Am 2004.07.26 13:38 schrieb(en) Joacher:
Hello!
Hi,
First: We are not talking about the situation where a user is regularly offline, e.g. cause he is a dialup or notebook user. In this case it's the users responsibility to configure Balsa in an appropriate way to cope with this situation. Balsa could assist him with this task by providing online/offline modi. But we are talking about being accidently offline, maybe because the ISP failed or the IMAP/SMTP server suddenly crashed.
Yes.. .;)
But have a look at the users intention: He wanted to SEND the message by pressing the SEND button. He never wanted to SAVE it to some ominous hidden outbox he can't access directly even if SMTP is down.
That is exactly the problem I had in my mind ;)The user should only be informed when something really goes wrong and it is not solveable by the mail client. So it is OK to present the status of transmitting in a way or another, but I think the whole Sentbox/ Outbox thing is much to complicated...
Suggestion: The compose window stays open until the message is sent or the user closes it. Failed sending brings up a popup dialog with following options:1. The possibility to choose another SMTP server. (Remember, the capability of managing different several SMTP servers is planned for balsa). Probably this solves the problem.
One has to think about that because it was planned to give an smtp-server per identity - That way the user should have to choose another identity to stay consistent
2. "Save message to folder". The folder can be chosen freely. If it's unreachable (IMAP down), this is another problem. The user has either to choose a reachable one or:
And here it gets complicated again ;) (hmm, which folder to choose - a lets put it into drafts - and you know each of us - 1 000€ that the user will forget resending :) A default box for storing unsendable mails is better and necessary (even for Balsa -> that way it finds all unsent ones... The more I think about it, the more it becomes a (simple :) online/ offline issue...
3. "Save message to file". This replaces the "always local outbox".
very bad idea (no one will ever remember to check every single file on his hd just to look for unsent msgs...)
4. "Cancel": Just closes the dialog - and refocuses the compose window as if the user had never pressed SEND.This concept seems clear to me.Sixty-four-dollar question: What to do if sending worked but storing it to SENT folder failes? With the current approach Balsa also requires a local sentbox, too.
Yes it does - but this is not a big problem because the mail got sent in a right way - only a local copy is missing - I think that is okay (if it doesn't happen always ;)
To come to a conclusion: The problem with the Outbox is mainly a online/ offline/ syncing one... (Who wants to patch an on/off mode? *hehe*) Whether the unsent msgs are presented in an Outbox or marked in the Sentbox is a smaller (visual) issue.
cu /Steffen -- /"\ \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign | "The best way to predict X * NO HTML/RTF in e-mail | the future is to invent it." / \ * NO MSWord docs in e-mail| -- Alan Kay
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