[Kde-pim] GSoC 2014- Active Mail

[amanjot singh]

Hi


On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Michael Bohlender <
michael.bohlender at kdemail.net> wrote:

> > Michael told me that there is much work in the account configuration
> area.
> > Can you please tell me what all work needs to be done in that area?
> > I would like to work on the UI as well.
> >
>
> App settings in Plasma Active live in the settings app and not only in the
> app UI. Have a look at this blog post[1] and its links.
>

By settings you mean the Account Settings, Favourites, Filters and all,
right?
I got that in the UI, but I looked in the binaries folder, I couldn't find
any separate settings app..  Could you point me to it?


> Like for every GSoC project around kontact touch I suggest two parts:
>
> 1) Expose the functionality as a qml import
>
> 2) Write a UI on top of said API
>
> In this case, the UI should be written as a module for the settings app.
> It is up to you, to decide, what features/settings you want to cover with
> your GSoC project. Just take a look at the current settings and provide us
> with a list of the things you plan to support.
>

About the UI.. I noticed several things as a new user -

1. The settings, when clicked, there are 5 buttons for it. Shouldn't there
be a panel that opens when the settings button is clicked?
And considering that the whole app should confirm with the smoothness of
Plasma Active, shouldn't Settings be included as a
slideout panel instead of having a button for it?

2.The Account and the Identities settings open as a new dialog, widget
based most probably (I haven't looked at the code yet), they should also
open like the Favourite, Filter and the About settings ( a slide in window
of the app).

3. The Favourite settings don't contain anything, just a blank template. I
could implement this part. From what I understand -
    a) This should contain the favourite folders according to the user's
preferences.
    b) It should provide settings for selecting existing folders or
creating new ones to be in the Favourites section. If a new favourites
        folder is created it should provide settings for mails to be
included in the folder probably filtered by date or a particular sender or
a
        group of senders.
    c) It should provide the user with options to add/delete/modify the
favourite folders. This should be done by obtaining various inputs
        from the user.
    d) Once folders in this section have been created, they should be added
as a tab in the main panel ( the one with inbox, drafts, sent
        mail etc tabs..)

4. Once a particular tab is selected, Inbox for instance, I have to click
on the arrow above to view the mails. Shouldn't it re-adjust it's size and
automatically show the mails, instead of the user having to click on the
arrow to go back and forth?

5. Once a particular tab is selected, the focus shifts completely to it,
the other folders dissapear and if one needs to go some other folder, he
has to go back and select the respective tab for it. IMHO it would be more
helpful if the focus temporarily shifted to that tab but all other tabs
remained visible and the user could select any tab at any time, saving many
user gestures.

6. I noticed that some mails take more time to load and some don't load at
all.. And the panel that shows the list of mails, it doesn't have a
scrollbar area ( just scrolls by my mouse wheel ) and the Mail viewer
doesn't have a scroll option at all (Big mails can't be read fully)! And
the panel that displays the list of the mails, shouldn't it be resizable so
as to adjust to the user's settings?

7. When viewing the mail, those three small buttons at the top for
replying, as far as I could understand, they don't have any tooltip or
something like that and the buttons are quite generic and don't provide
much information about their functionality. Instead there could be more
descriptive buttons?

And for the account configuration, I don't know much about mail
configurations, the settings seem pretty elaborate to me. The only thing I
noticed was that the dialog doesn't match the whole theme of the app and
this would need fixing.
Could you tell me what all settings should be implemented which are not
there currently?

I haven't looked at the coding part yet, am still reading QML resources and
trying to understand how it all fits together. Hopefully in a day or so I
will be able to look at it from that angle too. So these are just cursory
UI observations which I think can be fixed. :)

Suggestions/inputs? Coding tips? What I can include as the scope of my
project? :)



> Cheers
>
> Mike
>
> [1]
>
> http://vizzzion.org/blog/2012/01/active-settings-modular-embeddable-configuration/
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>

Thank you!


-- 
Amanjot Singh
Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering
- Season of KDE participant (2012)
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