stemcel's dashboard

A comment on the idea "Alternate background colors" in Postbox, Inc.:

Do you mean something other than the solutions 9,10, and 11 posts before yours? If you want alternating rows in different colors then you can do it as outlined in those three posts. Otherwise... I don't know what you mean. – stemcel, on September 28, 2009 16:13

A comment on the idea "Unread and Total counts in Topics Panel" in Postbox, Inc.:

Oh I agree with you, no doubt. (About the interesting aspects of the client). I just was relieved to have found a solution to my problem of the moment.
I still don't agree with you about right-click and context menus :P
We should get into a flame war some time about it. It would be fun :D
(btw, don't really mean the last, just idly poking) – stemcel, on March 15, 2009 07:37

stemcel replied on March 15, 2009 00:21 to the question "Any fix for top-posted conversation view?" in Postbox, Inc.:

Now I encountered the same problem when mail.conversation_display.reverse was set to false... which is weird. I set it to true and it works now... Is there some other boolean somewhere that's related? What's going on?

I feel like previously JD and I had some bug that was reversing things, fixed by setting the reverse preference counter to how Scott expected it to work. Now a version or two later that bug is gone and I needed to set the preference to match how Scott expected it to work?

Either that or Scott was working from memory and had the toggle wrong, and now I'm experiencing some other bug.

stemcel replied on March 14, 2009 23:54 to the idea "Unread and Total counts in Topics Panel" in Postbox, Inc.:

EDIT: Just found 'Total' column, enabled it. Hit myself in forehead for being doofus ;) Post not necessary anymore, but retained so that it keeps an accurate representation of what I said (for all those who receive email notifications of new Postbox Get Satisfaction activity).

I'm not sure I agree about all not needing it though. Here's my use case:
I'm looking for an email conversation about a project I'm working on. There have been many, many different conversations about this project, but the one that I'm looking for contains a large number of emails (and thus would stand out).

Other than that I can't think of anything (other than the fact that at least one email will have an attachment, and I'm already taking advantage of that to search) that will make the conversation stand out. If I could remember the text well enough to find it searching some other way I'd already be doing that.

I don't think that finding things this way (for varying kinds of searches) is that unusual. It's kind of like looking through a file cabinet and knowing that the file you're looking for is one of the really thick/thin ones. It helps.

stemcel started following the idea "Unread and Total counts in Topics Panel" in Postbox, Inc..

stemcel started following the question "Is it possible to detach messages from a conversation?" in Postbox, Inc..

stemcel replied on March 14, 2009 23:44 to the problem "Moving a message between accounts." in Postbox, Inc.:

I agree that spring-loaded drag-and-drop should be used more. I just tried to move an email from one folder to another, and that's what brought me to this thread.

Only problem I had was that the folder remained open/toggled after I deposited the email in it.

A comment on the problem "Moving a message between accounts." in Postbox, Inc.:

I don't care what Steve Jobs thinks. I've used a lot of different operating systems, and a lot of different software. There are things that OS X does well (I use it every day and love many of them). There are other things that it does less well. It's true that context menus can get out of control, but so can buttons and so can drag'n'drop. The idea that using the right mouse button is broken is identically as unreasonable as the idea that it ought to be used for everything, if not more so. People tend to use other user interface possibilities when they would be more useful, but arbitrarily shutting off "right click" as a way of bringing up up targeted, relevant contextual actions has immensely damaged UI on Apple products. It's not something that can't be done right.

That said, I agree with you on this particular case. – stemcel, on March 14, 2009 23:42

stemcel started following the idea "New Feature Quick Look" in Postbox, Inc..

A comment on the question "How does conversation view deal with multiple conversations in the same thread?" in Postbox, Inc.:

I thought about it some more and I think this _has_ happened to me in gmail. If I recall correctly you end up with all the messages in the same thread but it isn't always obvious how the ordering should work.

I mean there's usually a clear ordering amongst the "Reply All" messages, but the one-on-one correspondences mixed in may be less obvious ways. – stemcel, on March 09, 2009 21:53

A comment on the question "Any fix for top-posted conversation view?" in Postbox, Inc.:

Yours too, eh? That's weird. – stemcel, on March 09, 2009 20:00

stemcel replied on March 09, 2009 19:34 to the question "Any fix for top-posted conversation view?" in Postbox, Inc.:

Ah, I read J.D.'s response and assumed that that preference change wouldn't do the trick. It worked. For some reason mine was already set to <emph>true</emph>, which is probably why I was seeing everything backwards. Weird...

@scott: Thanks!

EDIT: My apologies if rapid-fire editing of this post has flooded anyone's mailbox. I'll try not to do it again :(

stemcel replied on March 09, 2009 19:31 to the question "Any fix for top-posted conversation view?" in Postbox, Inc.:

If each of the first four lines of my original question were a separate email (sent to me in the only order that makes sense), then right now I'm stuck reading the conversations backwards in Postbox.

Gmail view of same conversation:
You sent: "What is the most annoying thing in email?"
X replied: "Top posting."
You sent: "Why is that?"
X replied: "Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text."

Postbox conversation view:
X replied: "Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text."
You sent: "Why is that?"
X replied: "Top posting."
You sent: "What is the most annoying thing in email?"

All of my conversations show up as seen in the Postbox example above, and I can't figure out how to get them to display in natural reading order.

stemcel asked a question in Postbox, Inc. on March 09, 2009 18:19:

Any fix for top-posted conversation view?

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Conversation views (beta 9) seem to be stuck on top posting. Changing the sort field for the folder doesn't seem to affect it. It's... pretty backwards :D

Is there any way to fix this? I may be taking stupid pills (definitely low enough on sleep, it's been known to happen), but I can't figure out whether this can be even worked around.

Anyone?

stemcel started following the idea "Sent email with the rest of the messages in a conversation" in Postbox, Inc..

stemcel started following the problem "Not all emails grouped in the one Conversation" in Postbox, Inc..

stemcel started following the idea "Activity Monitor" in Postbox, Inc..

stemcel replied on March 09, 2009 18:08 to the question "How does conversation view deal with multiple conversations in the same thread?" in Postbox, Inc.:

Yeah, that's a sticky situation. The same sort of thing <emph>does</emph> come up with me in team project situations. I have no idea for how it ought to work (it's not reasonable to expect to see a conversation graph :P). If you ever figure out a good solution to this even in theory I'd love to hear about it.

Good point to bring up!

A comment on the idea "Real conversation view" in Postbox, Inc.:

I just don't see the point of adding another step (explicitly pressing the Gather button) to every conversation I'll ever deal with. I'll never want a conversation *not* "gathered", ever. To me the concept of a gather button seems like adding a "open the envelope" button that you have to explicitly click for every message you're interested in.

And while we're at it, how about a "just a snippet" button that you have to click to get a preview of the messge, something akin to only opening the envelope a little bit. Sure, it's no big deal. It's only one more thing that you have to do with every conversation/message. And how often do you actually need to read the message that you're receiving? Often a snippet is good enough, so you'd be providing an extra service with the snippet button. Automatically showing a snippet might be cool for things like gmail, but well-established client software like pine has been successful without features like that and there's no need to confuse the users.

The 1970s called, and they want their email clients back. – stemcel, on March 09, 2009 17:10

A comment on the idea "Real conversation view" in Postbox, Inc.:

No, requiring the user to click 'gather' to get the advantages of conversation view is not a solution. Say I have 2-3 thousand conversations. You want me to click 'gather' on each one before I can view it as a cohesive unit? I could set up gmail to import my IMAP account and get those advantages instantly. Postbox should *definitely* at least have the option to gather automatically, and gathering should work better than it does. – stemcel, on March 09, 2009 16:44