Mail-to enhancements

[Andrew Eddie]

I have some enhancements made to com_mailto. Basically these include:

* Backend ability to add custom email "alias's" that give you a
"label" and then the option of sending emails to one or more email
addresses (or groups, depending on how your mail server is set up).
* Backend ability to see logs of mailto usage
* Frontend ability to optionally select one of the mail alias's from a
list (rather than typing in an email)

The target audience is intranets and large organisations where people
would want to send an article link to work mates (as long as IT has
set up an alias for them - Toowoomba Regional Council has sponsored
this work and using it for this purpose). Other applications could
allow for people to "report" an article, using the mailto feature and
having a drop down alias to "Correction needed" or whatever.

So, for example. In the backend, you add a Mail Alias called "Correct
article" and point it to "corre...@example.com". This will show in
the mailto form on the frontend. The real email address will never
display, but if the user selects this, they don't have to type in a
manual email address - they just add a subject and a message body.
This saves round-a-bout solutions using the contact form.

Does anyone think this is remotely useful and would be a good addition
to the core Joomla code (for 3.0 min)? - everyone that hated User
Notes and missed their chance to officially jump up and down, I'm
looking at you :P If so, I can look at allocating time to tidy this
up for 3.0. If not, it can gather dust in a public repo safe from any
controversy :) I'm completely indifferent, but I think it does make
the mailto component somewhat more functional than it is now.

Regards,
Andrew Eddie

[Goyat LLC-吉田憲人]

+1

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Norito H.Yoshida 吉田憲人

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[alikon]

since i've loved your last introduction on CMS "the user notes",that i've found usefull,
seems this other one promising i'm interested on the fromtend feature
is available on github ?

[elin]

Some people didn't like user notes, not close to "everyone" although I'm sure it feels like that. 

The concept of enhanced mailto sounds potentially useful to me, I say put the code out there and let the world test it and see if they like it in real life. 

Just like everyone else proposing features though, you post it and you take your chances, no promises up front and you need to respond to whatever feed back you get in the tracker or elsewhere. And as always testing and commenting on other people's proposed features is a great way to get people to test and comment on yours.

Anyway I know you know all that, but it can't be repeated enough that responsiveness to feedback and taking the chance that what you propose something and it doesn't get in are the two things needed to get new features accepted. 

Elin

[alikon]

Sounds to me a bit strange new proposal are accepted only by
community response ?, there is not a lead group that make decision,
even taking in account community feedback ?
i think that this kind of action have to be managed by a lead group
that have a full knoweledge of the whole CMS and not let to the
community...

[Chris Davenport]

Ultimately the PLT makes the decision about whether a new feature is included in a release or not, so that is your "lead group".  Community feedback is, of course, an important factor in making that decision.

Chris.

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[alikon]

ok, probably i've missunderstand what Elin said, sorry

[Andrew Eddie]

On Monday, 13 February 2012 22:45:42 UTC+10, elin wrote:

Some people didn't like user notes, not close to "everyone" although I'm sure it feels like that. 

Read what I typed.  That's not what I said :P

There's some code here to look at for now:

https://github.com/eddieajau/joomla-mailto

but I need to update it.  I'll get some screenshots together when I can as that will make it clearer.

Regards,

Andrew Eddie 

[alikon]

let me know when is quite ready for you
so i can i fork it , and give it a look... if you want

[David-Andrew]

Interested to know more as well, will wait for the screenshots. 

[Peter van Westen]

Seems to me - at this stage - like a nice 3rd party extension you can put up on the JED. Don't see the necessity to put this in core...

[Steve]

Hey Andrew

I'll hold my hand up as one of this guilty of jumping in too late on User Notes.

No real pros or cons to put forward on this one. It certainly sounds useful.

I think the main objection to User Notes was in terms of usability and this improvement is agnostic in terms of UI.

[Peter van Westen]

(Sorry for the duplicate posts)

[Andrew Eddie]

Echo, echo, echo.

Actually it's difficult to add as a JED extension because of the
coupling to the mail button in the layouts. So, I could provide an
installable com_mailto, but that would then blown away, potentially by
each Joomla upgrade (first law of Joomla: thou shalt not hack core).
The other option is to make it com_mailto2 but then the user has to
modify put in layout overrides. So, I'm a bit lost as to how to post
improvements to a core component on the JED (isn't that what feature
submission is for?). If you successfully lobby to get com_mailto
taken out, that would open that option up for me :)

Anyway, I'll post the code updates as they become available and
someone can take it and run with it if they want. 3.0 seems to be a
bit rudderless at the moment in terms of what the community thinks it
should or shouldn't be and it just takes too much effort to argue the
toss :)

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers

On 28 February 2012 10:39, Peter van Westen <peterva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems to me - at this stage - like a nice 3rd party extension you can put up on the JED. Don't see the necessity to put this in core...
>

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[Gary Jay Brooks]

I'm coming from a hosting angle/view. When you mass mail from Joomla
you are allocating the mass mailing capabilities of what your host
allows. In many situations hosting companies limit mass mailing.
Host do this because we have to protect our very limited supply of
IPv4 Address space. Arin is no longer giving out IP's like candy and
these IP's can get dirty and marked as spam IP's from people clicking
the spam button. We deal with this everyday and we have to proxy our
mail to a host that limits outbound mail. Its a common practice from
*most* hosting companies.

We ask our clients if they want to mass mail they must install a
extension and use a API to a provider that does mail for a living. Or
use remote SMTP service. These big companies have servers on several
IP"s are have registration with major mail providers that allow them
to be a mass mailing company. They also have a team of people sitting
and dealing with spam complaints. Most host can not afford a
dedicated team to manage mail.

I love Andrews idea about adding features that are useful to Joomla
but in this case of being a hosting companies view, com_mailto should
be removed from the core of Joomla
as its a risk to everyday user that thinks its safe to mass mail from
Joomla but they are many times stopped or blocked by the hosting
company.

[David de Boer]

Gary, I did not think about that.

As an extension developer with a newsletter extension in the JED, I can second that. When com_mailto, or the new version would be used for larger lists/groups that will cause issues on shared hosts. So batch sending or sending via cron would need to be implemented. I can follow Gary's thinking and see where this would add a lot of extra support questions and issues to the default Joomla! package, without the dedicated support people get when they use a newsletter extension.

Kind regards

David-Andrew de Boer

Chill Creations

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[Andrew Eddie]

The mailto component is different from the mass mail feature in the
backend. This doesn't allow for mailing to whole groups of people
(although I suppose it could be set up for abuse by spammers, but
then, they could do that on your server anyway). For what it's worth
com_mailto should be converted into a more generic com_share component
that allows for sharing by mail and other social metrics. Personally
I think that's an important feature that should be in the core, but
that's just me.

But anyway, removing com_mailto is ok, but then you have to put back
some better mechanism for a developer to add buttons for content where
the print and mail-to icon set is now. I doubt that would be hard but
it's the only thing holding me back from releasing this as a
standalone component.

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers

[elin]

I was also thinking that the whole "email to a friend" and 'vote" ideas (which were cutting edge years ago)  have evolved into a "share" and 'like" model and that someone might want to look into how what we have could become something more modern (and even think about where things might go with that in the coming years). 

Elin

On Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:30:19 PM UTC-5, Andrew Eddie wrote:

The mailto component is different from the mass mail feature in the
backend.  This doesn't allow for mailing to whole groups of people
(although I suppose it could be set up for abuse by spammers, but
then, they could do that on your server anyway).  For what it's worth
com_mailto should be converted into a more generic com_share component
that allows for sharing by mail and other social metrics.  Personally
I think that's an important feature that should be in the core, but
that's just me.

But anyway, removing com_mailto is ok, but then you have to put back
some better mechanism for a developer to add buttons for content where
the print and mail-to icon set is now.  I doubt that would be hard but
it's the only thing holding me back from releasing this as a
standalone component.

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers

On 29 February 2012 02:30, David de Boerrote:

> Gary, I did not think about that.
>
> As an extension developer with a newsletter extension in the JED, I can
> second that. When com_mailto, or the new version would be used for larger
> lists/groups that will cause issues on shared hosts. So batch sending or
> sending via cron would need to be implemented. I can follow Gary's thinking
> and see where this would add a lot of extra support questions and issues to
> the default Joomla! package, without the dedicated support people get when
> they use a newsletter extension.
>
> Kind regards
> David-Andrew de Boer
> Chill Creations
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Gary Jay Brooks

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[Andrew Eddie]

On 29 February 2012 08:19, elin <elin....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was also thinking that the whole "email to a friend" and 'vote" ideas
> (which were cutting edge years ago)  have evolved into a "share" and 'like"
> model and that someone might want to look into how what we have could become
> something more modern (and even think about where things might go with that
> in the coming years).

Interesting you should say that because I think adding "social"
features would be a good to be in the vision for 3.x and having a plan
to turn com_mailto into a fully fledged and flexible sharing tool
would be great.

[David de Boer]

Is there any special reason this would need to be a component, and not just a plugin?

For example, I use:

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/social-web/social-share/social-multi-share/15665

Looks like this (at the bottom)

http://www.chillcreations.com/blog/22-joomla/397-help-improve-joomla-30-user-experience.html

Kind regards

David-Andrew de Boer

Chill Creations

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[Andrew Eddie]

A flyout "sharing" box for twitter, etc, is quite easy as a plugin.
If you want to forward the content link "to a friend", you need a
controller and for that you need a component (or a web service, but
then you still need a controller).

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://learn.theartofjoomla.com - training videos for Joomla developers