Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I'm Dave to my friends, and I do get on a bit don't I?

Thanks for that.

I think you'd be better served by addressing individual problems with individual brainstorms. Lumping many issues together is likely to become something of an unstructured mess.

I'd be proud if I produced Modest, so - sure. Modest is usable now, it's easy to navigate and generally a good early effort - its first appearance was in diablo, right? That much said, I'd certainly agree that there is room for improvement. I share your frustration with new mail notification, and wish for imap-idle support (really, a tinymail issue) and other things.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

The email client on n900 is one of the most primitive email client I have ever seen so far. It useless as a email client for official use. It lacks many features and almost sounds like a toy. The only this good about it is it integration with Maemo on n900. It does not come any close to the email client on my 3 year old Blackberry. Its a real shame to Nokia to launch a high end mobile with such useless email client.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

these are all true for my hotmail account. but im not sure what #5 is...

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Come on, bring the constructive criticism. Bashing is blah. Instead: What functions would you like to see? Which ones do you miss most often?

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Nerds around? How bad?
This bad.

Some brainstorms:
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...n_imap_server/
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._email_client/
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...inbox-folders/
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...ng_operations/

But I don't know. Imho sometimes it's just better to grab n+1 competitor devices (and also your own :P) and first just dumb combine best features of these and after that start really brainstorming on how to take it to another level :|

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I come from the E90 and there i had profimail.
And man what is that program way better then Modest. Its not even close but a very wide gap.

Of course it is for me the most part is Imap-Idle, not using the sent folder on the server also the user interface is something that i dont like. Why for example does the send button scroll outside of the screen (yes i know ctrl-enter will also work) and instead of the most important button (send) we have completely unimportant buttons on the screen for altering text (size,bold) those are a waste of space! never use them at all!

And this one for me also (for others it is just the reversed i think but make it a preference) i want to alter the font size of the list to way way way smaller, Why can i only see 5 entries?? If i open tmo in the browser i see way more topics in 1 screen, including much more info (like the first line of an email i already want to be able to read).
Also when i am in a mail, and i delete a mail, i don't want to go to the next (or previous) mail! i want to go back to the list.

Also it generates way to much traffic, if i send/receive an account and i dont get any new emails then it did tranfer more the 300KB of traffic. I dont mind that to much when i am in my own country. But in a foreign country that it really expensive. With my E90 and profimail, i just had profimail in a imap-idle configuration and that didnt generate much traffic at all. (the mobile java gmail client is even way better! there i can read many many mails and i only have 60-100kb of traffic)
It seems that modest does get constantly all the id's of all my mails in the inbox.
and i guess thats also the thing that makes Modest slow to use. it has to handle all that stuff.

I also want preferences how many mails it should keep in the inbox (or any folder)
something like i it can store the last 500 subjects (per folder) and the last 100 it can cache the whole message including body.
A preference what to do with new mails (only get the message subject or get the whole message)

If needed i can go on and on. Problem is that that for a mobile computer i expected that email was on the same level as the browser or the IM (those last 2 are really great but the Modest is the worst part even more worse in my eyes the Ovi Maps 1.0)

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

You hit the nail on the head. In the past, I have attempted to debug Modest and my findings indicated that a lot of traffic was caused by same queries (such as asking the server for the list of folders it knew about) being issued over and over again for no apparent reason.

This is clearly not going to improve performance...

BTW, the brainstorm to log improvements to Modest is now open for "solutions" entries.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I concur...

I can even say that modest is nearly the sole reason I don't take my N900 with me on daily basis... relegated to a nightstand duty.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Modest suffers the same disease as calendar, no full-text search..

This renders both apps close to unusable for business use.

emails are stored as individual files in N900's fs, so tracker (that currently indexes only filenames) or recoll/beagle port could index email contents for search.

Search needs to track changes in emails, ie. add new mails to index and delete deleted mail content.

Search should give results grouped/ordered by user config and list enough content/email metadata + link to open the actual mail from search results.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

N-series should not even be used in business context or actually it was not designed to be used. e-series is for business usage. This is how Nokia intended this, but (sadly) they didn't probably understand that people who enjoy social media and multimedia capabilities of this device go to also work :|

.edit
If i correctly remember there is some brainstorm about search:
For email:
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._email_client/
calendar:
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...endar_in_n900/

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I think it is the luck of the draw with the email client problems.

Mine actually works very well and loads very quickly. 2-3 seconds tops.
It is very odd that so many people seem to be having problems, I feel very lucky.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

This is the most frustrating aspect of my new N900. It's a bit embarassing to have to tell people "oh, I can't look that up for you now, I'll have to wait until I get home".

Anyways - I don't think there's much I can do unfortunately, I'm not skilled at all in coding, I've voted on the brainstorm and I'm standing by waiting for something to be announced!
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._email_client/

If there is anything else that someone in my position can try, please let me know! (ps tried claws, that was no good for me)

Get voting on the brainstorm people and try and get it noticed!

EDIT:
OK - there is something I can do, I can add a new solution to that brainstorm!

I've added
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...side_2_seconds

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Setting up my email accounts in the N900 Mail Client has been very frustrating. I have a simple Prepaid-telephone only SIM card, so I use my home (or free WiFi outside) WiFi for Skype & internet (which works great!).

I have tried to set up my Gmail, my Ovi.com and my Yahoo accounts. At the moment they all seem to work partly. For the Yahoo account I first changed to Yahoo! Asia to make it work on IMAP/POP (as mentioned in an other thread). Now I am in fact able to receive my mail on all 3 accounts, and in fact the N900 Yahoo account receives mail much faster (a few minutes!) than my regular laptop.

However, I am not able to send any mail from my Gmail or Yahoo, and get the message "Unable to connect to SMTP server smtp.mail.yahoo.com". :confused:
What do I do wrong? Why can I send mail with Ovi and not with Yahoo or Gmail??

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...9&goto=newpost

I would like to add those points to the brainstorm.

Thanks in advance,

Jelle

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

folks, i`m planning on getting my n900 on tuesday, to avoid stress and time i would be happy if the following very simple questions could be answered: :)

1. i take it that the email refresh can be set to 20min, 30 min etc., is there an option to get a refresh as soon as a new mail arrives?

2. when the client refreshes, is there a notification of new received emails?

3. are there any other downloadable email-clients that resolve these problems?

4. what changes will the new firmware/update bring?

thanks in advance!!

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

This is essentially "push" email. Apparently yes, with Nokia Messaging, but not with any accounts directly.

Yes, only if they arrive in the inbox.

Which problems specifically? There are many shortcomings of the in-built client, and nothing solves them all. Claws-mail addresses many but introduces its own shortcomings.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Does anyone know how we can possible get in touch with the people that are working on this project. I'm exasperated - 4 times today I needed to search my emails as I was out of the house, and it was frustrating not being able to.

Is there any way to release just a patch for the email client... on Tuesday!?!

Even if pee are one two isn't quite ready, surely we can all get involved and get the email client improvements over the line.

Anyone at all that knows anything about the relevant software development know if that is possible? I'll help.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Seems that it would be unlikely that you'd get a fix in the timeframe you want in this way.

The dev page is here: http://modest.garage.maemo.org/ - click development and follow instructions.

Perhaps you could hire a dev to do what you need and have a custom version.

Did you try claws?

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I don`t know what everybody is talking about....I think the email client is excellent.It notifies you when you get emails, and you can have it send and receive every 5 minutes....what else do you need?

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I think that question would be best answered by simply reading the bugs, brainstorms and existing threads that document the many shortcomings people have identified with the email client.

Remember people have different requirements.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

i am a bit confused becausing i am hearing opposing answers:

in order to receive emails through the client (without nokia messaging) by setting up gmail for e.g, does it require you to establish an internet connection yourself or does the auto refresh do that automatically like the omweather widget for e.g?

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

nobody can answer this simple question? :-(

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

If you are connected already (either you connected manually or you have selected "connect automatically" in the internet settings) then you'll get your emails checked periodically.

If you've set your internet to "always ask" then your emails won't be checked unless you've manually chosen a connection.

None of the standard N900 software will initiate a connection in the background, as far as I know, although the mail client (for example) will happily use an existing connection.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

i have it set to "connect automatically", however this does not mean that i always am online or have an internet connection, it just meanst that whenever a connection is established that it chooses that connection.

(?)

anyhow, thats how i have it set, email client ->refresh every 15 min, doesnt refresh at all..

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I've got the same problem with the email client :(
Isn't refreshing when no connection is established.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

i filed it as a bug, nr.10504

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

The same problem here, so indeed, gotta be a bug.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I wonder if no one else has got this problem. Not many people are complaining about that issue.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

maybe because many users are online most of the time with their n900, could also explain why some complain about it not refreshing at times and working at other times..

but others have reported the same problem to me, so i guess we are not alone with this..

please vote for the bug:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10504

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I have this problem too and I have just voted for this bug. Thanks for creating it.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I think this may be your misunderstanding. "Connect automatically" will connect to any available internet connection, whether or not any program wants to use it at that time.
It does mean that you are always online, so long as you can physically receive wifi or cellular signals & have suitable connections configured.

You say you have "Connect automatically" set. This should be enough to get a wifi symbol or cellular data symbol in your status area (i.e. connect you to the internet). If you don't have either then you have a connectivity problem not an email client problem.

If you are connected to wifi or cellular data and your email still isn't refreshing, then yes there is an email client problem.

Once again, the email client should not initiate a connection in the background. This is by design.
If you choose "send & receive" manually, then it is allowed to ask you for a connection. Otherwise it is only allowed to use a pre-established connection - not to connect, send/receive & disconnect.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

thanks, i have been hearing conflicting info on this! if that is the case then the email client is inferior to a simple weather widget like omweather that is able to do that. thats really mindboggling why nokia would choose that...

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I've not used omweather, but if any application is initiating a connection in the background without user interaction, it's violating the guidelines in the Maemo 5 developer guide.

The email client will check email periodically so long as there's an active internet connection. That's the design, that's the behaviour. If you want periodic checking, stay connected.

But you say you've got "connect automatically" checked. You still haven't confirmed that this does actually create a connection for you. If it doesn't (and accounting for the "search interval") you may have found a connectivity bug.
If you disconnect manually, then of course the email client isn't going to be able to check your mail. That's not a bug.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

is it just me, or is it that the email client does not update itself once the internet is connected.

actually, it does, but only when the internet connection is first established, in other words, i get notifications when i connect to the internet, but after that, any new emails are not received.

is anyone experiencing the same?

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

under settings-> internet connections i have chosen the internet connection of my provider instead of "ask me". this means whenever i establish an internet connection it chooses this one, it does not mean that i am alwas online. on the omweather widget i have chosen it to refresh every 4 hours.

90% of the time i am not online. when i am not online, sleeping for e,g, the email client does nothing (although it has been told to refresh every hour) whilst the omweather widget connects to the internet, refreshes and goes offline again.

this is exactly what i want the email widget to do and is most common sense. does nokia expect me to be online 24/7?? i might as well manually establish an internet connection every single time myself to check mail. i want it to do that automatically!

@schlumpfie - i will try that myself and answer you later in the evening.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

[*]

1. Spellcheck.
2. Send button at bottom of window (rather than having to scroll up after composing an e-mail).

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

Would be perfect if the Email Client would connect and dc like OmWeather, cause I don't want to be connected 24/7 just to check my Emails every 10 Mins...

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

It certainly should mean that you're always online. Try this:
1) Close programs
2) Choose "internet connections" -> "Connect Automatically" -> "Always Ask"
3) Disconnect from whatever connection you're on at the moment.
4) Choose "internet connections" -> "Connect Automatically" -> <your_network_cell_provider>
5) At this point, I get connected: I have the circle with 2 arrows appear in my status bar. This means I'm online, even though no program is asking for an internet connection. What happens when you do this?

So how do you "establish an internet connection" - what do you mean by that?

If I choose my mobile operator from the "connect automatically" drop-down, I'm always online (unless I go out of signal). It should be the same for you.

Look at the mail settings. It clearly says "Update when connected via ... XXX". It is not offering to update when disconnected from the internet.

I don't use omweather, and based on that behaviour I don't want to. If I've disconnected from the internet, I want to stay disconnected until I say otherwise.

Simply: yes they do. What, are you billed for your internet by the minute? This was apparently an "always-online" device. For me, the only reason to be offline is battery life. And I usually carry a spare battery.

For me, if I'm being conscious of battery life then I keep it offline & check manually every now & then.
If I'm somewhere near a charger, then I keep it online and it checks automatically every 10 mins.

Because the email client works the way it does (uses an existing connection but doesn't create one) then I don't have to change its settings when I flip between these two ways of working.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

I noticed the same problems after updating to 1.2. Even if my GPRS connection is enabled, I generally cannot update e-mail, even manually. The one exception, as others have noted, is that updating works if I have my web browser open.

Re: How bad is the mail client...
 

this whole discussion only makes clear that we should have both behaviours.. as an option
people want different things..