Mail Issues Meeting, 12/14/00
We discussed the problems associated with Bug 49753. When the Account Level is selected in Mail, the
Thread Pane and Message Pane are blank and often confusing for users.
As a minimum, we agreed that we need to put informative text in the Thread Pane when the account level
is selected. "There are no messages available at the level. Select the Inbox to view your mail."
If time/resources permit, we would like to use the right mail pane to provide useful information to the user
when an account level item is selected in the left pane. This useful information would be called "Account
Summary" view.
Option 1 - IF WE ARE UNABLE TO IMPLEMENT THE "ACCOUNT SUMMARY" VIEW
1. The first time that mail is launched, the Default Account should be expanded. The Inbox for the default
account is selected.
2. Put informative text in the Thread Pane when the account level is selected. "There are no messages
available at the level. Select the Inbox to view your mail."
Option 2 - IF WE ARE ABLE TO IMPLEMENT THE "ACCOUNT SUMMARY" VIEW
1. The first time that mail is launched, the Default Account should be expanded. The Account Level is
selected. The new "Account Summary" view is shown in the right pane.
2. Future Usage. When Mail is launched, accounts should be expanded/collapsed as the user last left
them. If the default account was left expanded, the Inbox should be selected by default.
3. Account Summary View. Not 100%, but most agreed we would like to see links to mail tasks, such as
"Read my mail" and "Setup a new account". Other possibilities include displaying account folder
information, displaying useful help tips, or a combination of account folder information and links to mail
tasks.
It was also discussed that many folks commented they would like to see the "Total" and "Unread" columns
returned in the Folder Pane. We would like to provide the column selector widget in the "Mail Folders"
pane so that users can add "Total" and "Unread" columns if desired. They would not be displayed as the
default.