message that the mails couldn't be sent. To 
avoid that, I would suggest taking over this button and also the place where 
it appears and to use an icon that would indicate that it combines sending 
and receiving. About the menu that pops up if you have more than one mail 
account, I think that doesn't need to be there. That functionality is only 
required if you have a specific mail account that you excluded from mail 
checking and which can be checked via the File menu. The best way to deal 
with that button is to put it on the far left, label it Send and Reveive and 
combine the functionality of sending and receiving in it.

So far my experiences here. I didn't have those problems with my dad but that 
can be due to that he didn't ask any questions and I have set up his mail 
accounts for him in KMail, hm.

Ralf

-- 
We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs.
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Ralf Nolden
nolden@kde.org

The K Desktop Environment       The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org              http://www.kdevelop.org

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