My first eM UI mockup

eM is the first UC and PIM tool that would make me switch away from MS Outlook – and that’s after trying dozen of Windows and Linux apps. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now with a number of e-mail and jabber accounts and am very pleased overall.

The UI needs a lot of improvement for eM to really become a productivity tool. Clunky toolbars (on my small laptop screen) and missing keyboard shortcuts are a problem.

Thinking about what would be a better use of screen real-estate and fewer-click-per-task ideas, I came up with a rough mockup. Feel free to rate and comment.

Wow, Mel,
it is great to see you gave eM Client so much thought and effort.
We will discuss this within the team and I hope discussion will evolve here about the UI.

eM Client’s UI sure does need improvement and we think about it all the time. At current stage we are focusing mainly on stability and resolving existing issues, but hopefully we will be able to put more effort into UI soon.

Thanks.

Regards
Libor

This would be fantastic. It seems many on this forum believe you have a fantastic app in the making. Carry on!

Further along the tabbed-interface idea, I personally would also like all items to offer a consistent look-and-feel (e.g. standard fields on top, using tabs to separate fields into groups as needed, and a big plain text/HTML text area at the bottom). I know many heavy-PIM users tend to attach thousands of notes to their contacts, or meeting summaries to their events, etc… so a big text area is nice (see sketch below).

Other UI ideas I found around the net:

Best, --Mel.

Cool Mel. I especially like the event summary.

As long as we can keep the full message pane for those of us with 17" laptop screens then you get my vote.

Hi,

I think this is great idea !! Your improvements for UI are very good. I just have some comments, suggestions.

  • Your event/tasks summary is very good. Rest of the left sidebar should stay similar as it is, i think. But with ability to resize and move each and every part - mailbox, calendar, tasks…

  • Tabbed content is very useful idea…it’s easier to switch between 2 undone tasks - writing new mail, changing the calendar. It’s better than have it in the new window. But possibility to drag it out into the new window again should be there.

  • Icons at the top for quicker new mail etc. are better than old fashioned menus. There are two possibilities i’m thinking about.
    —1) Use them for a “new” stuff and rest of the sidebar for all folders like i wrote above (drop down for specific “new”?). OR
    —2) Use them for switching between main tasks - inbox folder/main calendar etc. (ability to specify folders and “in a new tab”?). Other folders would be in the left sidebar. And buttons for common tasks like new mail/cotact, could be right below the tabs (at the top of every window).

  • Drag/Drop functionality for tabbed content + both sidebars would be nice. Ability to drag fields from the right sidebar into the main tab - useful for IM at least?. Dynamicaly switching contacts when in inbox or in IM window. Or filter them for thou who have IM number.

  • Search bar at the top. It’s useful so it’s good. Buttons for settings at the right top are also good.

Please keep doing your good work - both Mel and eM Client developers…

One I would suggest in all of these is for those that are Home users, give the ability to HID any of the side bar boxes that we do not use. That will give us a larger area to work in the ones we keep. These are some very good ideas that if implemented will make a good improvement.

In any of the “Column configurations . . .” give us the ability to select the ones we want and can drag/drop them at the top. Out of those 84 columns I personally use only two maybe 4 or 5 at the most. I do not save anyone telephone number on the web or home address either. Full name, with middle name or initial, NOT saved on the web, IDENTITY theft is too easy. Security is upper most in my mind. Not saying businesses should not use those features, I can see where it would be of great benefit for them.

As you can see I am not very good at cut/paste, copy screen shots as I am just a simple home user at 70 years old. I am attempting to post to some of these that I feel would help make some very good improvements.

TIA, CU L8R,
NTLS