Balsa 2.2.0 end user impressions

[joacher gmx de]

Hello!

This is a report of my first impressions about balsa 2.2.0. It is indeed
very subjective, it's not going to cover features I don't use. I will
mention everything that comes up to my mind, even if it isn't directly balsa
related. Some complains may address every MUA available, but mustn't balsa
outstrip the alternatives? And sometimes I will compare balsa directly with
other programs - I know balsa is not supposed to be a plain clone of other
MUA, but why invent wheel twice?

I am using an Athlon XP 2200 with 512 MB RAM, this is too fast to judge
performance optimization of balsa. My OS is Gentoo Linux, Kernel 2.6.7,
Gnome 2.6.2 and most other software is quite up to date, too. I use my own
IMAPS Server in my LAN, a Celeron 1100 with 1 GB of RAM, which allows to
keep my whole maildir in RAM, delivering good performance, too. This box is
running OpenBSD 3.4. IMAPS is provided by courier-imap 1.7.2, a medium
featured IMAP server based upon maildirs. 
There is an inbox with ~650 mails and several subfolder and sub-subfolder,
some containing up to 4000 mails.

My mails are fetched via fetchmail from some different accounts. A SMTP
server is provided by my university and another one by an public
freemailer.

Getting started:

The first start of balsa: I have to admit it, I dislike configuration
wizards, though I know that it makes sense and that they won't show up too
often. Though all fields are filled with default values, skipping the wizard
exits balsa.
Why do I have to specify local mail folders? I don't want to use them. All
my mails are supposed to lie within my IMAP Server. 

So lets configure the remote imap server: Selfexplaining and painless. I am
just curios, why SSL/TSL configuration needs an extra tab "Advanced"
containing just two options. Those two tabs could have been simply merged
into one, providing increased lucidity.

SMTP configurations seems painless, too. But a first test mail delivers a
"SMTP server problem (-113): No route to host. Message is left in outbox".
This is misleading. Of course there is a route, I just forgot to specify a
port. In my opinion, if there is no port specified, balsa should simply use
the default of 25. The ports for IMAP/IMAPS don't need to be specified
either.

I mark my IMAP folders as "official" inbox, sent, drafts and trash and
delete their former local correspondent. Nice! Look, configuration wizard,
here I go deleting the boxes you have just created! But, why can't I mark an
imap box as "outbox"? There is no "Mark as Outbox" option in context menu to
assign this duty to another folder. I can't get rid of the local outbox.
This gives not just my folder tree an inconsistent appearance, but might
store mails outside my IMAP server. But I need access via webmail frontend
to them. 

The main window:

So lets have a look at my inbox. "Unread" and "Total" numbers are shown
correctly, but the folder list window seems kindoff bugged. I experience a
strange behavior:

Though there are more than 600 read and a couple of unread mails in my imap
inbox, the mail list windows stays empty. Later my own testmail was
refetched by fetchmail (serversided), and it appears as the one and only. I
paid attention to the "View" Menu and toggled "JWZ threading" to "Simple
threading" without any success, but toggling to "Flat Index" finally made
balsa show me the whole inbox. Strangely, toggling back to "JWZ threading"
or "Simple threading" doesn't hide the mails again. This behavior occurred
with all folders. After I "touched" all of my boxen this way I have no
further problems till I restart balsa.
It is possible that this issue was caused by malfunction of my imap server. 

If I view a unread message in any folder, balsa comes up with an message
"Mailbox (<folder>) is readonly: cannot change flags." - why is that? Other
MUA don't complain.
It is possible that this issue was caused by malfunction of my imap server. 

Sorting the mails in the right upper window is totally deactivated - this
seems to be IMAP regarded, since it works with local folders. It is most
likely that this issue was caused by malfunction of my imap server. 

I'd like to have a "size" column in the folder tree window, displaying the
whole size of the folder. Mozilla has this feature, even easily
configurable.

The menu points "Message" and "Mailbox" should become interchanged:
"Mailbox" left, ,"Message" right to make it corresponding to the window
organization (folder tree is left, message window is right).

"View -> Expand All, Collapse All" has no functionality in my situation,
like "Mailbox -> Show from Name, Show Patches". I even have no clue what
it's supposed to do. "View -> Find" doesn't seem to work, too. I assume IMAP
incompatibilities again. But the "Find dialog" itself needs a complete going
over! Do you really expect someone to understand it intuitively? The first
time I had to refer to the indeed helpfull documentation.
I'd prefer a "search row" atop of the message list. Again I point at
mozilla's solution.

"Mailbox -> Select all" takes quite long if box exceeds 500-1000 mails.

A "Save" button should be available for the main window, not just for the
message window. The only way to save messages within the main window is
"Message -> Save Current Part", which is confusing. I want to save a message
and no part of whatever. Saving messages also lags explicit functionality:
Saved messages don't contain their header lines (is this meant by "part"?),
which feels a little bit too "noobish" for such a highly configurable and
therefore professional mail client. Second, the file name should default to
<subject>.eml in the save dialog.

I just found the "mailbox tabs": Wow, congrats, great feature! I somehow
expected to be able to toggle the "tree view" by pressing F9, as I know it
from various sidebars, e.g. of Mozilla Browser, Bluefish and Gnome Nautilus.
Maybe F9 is a good default hotkey for this function in future releases?
Maybe closing the last folder tab shouldn't actually close it, but disable
the folder tab itself, as you can see it by various webbrowsers (Epiphany,
Mozilla Browser, Opera).

Another default hot key I am missing is the del key for deleting messages
(currently: D).


The compose window:

The order of "To, Subject, CC" should definitely be changed to "To, CC,
Subject" or, at best, to "From, To, CC, Subject" ("From" = Identity
chooser).
The current identity chooser button is not user friendly. You can't see what
identity is chosen at the moment, and even toggling it isn't very
comfortable: Press the button, move to the small popup, choose an identity
and hope you have hit the right one...
A dropdown menu would not just be much faster, but would also give the
possibility to check the current identity easily.
You can see this behavior in both mozilla and sylpheed mail compose window.

The attachment handling isn't very efficient, too. By attaching a file Balsa
suddenly displays a huge attachment frame, wasting a lot of space.  I always
check attachment filenames three times to ensure I don't send the wrong
sensitive document to a person which isn't meant to see it. So it's
important to me that I can check the filename reliably. The displayed icon
doesn't have any use, it looks same for every file. And even if this is
going to be changed, the icon won't help much. The mime type is displayed in
text form anyways. The main downside of the current solution is that longer
file names require several lines, makes it hard to identify files. Even
worse, I have to scroll or to enlarge the attachment frame to see the
complete file name. 
Mozillas and even Sylpheeds approach is more efficient than balsas: Mozilla
keeps it simple and never changes window frame organization, while Sylpheed
adhere an extra frame like balsa, but at least provides usefull and readable
extra information like file size.

In my opinion, use the organization of Mozillas compose window but integrate
Sylpheeds tabular attachment view into mozillas simple attachment field.
This would deliver the most powerfull solution.

The stand-alone message window:

I rarely use that window, I use the message frame of the main window to read
my messages. A quick check didn't bring up any complaints.


Advanced Configuration:

Identities: I think this topic needs some clean up! I will explain:

First, each identity needs it's own SMTP configuration. There are some
reasons. The first is privacy, another is the fact, that some (my!) SMTP
server simply doesn't accept "faked" sender addresses. Or did I get the
concept of different identities totally wrong?
So, as you can configure several IMAP and POP3 accounts, you should be able
to administer several SMTP server, which can be associated by the different
identities. This means an own tab for SMTP configuration. The identities
configuration panel could move to it's own tab within the standard
preferences, too, there is no logical difference between configuring
identities and all the other stuff. Instead there should be a submenu for
quick toggling the default identity as seen in "Mailbox -> Hide Messages ->
(various options)" in the settings menu.

Spelling: Why is "ispell" the default, while it even isn't installed on my
machine? Hey, configuration wizard, why didn't you see and resolve that?
Unluckily Aspell-de didn't work for me with balsa, so I finally installed
ispell(-de), too.

A little bit annoying is that balsa redraws the whole screen for any tiny
change I apply in preferences window. Change SMTP port -> apply -> redraw
whole screen. In case this is technically necessary, the redraw process
needs some speedup to reduce its annoyance.

Conclusion:

Balsa is very promising, but I can't use it yet. It looks like Balsa isn't
optimized for IMAP users yet, but for local box users. In my case, this
gives a fatal impression. Sure, many problems and disabilities of Balsa
might be caused by my IMAP server, but this version is still widely spread.
I know that most people store their mail in local folders, but that's not a
professional approach IMHO.
It gave a very good feeling to use a modern full featured Gnome/GTK2 MUA,
and I hope I can involve it in my daily use soon.


Regards,

Joe


To make it clear again: Complaining about weaknesses of balsa lays in the
nature of this discussion and does not express disrespect about any
contributors or their effort.