This brainstorm is about improving the user experience in Modest, the built-in email client in Maemo 5, when the client performs long-running operations. Irrespective of any performance improvements implemented in the email client, the fact that Modest needs to, for example, download potentially large amount of data over a slow network connection means that some operations will inevitably take a long time (where long time = more than two seconds).
In its current version (firmware version 2.2009.51-1), Modest only has a very generic visual feedback system displayed to the user when it performs a long running operation (the spinning icon displayed in the title bar). This gives the user no indication as to what is currently happening and how long the operation might take.
This issue affects both POP3 and IMAP4 accounts. It's particularly acute when loading a new email account for the first time but it also affects day-to-day operations. For example, when setting up a new email account containing thousands of emails in the Inbox, opening the Inbox for the first time causes Modest to display a blank screen with the spinning icon for sometimes several minutes before eventually displaying the list of emails. This can also happen later on when refreshing the list of headers. The lack of proper feedback to the user indicating the progress of the operation leads to user frustration and to many users thinking that Modest is extremely slow when Modest might not be to blame.
Non-exhaustive list of potentially long-running operations that would need to presents better progress feedback to the user:
- Refreshing the list server folders when the folder list is displayed (IMAP4 accounts)
- Refreshing the list of email headers in the Inbox when the Inbox email list is displayed (POP3 and IMAP4 accounts)
- Refreshing the list of email headers in a server folder when that folder's email list is displayed (IMAP4 accounts)
- Downloading a new email body when that email is being displayed.
- Downloading images in an HTML email when that email is being displayed.
Again, this brainstorm isn't meant to discuss performance issues that may be affecting Modest at the moment. These are being addressed separately in Bugzilla (see bug 3762 for example). This brainstorm is about discussing ways to improve visual feedback in order to improve the Modest first impressions and overall user experience and to reduce user frustration when an operation takes a long time to complete.
Link to the Talk discussion: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=481073
