[Design] Chandler IMAP folders and the mail-stamp

[Philippe Bossut]

Hi Mimi,

Mimi Yin wrote:
> I'm not sure we need to solve this problem for Preview.

Which is too late anyway since Preview has been shipped already, hasn't 
it? :)

> I propose that we display the byline info (edited-by/updated-by) ONLY 
> WHEN AN ITEM HAS BEEN MARKED UNREAD (either because a sharee edited 
> the item or because someone else updated the item). However, as soon 
> as the user has clicked on the item and the item is now READ, the WHO 
> column should return to displaying either FROM or TO depending on 
> whether the message is Inbound or Outbound.
>
> Here's an example to illustrate.
>
> I dragged an email in from my email client that was sent to me by a 
> friend. She wants me to help her figure out something about a banking 
> acct / routing number.
>
> It's useful for me to see my friend's name in the WHO column because 
> it reminds me of what the task is. And when the email first appeared 
> in my Chandler, that's exactly what I saw in the WHO column. However, 
> as soon as somebody else edits that item, I no longer see that the 
> email is 'fr my-friend'. Instead, I see 'ed random-subscriber'. That's 
> extremely useful when I first see that someone edited the item (I want 
> to know who!). But once I've been there and done that, I'd prefer to 
> see 'fr my-friend' again, because that's the person I associate with 
> this task.

Changing stuff based on read/unread seems too flimsy to me. Remember 
that the user can sometimes "glance" at an item but not really "read" it 
so, in that case, the 'ed random-subscriber' could still be useful in 
the Who column even if it's "read". It's not lost (it's still in the 
byline), but it certainly hasn't registered with the user (assuming she 
cares about the Who column display). Also, that column is a tri state 
button "read/needs reply/unread" and the user can manually set it to 
"unread" if she wants to (which would modify the "Who" column).

Generally speaking, I think the byline is a way to mitigate the absence 
of an affordance to visualize the history/versioning of an item: in the 
absence of the byline, I wouldn't even know that the item has been 
edited. That's good but the byline only gives me info for the current 
state, nothing in the past, nothing in particular to indicate who 
created the item (always an interesting tidbit). This is related to the 
Who column since that column currently echoes the byline (most of the 
time). Using that single one cell to view both the last editor and the 
creator and rely on smart heuristics to display the one which we think 
is the most appropriate depending on where in the 
viewing/reading/editing process the user is, is tricky. This is bound to 
have issues. e.g.: I sort my items by "people" clicking on the "Who" 
column, I select an unread item and, boom, the item gets resorted out of 
view because Who changed from 'ed random-subscriber' to 'fr my-friend'.

I'd much prefer the following:
- Byline: evolve the byline widget to turn it into a full fledge 
history/versioning browsing widget: continue to display the same thing 
but make it a drop down, display in the drop down the list of versions 
and, for each, the author/date, allow the user to select one of those 
past versions to display it and, if editing, overwrite the current one.
- Who column: allow the user to choose (contextual menu, drop down from 
the column header or preference) between the "creator" or "last editor" 
(i.e. author of rev 1 or author of last rev). As a user, I need to feel 
there's some predictability as to what is displayed there, especially 
when I sort my items according to the content of that column (note that 
we already had users mentioning a similar issue with the "Date" column 
where we do a similar guess work as to  what we should be displaying).

Cheers,
- Philippe