Betalogue

Here’s a bug report I’ve just sent to Apple:

* SUMMARY
Mail: Need visual effect to help avoid confusion when removing messages from thread

* STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Sort the contents of a mailbox in chronological order.
2. Select a thread that contains several messages with different dates.
3. Expand the thread.
4. Select the MOST RECENT message in the thread and delete it or move it elsewhere.

* RESULTS
This will sometimes cause the remaining thread (without the deleted message) to jump to a different location, because the date of the thread is no longer the same. The problem is that, because the jump is instantaneous, it can look like the entire thread has disappeared.

In order to avoid this, it would be best to add a visual effect illustrating the movement of the thread, much in the same way as Mail uses a visual effect when expanding or closing a thread. The visual effect would be similar to the one in iChat where the buddy list gets reordered whenever a buddy arrives or leaves. The reordering is not instantaneous. There is a visual effect that illustrates the “shuffling” process in the list. It’s useful for the user, in order to avoid him being confused by the reordering.

* REGRESSION
Only applies to Panther’s Mail, of course.

* NOTES
See profile attached.

I think it’s important to provide visual feedback for such operations. Otherwise, they can be too confusing visually for the end user.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Friday, January 30th, 2004 at 7:21 am and is filed under Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.