Notices

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

Beta SDK has been out for a while.

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

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

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.