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What do you think of the new interface on Apple's Mail program?

1/1: What do you think of the new interface on Apple's Mail program?

Love it! 357 (26.44%)
Somewhat like it 416 (30.81%)
Undecided as of yet 152 (11.26%)
Somewhat dislike it 208 (15.41%)
Hate it! 160 (11.85%)
No opinion at all 57 (4.22%)
Other polls | 1,350 votes | 19 comments

What do you think of the new interface on Apple's Mail program? | 19 comments | Create New Account
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I love it
Authored by: Jwink3101 on May 12, '05 11:54:23AM

At first i was weary but once i customized the toolbar to not be centered and include the options i want, i love it. I think it just looks really nice and make getting mail easy.

I never loved the old one but used it because my other favorite, Thunderbird, had an annoying bug. Well, the new Mail is so nice that i do not think i would switch back even if Thunderbird is fixed.



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status line
Authored by: zpjet on May 12, '05 04:47:36PM

i want it back! where else can i see those 3000 messages in my trash and those 75 waiting for reply?



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Love It!
Authored by: zane on May 12, '05 04:52:45PM

I just don't get why people supposedly "hate" the new Mail so much. I mean, from the dozens of comments I've read, you'd think Apple had made Bin Laden heads for buttons!

When I look back to Mail 1, it's dog ugly compared to Mail 2's cleaner interface. It has a more "pro" feel to it, IMHO. My [slightly less technical] girlfriend wanted me to upgrade her PB as soon as she saw the new Mail (well, Dashboard ripples helped convince her too! She's very aesthetic ;¬)).

That said, the stupid left indent in the button-bar had to go pretty damn quick for me. ;¬)



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Love It!
Authored by: zpjet on May 13, '05 03:00:37PM

actually, it is quite easy to unindent it. just go to customize the toolbar and delete (drag away) the flexible space.



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Toolbar Question
Authored by: Ross L on May 13, '05 09:41:14PM

The standard command-drag in the toolbar trick doesn't work in Mail. What gives?



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Toolbar Question
Authored by: anjoschu on May 16, '05 01:25:55PM

ctrl-click on the toolbar & select customize from the menu



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Went from hate to love
Authored by: fil_dawg on May 12, '05 09:15:43PM

I started out hating the new UI. Now I see a pretty good design. The trick for me was to uncenter the toolbar and view the entire application like columns. Then place the buttons over the columns that made the most sense. While lacking some polish, I like the function and flow.



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My first impressions of Mail 2
Authored by: jamesconroyfinn on May 13, '05 12:03:53AM

I started up Mail 2 almost as soon as I upgraded to Tiger as I was interested to see how the new User Interface felt. The new UI in Mail 2 is gorgeous, as soon as you remove the unnecessary space on the left side of the toolbar. The blend from the title to the toolbar looks swish and the icons/graphics are stunning.

Apple have done a brilliant job of producing an aesthetically satisfying

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My first impressions of Mail 2
Authored by: jbouklas on May 16, '05 12:29:59AM
Very trippy use of bold, to be honest. -Jim

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Somewhat like
Authored by: JKT on May 13, '05 09:58:27AM

I voted for somewhat like it as there are improvements to the interface. However, there are also some bad regressions - the unread/read toolbar buttons are virtually indistinguishable on a quick glance whereas it was immediately obvious what the status was with the old versions. Get rid of the somewhat ugly button-style background from the icons and I would like it a lot more.

---
PB G4, 1.5 GHz, 2x512MB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 80 GB 5400rpm HD, SuperDrive, MacOS X 10.3.9

Visit www.thelandgallery.com for nature-inspired British Art



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I miss the drawer.
Authored by: schwankl on May 13, '05 12:11:31PM

I had the drawer on the right side of my Mail window. I had gotten used to it being there. I liked the fact that I could change which side the drawer was on if I felt like it. Now I'm stuck with it on the left.

It also took me a while to get used to how Mail handled sigs.

I know I'll get used to having the mailboxes listed on the left, but it will take time.

Anyone know of a way to change the location of the mailboxes? Or should I just mess around with interface builder? (on a copy of course)



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I miss the drawer.
Authored by: DaphneDiane on May 14, '05 06:38:41AM

Yeah the drawer and placing it on the right side is one of the things I miss most about mail. The new buttons don't bother at all. But I liked being able to open folder in a new viewer and then close the drawer to give me back screen real-estate. I found it especially useful when doing a bunch of cut and paste and drag and drop from an organized folder. Now, not only is the mail folder list now on the left, when you hide the folders the window shifts and grows by the amount of space occupied by the list.



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Great functions, the UI is terrible
Authored by: pepi on May 15, '05 08:18:53PM

I like the new functions Mail.app now offers a lot. Like Smart Mailboxes, the substantially faster search, per account signatures and the Connection Doctor to name a few.

On the other hand I totally disagree with the new interface. It has lost a lot of things that were there before. Both in terms of useability and features. Just to mention, that it's totally against Apple's own Human Interface Guideline.

  • The toolbar buttons are not distinguishable by their shape. This would help the eye and conform to Apple's HIG!
  • Totally nonsense enforced grouping of toolbar buttons. Let's have them one by one like anywhere else.
  • The Status bar is completely gone. I want it back, now.
  • The choice of small toolbar buttons is gone. Mail.app is the only app to not offer this, why?
  • The mailbox list cannot be moved to the right hand side anymore, where this was possible with the good old drawer.
  • Spotlight search get's in the way of my workflow. I cannot preselect what I'm searching for, before typing in text into the search field. Before I could tell Mail to search in the "From", "To", "SUbject" or "Entire Contents" of one or all Mailboxes. I can still do this, but I have to type first, wait for the Spotlight bar to appear and then click what I'm searching for.
  • The Junk filter will move away Messages from your InBox even in Training mode when it should just color mark them. When switching Junk Filter Mode from automatic back to training the "Junk Mailbox" is deleted without ANY warning, notice or even a way to get back it's contents. It's just gone, including all your false positives why you switched to training mode again.
  • When moving from field to field in a "new message" window, including pop-ups, you cannot get to the text field for the message body if you have enabled te "priority" menu. You're stuck there, unless you click with the mouse.
  • The "save to iPhoto" is only available from the Save… button pop-up in the message view. It's not in the context-menu of a picture, nor anywhere else in menus.
  • The button for "new mailbox" doesn't change to "new smart mailbox" when the option (alt) key is pressed. This is unexpected, because every other app (eg. iTunes, iPhoto) does it that way.
  • Organize by threads lacks a keyboard shortcut.

Conclusion:

Apple has added a lot of new stuff into Mail.app which is great. Overall it feels a lot faster and polished in terms of features. On the other hand the user interface is a terrible step backwards, taking away a lot of choice and information from the user, that was there before.



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I miss the drawer.
Authored by: ganoe on May 17, '05 05:10:18AM

Same here. I had the drawer on the right side. That way I kept just enough of the left side of the mail window exposed under my other open apps to see when new e-mails came in. I really hope Apple fixes this. I don't see why the folder list has to be on the left. I doubt that really fits with how most people probably use a mail client anyhow.



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Left-justify the toolbar and it's all good
Authored by: n8gray on May 13, '05 05:39:38PM

Funny, most people seem to say the same thing: once I left-justified the toolbar I was happy. I had the same reaction.

I don't understand why people have had such a negative reaction to the new design. I think it's a lot better than the old one, which always looked pretty goofy to me. And don't get me started on the idiotic mail folder drawer--as if anybody would ever close it!



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TABBING in the UI?!? - ARG!
Authored by: x509v3 on May 17, '05 01:55:39AM

I think Apple made nice UI changs to Mail.app, but they've really BRUISED one particular user experience:
when composing a new mail, I used to enter a "to" address, press the TAB key to enter a "subject" line, then press the TAB key to go to the body and start entering my message.

With Mail2, now you have to press TAB to cycle through a bunch of UI elements like account, prioroty, signature, digital signature. UGH! Why would I want to use they kayboard to make those selections!?? Those are meant to be clicked on by a mouse.

sigh...this is the type of UE I expect on Windows, not Mac OS X.

This is my one pet peeve with Mail2



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TABBING in the UI?!? - ARG!
Authored by: matamatangi on May 19, '05 11:21:39AM

Sounds like you have full keyboard access turned on in Keyboard shortcuts of the Keyboard & Mouse Pref Pane. If you turn that off, tabbing works as expected. You can also hit control-F7 to turn it on and off.



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i kink of like it, BUT...
Authored by: nick on May 17, '05 10:51:22AM

...i have two gripes.

1. as said in the ars-technica article it is BAD UI-design that the buttons don't differ in shape. now its harder to figure out, which button does what.

2. now we have 3 different interfaces: the pin-stripes (or whatever one should call it now), the metal-interface and the mail-interface.

please apple: give the buttons their shape back and chose ONE design for all programs.



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i kink of like it, BUT...
Authored by: Anonymous on May 18, '05 05:35:56PM

There are 6 not 3

http://www.robservatory.com/archives/2005/05/17/consistency-of-design/#more-3



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