Perceptions and usability
JoeS
Images in emails won't forward. It has been my understanding that this is a well understood limitation of thunderbird. I have even considered switching over to Outlook for email.Or this thread in Mozillazine.
There are very real usability issues that have never been addressed regarding HTML use in MailNews.
Bug 307023 for one.
I'm pretty sure that if someone decides to address these issues, he will not be accused of breaking the internet.
Most of the issues that I have seen involve the user either not realizing the compose mode is not HTML,
or the message was not sent in the intended mode.
A couple of things I think we could do to help here:
- Clearly indicate the composition mode with an icon or color change in the composition toolbar.
- Create a "send preview" tooltip on the send button showing how the message will actually be sent
content, address book prefs etc etc.
There should be no reason a user should have to send a message, then hope that it arrives as intended.
--
JoeS
Marco Zehe
JoeS wrote:
> A couple of things I think we could do to help here:
>
> * Clearly indicate the composition mode with an icon or color change
> in the composition toolbar.
> * Create a "send preview" tooltip on the send button showing how the
> message will actually be sent
Both of these are purely visual suggestions, excluding, for example,
blind people from this kind of indication.
I know it's not an ideal way to copy the competition, but one thing that
Microsoft does right is indicate the type of mail that is being composed
right in the title bar, along wwith the mail's subject. That way,
everyone can see (and hear) what format they're composing their mail in.
Marco
Melchert Fruitema
-- Kind regards, Melchert (MacOS 10.3.9 / Firefox 2.0, Thunderbird 2.0)
Marco Zehe
Hash: SHA1
Hi Melchert,
Melchert Fruitema wrote:
> I simply use colors to differentiate between the compose mode in
> 'html' or 'plain text'.
That, too, is not immediately, if at all, accessible to visually
impaired people. For such a feature to be easily discoverable for
everyone, it would have to be a straight-forward way without hazzles.
And any purely visual cue that is not text-based is a problem for
certain people.
Also, what do color-blind people do, for example? They'd not be able to
use this feature either if the colors were chosen in a way that hit
their color blindness.
Marco
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Melchert Fruitema
>
> Melchert Fruitema wrote:
> > I simply use colors to differentiate between the compose mode in
> > 'html' or 'plain text'.
>
>
> That, too, is not immediately, if at all, accessible to visually
> impaired people. For such a feature to be easily discoverable for
> everyone, it would have to be a straight-forward way without hazzles.
> And any purely visual cue that is not text-based is a problem for
> certain people.
>
> Also, what do color-blind people do, for example? They'd not be able to
> use this feature either if the colors were chosen in a way that hit
> their color blindness.
>
post.
I'm sure you know that 'accessibility and usability' is (also) supported
on a system level. My Mac has a voice speaker facility for the visually
impaired. I can switch it on for the message text to be spoken.
Ron K.
Windows Vista also has text to speech plus giant oversize icons that can
be set in very high contrast system themes. Fortunately the combination
of vision deficiencies I have has not yet progressed to to a degree I
need that system support.
The critical issue in support of accessibility is not indicators of
which compose mode is active. Rather it is the absolute inability of the
HTML compose mode to insert a screen style sheet for both screen and
audio rendering when using the WYSIWYG composition tools. That means
none of the of the visually gifted are able to send accessibility
compliant messages to their visually hampered friends and family.
--
Ron K.
Who is General Failure, and why is he searching my HDD?
Kernel Restore reported BSOD use by Major Error to msg the enemy!
Ron K.
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> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi Melchert,
>
> Melchert Fruitema wrote:
>
>> I simply use colors to differentiate between the compose mode in
>> 'html' or 'plain text'.
>>
>
> That, too, is not immediately, if at all, accessible to visually
> impaired people. For such a feature to be easily discoverable for
> everyone, it would have to be a straight-forward way without hazzles.
> And any purely visual cue that is not text-based is a problem for
> certain people.
>
> Also, what do color-blind people do, for example? They'd not be able to
> use this feature either if the colors were chosen in a way that hit
> their color blindness.
>
> Marco
>
As a color saturation challenged person, I can always get a clue from
the gray scale shifts caused by varied RGB ratios. My reply to
questions on color sensory sensitivity is my brain has been trained by
years of looking at color samples and reading there associated name
labels. Thus I can say Pine Green and have a common reference with full
spectrum sensitive people. I simply sense a lesser saturation and the
position on a gray scale is closer to black. Color blindness is not
absolute for most people so effected. The human eye is an RGB sensor,
and all of the colors inermediate between any two primary's will be
perceived as skewed toward the one with higher sensitivity and a
brightness shift toward a darker level of illumination.
And an oddity. The degree of sensitivity reduction can differ between
the two eyes. This actually has the result of improving color
discrimination.