Some problems / suggestions / likes!

[dvdvnr]

Hi

I have been using MW2010 for around 10 days now (6.54 is still on my PC) and have come across a few problems and "annoyances" that I'd like to report to you along with some other comments.

PROBLEMS and ANNOYANCES

These are in decreasing order of importance (to me, anyway).

1. (The major one!) I think this may have been touched on in other forum posts. MW2010 (even latest 1.0.15) seems to randomly stop responding for a few seconds. I've seen this when doing the following:

• Clicking a delete icon on a message.
  Using up/down cursor to move up/down the list.
  Clicking the Check Mail button.
  Moving to a different Inbox/Recycle Bin/Settings tab.

The delay is often up to 4 or 5 seconds before the program responds. The PC spec is XP SP3, Intel Dual core, 3GB memory. No other programs experience this when using the same loads as when MW is running (when it DOES experience this). I have checked CPU and memory usage on the PC when it happens and it doesn't appear to be related to this (i.e. it can occur when the CPU usage is low and there is plenty of free memory).

Occurence seems random though is worse when MW is checking my accounts. Often there will be several lock-ups over a several seconds/operations.

2. (Not so important, but still annoying!) I subscribe to a few of the freecycle/cheapcycle Yahoo groups here in the UK and have set up a filter which I then use (via the status grouping) to group these together. The filter has 2 rules: one looking for cheapcycle and the other looking for freegle (the local version of freecycle) in the subject line. However, some emails escape the filtering. When I looked at these via the source option I could see that they had some extra information in the Subject: line. For example, a "good" email (which correctly gets filtered) will look like this:
Subject: [cheapcyclenorfolk] for sale swing crib nr3 area
And a "bad" one (which consistently fails to get picked up by the filter) can look like the following:
Subject: [cheapcyclenorfolk] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?for=20sale=20cover=20n=20play=20bouncer=20=A310=20gty?=
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?armouth?=
This particular one gets split over two lines in the source view (though that may not be relevant). The cheapcycle part of the subject isn't actually broken up in any way so I'm not sure why the filter is ignoring it. I haven't noticed this problem with emails other than those from the freecycle/cheapcycle Yahoo groups.

3. When reading an email MW2010 loses focus when the mailboxes are checked. Could it be made to remember which email last had focus before the check is performed and restore this after the check as completed? This is quite annoying though the old MW does this too

4. This one is merely an inconsistency. The mails show times in 24-hour format whilst the event log shows in 12-hour +AM/PM indicator format. Personally, I prefer 24-hour format but this should probably be under the control of the user as a setting.

SUGGESTIONS

5. I would REALLY like to see a total of the emails currently in MW. This is so that, upon downloading them to my email client, Thunderbird (TB), I can see that it is downloading exactly the same number of emails and not any extra ones that just happen to have slipped into my mailbox on the mail server in the 1 or 2 seconds between me clicking check mail in MW2010 and then clicking Get Mail in TB. When the number IS different I can then search in TB for the extra ones by most recent date. In this respect MW2010 is an improvement on MW6 as I have turned on grouping by status and this gives the totals per group. However, a permanent on-screen indication of the total would be far better - the Recycle Bin already shows a Currently displaying figure so it shouldn't be hard to add this to the Inbox as well.

6. In the Quick Display the Grid view settings give either horizontal or vertical white separator lines - it would be nice to have a third setting with both turned on.

7. On a high resolution screen (I am using 1920 x 1080) the difference between the normal system tray icon and the one indicating new mail can be a bit tricky to differentiate. Would it be possible to give us a choice of icon pairs, some more "different" (i.e. obvious) than others? The old MW6.54 plug hole / envelope icon pair were far more obvious at these resolutions!

LIKES

After getting over the shock ( ) of what others have called the Fischer Price UI, I have now got MW2010 set up how I think I like it. Like others, I remember being equally shocked at the Windows XP interface when it first came out - now it just seems "normal" - lol. Things I really like in MW2010 include the ability to change the font size, layout and, best of all, the ability to group things by filter status which is probably the main selling point for me.

Like others I was initially a bit annoyed by the yearly charge (until it was set at $10) but as someone who earns his living building software I can understand the need for this and am glad that you set the yearly price low (I pay the same amount to read some silly daily comics ). At the moment I am still using the trial (20 days left!) but it's almost certain I will register once the trial has ended, especially if there is any progress with my item 1 above (which I do find rather frustrating).

Regards

David

[Sidewinder]

RE: Item #5 - Click on Search and you will have your count.

[Sidewinder]

Item #2 - without dissecting your filter(s) have you tried using Header rather than Subject?

[Sidewinder]

Item #3 - fix coming in next release.

[stan_qaz]

On your first problem, does it happen after you have first started using MW with less than a few hundred messages downloaded or does it start happening after 1000 or so have been downloaded?

On number 2, have you tried looking at the entire header for Subject: [cheapcyclenorfolk] that may bypass the decoder for the subject line? I'm thinking there is either a glitch in that or I just don't understand just how it works.

Number 3 is being worked on.

Number 4, both should really follow the Windows system settings.

Number 5, I'd like to see that as well as totals on each group line for number of messages and unread ones.

[dvdvnr]

Thanks for the quick replies!

On your first problem, does it happen after you have first started using MW with less than a few hundred messages downloaded or does it start happening after 1000 or so have been downloaded?

I rarely have more than 100 messagesin MW (usually between 10 and 60). I think it can happen at any time - however, I will keep a log of how many emails I have in MW when it happens.

Item #2 - without dissecting your filter(s) have you tried using Header rather than Subject?

Thanks. Will try that next time one of the "bad" ones comes in and post the results here.

Item #3 - fix coming in next release.

Excellent!

RE: Item #5 - Click on Search and you will have your count.

D'oh! Thanks

Actually, thinking further on this - only having the total displayed when the search is open is a slight waste of screen space. I don't tend to use search anyway - status grouping kind of removes that need for me. I tend to D/L emails to my email client once there's more than a screenful in MW anyway. Having the total permanently displayed in a way that takes up less screen space (e.g. in the darker grouping bar which is always displayed anyway) would be a better solution in my opinion - still it's nice to see that it's already there anyway!

[Sidewinder]

RE: Item #5 - Click on Search and you will have your count.

D'oh! Thanks

Actually, thinking further on this - only having the total displayed when the search is open is a slight waste of screen space. I don't tend to use search anyway - status grouping kind of removes that need for me. I tend to D/L emails to my email client once there's more than a screenful in MW anyway. Having the total permanently displayed in a way that takes up less screen space (e.g. in the darker grouping bar which is always displayed anyway) would be a better solution in my opinion - still it's nice to see that it's already there anyway!

No quibble here about the real estate, I run with it closed too. But if you want/need to watch for "sneakers" it's only one click before you pull the trigger.

[mcullet]

Hi dvdvnr

That was one really well considered post - reasoned, examples, observations and a pleasure to read.

Recently, some of us have expressed personal opinions that have included unnecessary and unhelpful words - me included (I'm not a saint). When I see something well crafted (like your post) then it's worth citing as an example of 'how to': well done.

I'm working on a similar listing of my own - yours dealt with a few - and hope my post comes close to a good standard set by you.

Cheers

[rusticdog]

When you group emails you get a total in the group heading. So for example if you group by Account you'd see something like this :




Actually it probably would be nothing like that mess, but you get the idea

[rusticdog]

*sigh* and if I had read your post properly I would have seen you already were grouping by Status.....


With regards to the system tray icon, there is another icon you can set under Settings >> General >> Notifications...

[stan_qaz]

Number 5, I'd like to see that as well as totals on each group line for number of messages and unread ones.

Poorly edited screenshot of what I'd really like to have

read-unread-count-1a.png (26.15 KiB) Viewed 12965 times

This would keep me from having to un-collapse my groups and dig in each one looking for new mail.

[dvdvnr]

That was one really well considered post - reasoned, examples, observations and a pleasure to read.

Recently, some of us have expressed personal opinions that have included unnecessary and unhelpful words - me included (I'm not a saint). When I see something well crafted (like your post) then it's worth citing as an example of 'how to': well done.

Thanks for the comments - yes, I did spend a while looking at some of the flame wars going on. They just ain't productive are they!

David

[dvdvnr]

*sigh* and if I had read your post properly I would have seen you already were grouping by Status.....

We're all guilty of it at one time or another. Having the courage to admit to it is, of course, another thing.

With regards to the system tray icon, there is another icon you can set under Settings >> General >> Notifications...

And another "D'oh" from me - how did I miss that!!! Yes, that's a lot better. Thanks rusticdog.

David

[Sidewinder]

Number 5, I'd like to see that as well as totals on each group line for number of messages and unread ones.

read-unread-count-1a.png

This would keep me from having to un-collapse my groups and dig in each one looking for new mail.

Great suggestion. I think that I would be happy with just adding the # of Unread.

[mr.den]

On your first problem, does it happen after you have first started using MW with less than a few hundred messages downloaded or does it start happening after 1000 or so have been downloaded?

I rarely have more than 100 messages in MW (usually between 10 and 60). I think it can happen at any time - however, I will keep a log of how many emails I have in MW when it happens.

I see the same "lockups" on my machine as well. .net garbage collection perhaps? I remember reading in the early days .net was bad for that.

I rarely have more than 50 to 100 emails when running the app here, and it does not take long for it to happen after opening the program and downloading messages.