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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Providence walk sign | Main | Next: Fedex.com country list
March 26, 2005 12:05 AM
Broken: Apple Mail filter interface
Alex Yourke writes:
My Apple Mail junk filter doesn't learn everything, so I have to help it with some extra rules.
Unfortunately, the way Apple has designed the Rule dialog makes it impossible to get past the bottom of the screen if there are more than a certain maximum number of conditions - there's no scroll bar. Even though I can always add more conditions by clicking on a "+" icon on the right side of the dialog (cropped to avoid offending viewers with some of the spam criteria listed), I can't change what happens if the criteria are met - this is at the bottom of the box and there is no way to get there. Tabbing causes the cursor to just disappear off the bottom of the screen.
This bug has remained unfixed through several revisions of Apple Mail. Get with it, Apple!
No, that's NOT broken. The rule setting in Mail.app is a panel; panels are NOT windows and do NOT take scrollbars, according to standard Apple UI. The only part that can be called broken here is that presumably the + button should be grayed out when the height of the panel is greater than (height of monitor - height of additional rule entry - height of menu bar). Although arguably, even then you might want to leave it ungrayed unless you had a secondary test for a larger alternate monitor attached.
Might I suggest that the design of Mail.app strongly encourages you to have many rules with one entry per rule, rather than one master rule with many entries. Try it, and you'll note many design touches which show that this is what the designers had in mind, with positive feedback for users who do so.
But, anyone who has done any development work on OS X would know that you could remedy the situation very easily with a scroll view.
It's not like it's hard, and IMHO they should have done it.
Simply put: Allowing the content of a window to exceed the height of the window without providing a means to scroll is broken.
According to Jeff, that would entail changing the defaults for panels just to avoid a problem that could be solved by just having many rules instead of one.
Apple has many panel interfaces that have a back and forward arrow setup, much like browsing. A simple solution here would be to apply the same function. When more than a certain number of rules is added, you hit the next arrow to go to the next group of rules. Better than a scroll, which would break the UI convention.
Yeah, that interface is a bit funky. I've actually never been a big fan of Mail, I still use entourage despite its total lack of useful junk mail filters.
Still, I'm not sure I'd be proud of having found this particular flaw. It takes a "unique" mind to try to pack all your mail rules into one master list, rather than breaking them up logically according to what they do. I can only guess what your closet and silverware drawer must look like.
"Honey, Where are all the forks?"
"In the back, behind the Salad Shooter and the coleslaw!"
God forbid someone complain about Apple/Mac! Heavens to Mergatroid! This must be a heretic! Burn him at the stake!
Man, it's amazing the lengths the Apple faithful will go to to defend their paradigm!
- "It's a panel, not a window" -- well why not just make it a window then?
- "It's designed to strongly encourage many rules with one entry per rule" -- okay, assuming this is desirable, just limit each rule to one entry.
- "Apple shouldn't have to change the defaults for panels just to avoid a problem that could be solved by the user doing things differently" -- I don't know about you, but my idea of good interface design is something that lets me do what I want to with a minimum of fuss, not something that adheres to some set of arcane "defaults" that I have to adapt to.
- "The user is broken, trying to pack all his mail rules into one big list" -- well, actually, to me it makes a lot of sense to have all the entries that perform the same function (deleting junk mail) in one rule. Continuing the "forks" metaphor, I don't think many people (other than Apple Mail users?) have one drawer for forks, another for spoons, another for knives, etc.
Come on, Apple faithful, admit it: Jay and Maurs nailed it in one. It's simply broken, and should never have passed QA. Shock and surprise, Apple isn't perfect.
"The rule setting in Mail.app is a panel; panels are NOT windows and do NOT take scrollbars..."
You have no idea how many times we have to hear nonsense such as this.
This is what keeps us usabilitites in business - fighting off people who think that software doesn't need to be modified to serve users' interests.
Not trying to be rude, just wondering: what's the point of having 22+ hand-written spam filtering rules?
Couldn't Mail simply pipe the messages through something that actually works, like bogofilter?
perhaps more to the point, since MAC and Linux faithful are so proud of their stuff, why do you even need spam filters? Isn't the product so great that it takes care of that for you? Come on, E.T. was right, something that was not quite up to par came out of the Apple camp. Big deal. Get over it. Mac and Linux faithful will always take shots at MS & Windows, because they can. But it seems they'll argue like liberal lawyers to keep any bad news from coming their way!
Yeah, this _IS_ broken. Any UI designer, including the UI gods at Apple would say that making the USER change how THEY work to suit your app is bad. By this logic, we shouldn't bother with preemptive multitasking, because it could just as easily be solved by the user not running more than one app at a time. And 3D cards are unnecessary, because the user could run 2D apps instead. You know what? Computers are unneeded because the user could just use a paper and pencil...
I again agree with the sentiment that if the UI can ever leave any interactive element completely unaccessible, it's broken. Period. It doesn't matter if it's not running as intended, it's broken. It is not the place for the UI designer to dictate how the software should be used, especially for stylistic considerations.
FlyingAshtrays, I have to disagree with you. I would never want to use a spam filter without extensive rule customization; whitelist and blacklist are not enough. There are a few groups I do want to recieve e-mail from with erattic addresses and messages constantly marked as spam, but I can't whitelist the whole domain. I'd need to make a content pass rule, and you need good customization to do that.
It's fine for there to be useful defaults, but it is unacceptable for there to be no customization availible.
Without entering this argument/debate, I'll just mention that I've been able to avoid getting spammed to countless ends, simply by having an alternate email I use for signing up. I check on this one about once a week, and don't even bother deleting the spam.
My system gets me about three spam-mail a month in my personal email. And it's all from eBay (which promised not to spam me... bastard).
Funnily enough, the attached picture shows a way in which "This Is Broken"'s interface... is broken.
The code for the image link specifies that it opens in a window that has no scrollbars and is not resizeable. The image in this case is 877 pixels high. If your monitor resolution (minus menubars, window borders, etc.) is less than 877 pixels - and many are - the bottom of the image is cut off and there is no way to move or alter the browser window to make it viewable.
In order to see the entire image, I had to save it locally and open it in a graphics editor where I could scroll and resize it.
Okay, I confess. That's not why I bought Windows. Apple's prices seemed outrageous. Now I just wish my computer didn't crash so much. IGOT78VIRUSESINONEEMAILIWISHIHADN'TOPENEDTHATEMAILITHOUGHTITWASFROMAFRIENDWAAAH!
Anonymouse Coweird: If you were running Firefox, it wouldn't matter, because you could right-click on the image (in the popup) and say "view image", or even just middle (scroll wheel) click the thumbnail, which opens it in a new tab (with scroll bars) instead of a popup. ;) Then again, just because a workaround exists doesn't mean something's not broken.
Apple's Mail crashes everytime I try to use it. I switched to Mozilla Thunderbird long ago and like it just fine. It filters my email admirably.
Can't believe the Mac vs Windows thing is still going on. Can't we all just get along? ;-)
"panels are NOT windows and do NOT take scrollbars"
Bzzt - wrong answer. Goodness, I sure hope you are not a usability specialist or a programmer who is allowed near the UI.
It's broken.
To be fair to Apple, this is a VERY unlikely situation. For those who haven't used Mail, this is how it's done:
There are two levels of rules:
1st level: You can have as many "Rules" (more like collection of rules) as you want (with scroll bars)
2nd level: Here you define the settings for each of the above "Rule(s)", and that's what the screenshot is of.
"You have no idea how many times we have to hear nonsense such as this. This is what keeps us usabilitites in business - fighting off people who think that software doesn't need to be modified to serve users' interests."
God help the people needing usability design who hire you, then. There is nothing sacrosanct about the use of the panel -- however, there *is* something collectively sacrosanct about not changing the behavior of a UI element in one location to make it act differently than it does in 25 or 30 others. As I stated in my original post, the error here is NOT in reworking the panel to provide for an infinite scrolling list; the error is that the user should be limited to the number of rules that can fit in the panel. If you want to provide an infinitely long list, then you need to abandon the panel interface.
"Yeah, this _IS_ broken. Any UI designer, including the UI gods at Apple would say that making the USER change how THEY work to suit your app is bad. By this logic, we shouldn't bother with preemptive multitasking, because it could just as easily be solved by the user not running more than one app at a time."
I'll skip the ludicrous hyperbole and stick to the ludicrous first two sentences. What amazes me are clueless comments like this one, which seem to imply that humans have some genetic instinct for email rules, akin to the infant sucking reflex. The way a user works is defined by experience, which in turn is developed through repetition across many applications. Therefore, if every panel in every application has a defined and limited set of parameters, you don't suddenly redefine how that element works because one edge case might decide to create a rule of infinite complexity.
As noted before, fans of infinite complexity can create infinite rules. Or they can choose Perform AppleScript and get infinitely complex there. Such design decisions allow for an application that remains usable by Ma and Pa Kent, who just want to read email from Clark without being sold Kryptonian Viagra.
"I again agree with the sentiment that if the UI can ever leave any interactive element completely unaccessible, it's broken."
What part of "the + button should be grayed out" don't you understand? Perhaps I should repeat myself using smaller words: yes, it's bad that you can lose access to widgets. The height of the panel is limited to the height of the monitor. Scroll bars *can* be added, but break what the user expects from a panel. Therefore, stop the user from adding more than N elements.
An exception is made here for the file dialog panel, which looks like the file dialog in any other part of the system -- and has scroll bars. Why? Because you give the user what he expects, and the file dialog is standardized across applications. No such exception exists for the mail rule, which is located in only one application.
"Bzzt - wrong answer. Goodness, I sure hope you are not a usability specialist or a programmer who is allowed near the UI. It's broken."
Both, actually. You don't have to hire me. Just as I wouldn't hire you for any work requiring any kind of cogency or ability to present an argument. Should I ever find a need for godlike pronouncements from anonymous people with no credentials, though, I'll be sure to give you a call.
here r the facts
Windows=worst IE=bad,netscape=ok,forefox=best
Mac=OK IE=bad,netscape=ok,forefox=best
Linux=Best IE=bad,netscape=ok,forefox=best
In response to Jeff:
I, personally, am somewhat sick of the nearly theistic approach some people take to UI 'standards.' Standards are good, very important, shouldn't be broken in most cases, particularly when they involve cooperation of heterogeneous systems. But when it comes to something as arcane as a GUI rule that "Panels don't take scrollbars," one ventures into the absurd.
Consider this: Which would confuse a user more? And granted, I am a computer-savvy IT professional, so my opinion is probably NOT similar to a 'typical' user's. But nevertheless.. Which is more confusing? The ability to add another rule to a set mysteriously becoming unavailable, or a scrollbar appearing on a widget where [a standards committee decided] it shouldn't? Users know what scrollbars are. They know that a scrollbar signifies content that exceeds the bounds of its container, and provides a means to reach that content. Whether that content is words in a document in a word processor or widgets on a panel is irrelevant. Experience has taught the user that a scroll bar means "use this to see more stuff." A user isn't going to think "oh my gosh, I've never seen a scrollbar in this context before, WHAT DO I DO?!?!" They're going to think "ah, a scrollbar. I can use that to see more stuff."
Again, I am a computer professional, so my opinions carry the slant of a computer professional. But it makes much less sense to me to limit something like a ruleset simply due to what fits on the screen. Limiting a ruleset to [for example] ten rules because the underlying engine has a limitation, that's excusable [but the engine should be examined to overcome the limitation]. Limiting it simply because the display widget standard does not allow for scrolling is rediculous.
In my humble opinion, all panels should be considered scrollable. GUI elements that are unreachable because they are outside the bounds of their containers are unacceptable, and most computer users are experienced enough to understand what a scrollbar does.
Jeff, your example of the exception for the file browser is an argument against your case, not for it. Look at the logic behind the argument: "We've decided to make an exception because here is an instance where a panel is likely to contain more content than can easily fit in its bounds." Despite being an exception to the rule in the eyes of the standards committees, users understand it. Here is another example of a panel that is likely to contain content that exceeds its bounds: A ruleset of arbitrary length. Users would understand that, also.
Hear, hear, "Nobody" got it exactly right.
If a panel can't have scrollbars, then don't use a friggen panel for anything that can be of arbitrary length. Use something else. Besides that, what Nobody said.
Why are you complaing that it's Apple's fault? This very thing could happen in Windows or (God forbid) Linux. I've seen it many times, and it frustrates me.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Providence walk sign | Main | Next: Fedex.com country list
It's absurd that something like that would pass QA.
Posted by: Maurs at March 26, 2005 12:26 AM