Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Having not used Modest in Fremantle yet, I can only base my opinions on some screen shots and a recent Screencast (4.9 MB OGV file).

It seems to me like a "traditional" desktop approach is still being taken in the design of the maemo user interface of the new version of Modest. Sure, it's more finger friendly, but a lot of screen real estate is being used to display items that might be better served in a "Sub View" (see the Maemo 5 HIG for for info). This is especially detrimental to the space allotted for the "Body" field of a New email.

Anyway, I've attached a reconfigured screen shot to display what I mean. By removing some of the visible fields and creating buttons for their functionality, I've greatly increased the size of the Body field. Heck, it even gave me room to add a couple more important (imho) buttons. (Alternately, the Body field could almost occupy the entire screen if all of the top-most buttons were placed into a window-specific View Menu -- again, view the HIG for more about that.)

As an aside, while viewing various screen shots of the current/new Modest UI, I've found that many elements are either not centered properly on the screen, or they don't use consistent spacing when compared to other like elements, etc. This is usually only by a few pixels here and there, but I think it is important.

I didn't really want to add this to the Brainstorm -- yet -- but I'd love your opinions...

Tim

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Personally I prefer what both Diablo's modest and PalmOS mail clients are doing: making the whole window scrollable, so that as soon as the message is bigger than the available textbox space, headers are hidden. I hope Fremantle's is doing this too.

But either way I think it's a nice idea :)

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Hi, I'm not too sure about the proposed changes here. Perhaps you've missed the fact that the Body field scales up dynamically based on the amount of text there, i.e. the total page grows larger. Eventually it is as high as the entire screen. Imho it's quite nice in use.

At least i personally would find it quite much more annoying if all the To, Subject etc. would be have to shown and accessed separately.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Where is everyone getting Fremantle from I thought no devices using the OS were out? And I'm right in saying it can't be run on N8x0 yeah?

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

I think that having the from and to visible at all times is very necessary for me at least. I send and receive email from numerous accounts and always need that visual reference to who I'm writing to and whom, if I am sending emails out quickly. I do agree on the seemingly off center alignment but all that stuff is probably not a terribly hard fix.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

How well does Modest run on Diablo/N810?
Would it be a step up from claw or built-in mail?

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Beta SDK has been out for a while.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Ah, yes... Like how Fennec works too. Good point.

No, I didn't miss it. But, I still thought the other items were "in the way."

Fremantle is only out in SDK form right now (i.e., not installable on devices). As I said, I'm only going off of screen shots and screencasts.

This information could easily be displayed in a way that's not so obtrusive, though.

Modest is the default email app that comes with Maemo 4/Diablo.

Thanks, everyone!

Tim

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Ah thanks. I actually prefer the default, Modest mail app over Claw for some reason. It's not half bad.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Tim; are the buttons that you have made conforming to some type of UI spec on size? Because, I think that it could be further tweaked...

...for example, the From button could be done away with and put into a submenu (or, that could be something captured when the user clicks on 'compose" on the screen before, asked via a popup dialog of all the accounts available).

..the spelling and attachment buttons are probably double the size they need to be, I'd say about half as wide, but keep the same height. Then move the "Save Draft" button either to a submenu, or remove it entirely and the application would just save all emails as drafts by default with the user simply needing to turn that feature off if they didn't want it.

...The "To" button would remain, but it would change its context from saying "To" to having the name of the person (if a single recepient) or an elipses (...) if there are more than one person. This works well because the ideal behind email is just to point the message and go. There's no need to see the "To" as an empty field.

...The "Subject" button would likewise change once the user has imputted a subject. Because we have gained some more space here with the removal of a button and the making smaller of others, we then have room to show most of the subject. I would say that if its something that could be done in two lines in a smaller system font, that this option should be taken if the subject goes long.

...I agree that there should be more space for the body as you've designed.

edit/add: I think that the attachments button would be better served at the bottom with the other email composition buttons on a second look. This again adds more space at that top menu area.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Read the HIG. ;)

Yes, the buttons must be that size (according to the HIG) for maximum finger-usability.

Traditional "popups" are frowned upon, but they can be used in specific cases.

Also, there are not going to be submenus anymore -- just Menu Views and Sub Views... Basically, every button (menu item) will open a new screen on top of the application's main window, rather than providing multiple-nested menu items.

The Spelling and Save buttons are my own additions -- they don't exist in the current UI.

You've added some nice tweaks that might work, though -- again, depending on screen real estate.

Tim

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

The HIG had been on my to-read list; its in a browser tab now :)

I should have contributed to the HIG, because while I understand the spec for the size of the buttons, half-size for some background elements would be a solid option (as I somewhat demonstrated in the suggestion above).

Nice to hear others talk about this kind of stuff; gives another layer of understanding to how Maemo lives beyond some of the other discussions.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Thanks for taking the time (although I agree with ragnar on this one).

I had a similar "WTF?" reaction when I saw screenshots for the first time, but it's not that bad actually. The body text area's height grows dynamically as you type and the entire window contents (ie, everything on the screen apart from the menu bar) scroll together so the header fields get out of the way as soon as the body needs the space.

If you want some help with getting the beta SDK and modest from git up and running give me a shout.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

All current mail app concepts, no matter what OS you're looking at, are pretty boring. They appeared when first graphical ui's appeared and haven't practicaly changed at all. I have some cool concept, I'll try to show it in my blog asap, but trust me, it's worth waiting =)

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Actually, I have some quite different ideas too, but I was trying to work with what we had for now. ;) I should mockup what I'm thinking as well.

I can't wait to see yours!

Tim

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

First person to give me a unified communications interface on my tablet like Google Wave (hint, hint developers) makes me happybeans.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Please, dear god, can we have plaintext emails that aren't double-wrapped?

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

Amen, brother. ;)

Tim

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

the one thing that concerns me more about modest in M5 is:

from the screencasts, it looks as if it takes a number of taps from the launch of the application until you finally reach your inbox. - the latest screencast shows the user first select an account, then a folder and then finally the first list of messages shows up.

given the fact that i read emails more than i write on any mobile/portable device, this scares me more than the layout of the "write new mail" window.

so is it what it looks like from the screencast or does the application provide a better way to see my mails that just wasn't demonstrated?
if this is how it is: how could it possibly be changed given the tight restrictions of M5? - you cannot just say "show inbox on launch" - modest still doesn't seem to have the inbox, it looks as if there's still one inbox per account. - ideas?

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

That aspect of user process is often one that seems to be missed here on the Maemo side. We get the features, but then it takes so long to get there...

It would be nice to see an implemented summary screen option that a user could select as a start screen. On this screen would show the most recent emails pulled from all inboxes with an additional ability to compose an email right on the spot.

Click the compose button, get asked what account (if you have more than one account), and then boom go to the screen that started this thread. Nice and simple.

I would hope something like this is put in here; it would make the impression of Maemo that much better to those a bit less than patient.

Re: Modest UI - some personal changes...
 

We will see in the final version, of course... But, with the new idea of Application Windows, Menu Views, and Sub Views, this may be what we're "stuck" with (it's just something new to get used to, I guess). But, I do know that a lot of care is being taken to reduce the number of clicks that it takes to get to a final destination, so there is some hope. Still, eradicating submenus and adding Sub Views inherently increases the number of "pages" that users will have to view in order to do something. A positive aspect of this is that everything will occur very fast.

Tim