Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact: an e-mail client comparison (opensourceversus) [LWN.net]

Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact: an e-mail client comparison (opensourceversus)

Posted May 20, 2005 16:09 UTC (Fri) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688)
Parent article: Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact: an e-mail client comparison (opensourceversus)

It's unfortunate that all of these apps have such a similar layout. I have to remote desktop into a Windows box at work to use Outlook for email. I tried using Evolution on my Debian box but I couldn't get the calendar component to work with MS Exchange server. I was also annoyed that the interface looked the same as Outlook. In an ideal world I'd like to see my message folder, my tasks, and my current dialy calendar on one view. They are all related in my daily work so I want to see them all at once. Here's a screenshot I composited of what I would like (sorry about messing up the scroll bars): http://www.stickiwiki.org/ideal-outlook.png

Now I understand what people mean when they complain about software copying microsoft or copying windows. It's not the graphic design but possibly the layout. I know that MS has spent a lot of money on user testing and UI design so there's a lot to take advantage of by using a tested and familiar design. However, I think a lot more can be done to help the user.

I'd really like to start seeing apps that allow the user to rearrange the interface. One of the things I don't like about Outlook, and by extension, Evolution, is that I can't place the folder view on the right. It's locked to the left with the list of messages to the right of that. See the link above for what I would really want Outlook, Evolution, and Kontact to look like.

At work I use a sound editing program called Sound Forge. One thing that I really like about it is that each part of the interface is dockable (for lack of a better term) inside of the main interface. For example, I might have the waveform view taking up most of the window space, and a volume meter on the right. I can click and drag on a small grab-bar at the top of the meter and it'll undock and become a floating window. I can either release the mouse button and leave it as a window or drag it to another part of the interface and dock it back into the main window. This is really nice when you have multiple windows open for different things. You can even stack docked windows and they then have tabs to switch between them. I usually edit sound for video and will have a timecode window, video preview, effects, etc. I put up a screenshot in case anyone is interested in seeing exactly what I'm talking about: http://www.stickiwiki.org/soundforge-screenshot.png

Anyway, I wish linux developers would start incorporating these GUI rearranging features into their GUIs. It's frustrating to use a program where the developer feels they know the best way for you to organize and present *your* information. Not everyone's brain works the same way and the interfaces in most programs make for a frustrating daily computing experience no matter which platform I'm using.

I'm not a programmer so I don't have the skills to fix this myself. I'm just venting some frustration as an end user.

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Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact: an e-mail client comparison (opensourceversus)

Posted May 20, 2005 18:51 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Actually, you're likely to get an even split between people who hate the standard interface more and people who hate change more. The real solution is for the interface to be extremely customizable, and for the default configuration to match some other interface. If the GIMP's interface were just like Photoshop, except that you could arrange it differently, few people would complain (except for people who like particular previous GIMP version default interfaces, who would want a way to configure it to the way it was).

Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact: an e-mail client comparison (opensourceversus)

Posted May 20, 2005 20:55 UTC (Fri) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link]

Hmm, interesting. I just installed gimp and tried it. It works somewhat like how I want but not really. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. When I run it I have two windows: One window with tools and a second window with the image. I've tried and tried but I can't get the tools to add to the window with the image, or the other way around. I seem stuck with two windows which isn't what I want. I want a single window. The image should be just another dockable component that I can put below, above, or to the side of the other components.

I'm also unable to dock items side by side. I can only dock above or below an existing component. It's a good start though.

Customisation

Posted May 21, 2005 21:49 UTC (Sat) by mightyduck (guest, #23760) [Link]

Well, that's exactly what kontact is. You can run all of it's components
as standalone applications, kmail, korganizer, kaddressbook, knode,
akregator, and arrange them the way you want. Kontact is just a shell
which combines these applications into a common frame and it was only
developed because of the ongoing crying demand of former outlook-users.
That's also what turns me off about evolution. It's just another (bad
IMHO) outlook-clone and I can't use it's components individually or
replace components with something else.

Customisation

Posted May 22, 2005 4:03 UTC (Sun) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link]

> It sounds to me that what you want is not a mega-application that does
> everything, but rather several small apps that each do one task well.

As far as Outlook is concerned, not really. Well, if it were up to me I'd be reading my mail with pine which has been my mail client since about 1992. But we use exchange server at work with pop and imap disabled so I'm out of luck.

What I want is a way to easily rearrange the interface of applications in a manner that suits my working style or current workflow best. If Outlook was split into separate applications then what I'd want (probably from the window manager) is a way to create an empty window and then dock other application windows into the container window. That way I could lay things out how I want but manipulate the "combined app" as it were as a single application. One window to move, one window to iconify or close (which would close all contained applications).

I also don't like using windows (the GUI object). I hate how they overlap. The first thing I do when I run an app is hit the maximize button. Windows are fine for dialog boxes and such but I want use as much of my screen as I can for whatever app I'm working in. There's a window manager called Ion that's thinking along the lines of what I want but you can only control it from the keyboard. It also takes custom programming, in yet another programming language, to get it to work the way you want with apps.

Sadly, my window manager of choice is Microsoft Windows. It does what I want with regards to maximizing and window management. I have Cygwin with its X server running on my Windows laptop. I just ssh into my Linux box, run apps, and have their interface appear on my Windows desktop (gotta love X's ability to do that).

I haven't found anything that works the way the MS window manager does under Linux. There's always a catch with window managers in Linux such as still being able to click and drag the window on the title bar when the window is maximized. MS Windows will lock the window into place when a window is maximized (which is what I want). Or window managers will resize the window to fill the screen but it's just resized, not locked into place, and they still contain window borders which are eating up screen space. That's the primary reason I don't like Macs. They are too window oriented. You spend a lot of time shuffling windows to get to things instead of getting work done.

Customisation

Posted May 22, 2005 9:46 UTC (Sun) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link]

KDE 3.4's kwin window manager gets you part of the way there; in KControl, under Desktop, there's an option pane "Window Behaviour". In the "Moving" tab, there's an option "Allow moving and resizing of maximized windows". Uncheck this, and maximized windows can't be moved or resized. It also gets rid of the borders.

Customisation

Posted May 22, 2005 16:10 UTC (Sun) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link]

Awesome! Thanks for the tip. That's the push I needed to install KDE 3.4. I've been using KDE 3.3 under Debian at work because that's what Debian came with. There were some unofficial KDE 3.4 files but I had been afraid to install them. I guess I'll risk it now. :-D

Customisation

Posted May 23, 2005 14:36 UTC (Mon) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

Thanks for the tip! I had wished for this feature and then when it was implemented I completely missed it!

Customisation

Posted May 23, 2005 14:55 UTC (Mon) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link]

Thank you so much. I just installed KDE 3.4 and now maximized windows do *exactly* what I want. The close, minimize, and maximize buttons also go right to the edge of the screen which means I can just whip the pointer to the top right and click to close. Before it took a lot more time and coordination to click the close button.

I'm one step closer to moving 100% to Linux.

Customisation

Posted May 22, 2005 17:08 UTC (Sun) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]

"It sounds to me that what you want is not a mega-application that does everything, but rather several small apps that each do one task well. These can easily be arranged any way you like, and can be individually replaced. Being a long time unix fan, I've never understood the last decade's trend of consolidating more and more tasks into huge applications."

Sigh....

I hear this so often these days I'm tempted to just be rude,

Both Kontact and Evolution are ***NOT*** huge apps, they are VERY UNIX-esque and component oriented. You can open an individual component, have each component open in a seperate (or multiple!) windows. In evolution the backend 'address book' processing is broken out into another process - the evolution-data-server. So it is very easy to write your own front-end using evolution data.

So stop spreading silly nonsense about the big-monolithic-Linux-desktop (either KDE or GNOME). Because in neither case is this true.

Customisation

Posted May 23, 2005 3:13 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I have my wife set up to use Evolution; it is a decent mailer, definitely usable by non-geeks. But it is not in any way Unix-like, despite the use of components.

To me, Unix-like would mean that it's easy to pipe a message to a process (using a command line), or insert something like procmail rules in its processing chain, or use regular expressions. And while threading isn't inherently Unixy, it's the best way to get through high-volume discussions, so the lack of threading really hurts. The result is that I use mutt for real work; Evolution and similar mailers don't cut it, though they could if their designers would try to incorporate the best from both the Unix and the Windows worlds instead of just slavishly cloning Outlook.

Also, my main reminder that Evolution uses multiple processes is that it occasionally informs the user that one of them has crashed.