Outlook bugs/features (ATTN: MS Developers)

[Sami-Pekka Hallikas]

(This message is for Outlook developer team, but I hope that some other
people shares their opinion about these subjects). Replys via email, thanks.

Well.. I'm sorry to say, but Microsoft still has some problems with
different programs. At least (us) power users find every now and then all
kind of small 'features' that make us to use some other programs besides of
Microsoft products. Usualy I like to read my mail with elm and tin in unix
box (powerfull tools, even not so easy to use).

I just installed this Outlook 98 and was hoping that those 'feature bugs'
would be fixed in this release. But no...

Now I think it is time (again) to kindly ask for these fixes.

1) Signature + Reply
It is PAINFULL to reply with these MS products, not because it is not
working (yes these works), but because that reply format is terrible wrong.
There is few non written (at least I did not find any specs from net)
standard that people has been using for years (at least ten or more years
now), when sending Email or usenet messages.
Signature allways starts with "-- \n\r" and continues to EOF. Next quote
is from RFC1855:
" - If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer
than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute,
and the longer your message is, the more they pay."
Why Microsoft do not follow this widely used 'standard'?
Also there is point why message format is: Cursor, reply (with prefix
(usualy "> " )), signature (Not: cursor, signature, reply ... or that:
reply, cursor, signature). When people moves down, they can delete lines
that are not important and could insert comments right after part of
mail/news that they are replying, so it is relly easy to follow conversation
at any time (without jumping to end of message to search part of message
that person is replying).

2) Preview
I hope that preview pane was really included in Outlook 98, and it was
not transfered from my Outlook 97 addon.
This preview pane speeds up reading and eliminates unnessesary mouse
movement. (Yes, I'm lazy... heh)

3) From field
I like to have possibility to see senders email address instead of 'full
name'. Sometimes Email address is more important than fullname. This could
be checkbox somewhere.

4) Autowrap
It would be really helpful if program would autowrap text when writing
it, so program will not autowrap it AFTER it has been send. (composer would
see that 'final' message format, before it is sent). This could be checkbox
somewhere.

5) Reply color
Also usualy that 'other people' text (replied) is different color then
'normal' text, so it makes easily do notice what part is replied, In Outlook
those colors are 'reversed'.

6) Signature (Mail/news)
Also with this outlook 98 I noticed that mail and news sections do not
share same signature. This could be also nice feature. (Maybe it is because
of 2 outlook programs at the same time?)

7) Netiquette (RFC 1855)
I hope that you (Microsoft developers) would read this RFC1855 document
(http://www.roxen.com/rfc/rfc1855.html) and do some adjustement for programs
to make them more easible. Also I recomment that those persons should read
more news from different groups to see what that 'common standard' is (all
programs except 'outlook' (or Internet Mail/News) uses that).

Here is URL for few other ideas that could be usable
http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/nn/nn.wishlist.html

--
| se...@teleste.com (Sami-Pekka Hallikas) Technical support, Teleste Oy |
| Hardware, n: The part of a computer system that can be kicked. |

[Vince Averello [MVP - Outlook]]

On points 2 & 3:
#2: There is a preview pane in Outlook 98. There's a check box for it on the
View menu

#3: Right click on the name and choose Properties to see the address

Sami-Pekka Hallikas wrote in message ...

[Sami-Pekka Hallikas]

Vince Averello [MVP - Outlook] wrote in message ...

>Sami-Pekka Hallikas wrote in message ...

>>2) Preview
>> I hope that preview pane was really included in Outlook 98, and it was
not transfered from my
>> Outlook 97 addon. This preview pane speeds up reading and eliminates
unnessesary mouse
>> movement. (Yes, I'm lazy... heh)

> #2: There is a preview pane in Outlook 98. There's a check box for it on
the View menu

Right, I was found it out today, when I formated my computer and reinstalled
everything. Point of doing this is to see that is there point to stop
installing Outlook 97 to our corporation computers and start installing
Outlook 98. Well, at least that few of these my points was 'fixed' in
Outlook 97 with external 'patches' (even that is not correct way to do it,
now we have to run 4 exe's to every system we install, and there is about
200-300 computers to do).

It was nice to see that some of those 'exe patches' has been included in
this outlook 98, but even this starts to look quite nice program it does not
have these 'features' we power users need, of course normal end-users does
not usualy 'need' these features, but I was chatting about these features
with few of them yesterday, and they understunded need of that (at least
those of them, who has been using Internet for years).

>>3) From field
>> I like to have possibility to see senders email address instead of
'full name'. Sometimes
>> Email address is more important than fullname. This could be checkbox
somewhere.

> #3: Right click on the name and choose Properties to see the address

I did find this 'feature' in 10 seconds myself when I 'checked' this
outlook, but anyway it is not what I want. I recomment that you check out
some other news readers, almost all of them has this feature to toggle what
information to show in article lists. (Usualy those options are: full name,
full name and Email, email only.)