Desired Features in the Vivaldi e-mail client.
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Hi, We are working on the Vivaldi e-mail client. It is getting there but we would like to know a little bit about what you need to have available in an e-mail client to be using it as your daily driver. Of course you need to be able to send and receive mail but in addition to that there are features that some use and others could not care less about. I will list some of the secondary features that could be included in an e-mail client and would like to know your thoughts around this. So here goes: Mailing list handling. Filtering capabilities. E-mail aliases (so you can send and receive from several accounts). Signature(s) Client side spam filtering. Scheduled send. Being able to set a time for e-mail to send. External address book integration like Google Contacts Calendar. Detecting and deleting duplicate messages. Encryption Automatic archiving Tagging and labeling e-mail Schedule e-mail i Inbox. Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox. If you have other features you use it would be great to see them in this thread also. //Christian
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- The thing I need the most is to view my mail in a tab, without needing to use the Mail Panel for daily tasks. I pin my "Received" mail tab with the list above the message, and occasionally swith to "Sent" or "Trash" in the same tab using a menu. Whenever email arrives, I see a notfication popup, whichever program I am currently using. Then I switch to my Received mail tab, read it, reply if necessary, then delete it.
- Tagging is important for me too, for mail that I wish to keep.
- I must also be able to zoom and control the font size for reading and writing email.
- A fast indexed search is something I don't see on the list, but I guess that users with lots of messages will depend on it.
- One very frequent request on My Opera was an option to remove email attachments to reduce the size of the email database.
- The longest-standing Feature Request was for Email backup. If Archiving covers that, then that's good. I currently archive my Opera Profile folder using 7-Zip but I often forget to do it, so I want it to be easier. One click would be good rather than using something like Stu's ini backup tool for Opera.
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The ability to sync the contacts and the calendar with different services such Gmail and Outlook can be welcomed.
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Mailing list handling. - I hate mail list visibility. It's a UI bloat. I don't need to know the mail was part of a list, and I don't need a huge list of email lists that I have to keep clearing.
Filtering capabilities. - probably
E-mail aliases (so you can send and receive from several accounts). - nah - If I have multiple accounts installed in the client, I must obviously be able to send and receive from each of them. I do NOT need to "send as" an account I never installed
Signature(s) - absolutely
Client side spam filtering - maybe
Scheduled send. Being able to set a time for e-mail to send. - no
External address book integration like Google Contacts - absolutely
Calendar. - only if it's syncable via caldav & other popular protocols, google calendar, etc.
Detecting and deleting duplicate messages. - meh
Encryption - meh
Automatic archiving - depends on what archiving actually DOES and whether it heightens risk of data corruption.
Tagging and labeling e-mail - yes - especially if syncable with gmail
Schedule e-mail i Inbox. - yes
Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox. - noNeed HTML/plaintext option.
Need the ability to send email in desired size and font irrespective of how mail was received.
Need control of images in email.
Need ability to send and view attachments in-line
Would LOVE it if there were some way received email formatting elements, logos, signatures, stationery, etc. were not shown in the visible header as a huge list of "attachments." That makes me crazy.MAPI, MAPI, MAPI. I don't care what it takes. The OS HAS TO be able to identify and set the Vivaldi email client as default mail app for "mailto," etc. For some use cases, having an email client which cannot be set as system default is almost useless.
Most important things are transparent, easily accessible controls and smooth, fast, robust data operations. Everything else is secondary.
As to IMAP operations, the client has to be designed in such a manner that it can handle GMail operations in a user-expected manner - no multiple copies of the same mail from different folders displayed in the inbox, working delete operation, etc. Why? because at this point in time, I think the vast majority of IMAP users are using GMAIL - in spite of its non-standard internal protocols and data structure. -
I don't do anything particularly intense with email.
Mailing list handling. - Not really.
Filtering capabilities. - Does this mean automatically filtering mail into categories when they're received? Not something I use.
E-mail aliases (so you can send and receive from several accounts). - I don't really use aliases. So long as the client can handle multiple accounts, I'm okay.
Signature(s) - I don't like signatures, but it seems like a pretty standard feature.
Client side spam filtering - Not a necessity
Scheduled send. Being able to set a time for e-mail to send. - I can't think of a time when I would need to use this.
External address book integration like Google Contacts - I don't need it to sync with anything external. A local address book would be needed. Preferably it could handle home addresses, phone numbers, maybe some notes.
Calendar. - A calendar would be nice.
Detecting and deleting duplicate messages. - I think I'd only use this if I messed something up, so not a priority.
Encryption - A nice feature to have, not a necessity.
Automatic archiving - Not sure what this means - An easy back-up would be nice.
Tagging and labeling e-mail - Yes. Probably one of the most important.
Schedule e-mail i Inbox. - Not sure what this is
Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox. - Not sure what this isNeed HTML/plaintext option.
Need the ability to send email in desired size and font irrespective of how mail was received.
Need control of images in email.
Need ability to send and view attachments in-lineAll these are good.
A fast indexed search is something I don't see on the list, but I guess that users with lots of messages will depend on it.
Opera's mail search was one of it's nicest features. Seemed much faster than other clients. I would love to see this again.
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There's been entirely too little feedback on this topic to date, so I am floating it back to the top to solicit more input.
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Mailing list handling.
Don't really need this
Filtering capabilities.
Well I love the way Opera Mail is working. As far as I know it's based completely on filters. Not on folders.
E-mail aliases (so you can send and receive from several accounts).
If it can handle different accounts, it's enough for me
Signature(s)
Nice to have but not prio 1
Client side spam filtering.
Would be nice
Scheduled send. Being able to set a time for e-mail to send.
Don't really need this
External address book integration like Google Contacts
Don't need this
Calendar.
Well a calendar with caldav abilities would be really great. But that's nothing what I would expect from an email client. So no clear Yes or No but just a would like to have this but can live without it.
Detecting and deleting duplicate messages.
Nice to have but not more
Encryption
Nice to have
Automatic archiving
I love the way opera Mail is handling Mails. No Database but a folderstructurewith single mails. No corupted databases, no archiving necessary.
Tagging and labeling e-mail
Don't really need this
Schedule e-mail i Inbox.
What is meant by this?
Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox.
NoThe most important thing for me is as well as already mentioned a fast capable search.
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Filtering capabilities is setting up different views and having your mails flagged with those views so that you can search them with more ease. The only "filter" I use at present is to mark every incoming mail concerning business, so that I don't have to search for them. I can just click on the "business" label and have all personal and other irrelevant emails filtered from my view.
Calendar makes Vivaldi a complete web suite. Of course the point of calendar is not to miss appointments, so if you are in the field on your phone, you need to receive notification of an appointment you set in your Vivaldi calendar three days ago. Caldav and notifications handles this.
A database is not how emails are archived or stored. Its how emails are found. EVERY mail client has databases and database operations.
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Filtering capabilities is setting up different views and having your mails flagged with those views so that you can search them with more ease. The only "filter" I use at present is to mark every incoming mail concerning business, so that I don't have to search for them. I can just click on the "business" label and have all personal and other irrelevant emails filtered from my view.
Calendar makes Vivaldi a complete web suite. Of course the point of calendar is not to miss appointments, so if you are in the field on your phone, you need to receive notification of an appointment you set in your Vivaldi calendar three days ago. Caldav and notifications handles this.
A database is not how emails are archived or stored. Its how emails are found. EVERY mail client has databases and database operations.
Speaking of calendar/tasks and so on in the mail client, it'd be great if Vivaldi would even make apps for that for mobile, for email/calendar/tasks to make a complete and seamless web suite, but I digress.
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Okay, here goes. I'll respond to the OP list, and try to think of some of my own, but I'm sure there's other stuff I would like that I'll only remember long after I've posted this reply… :oops:
Mailing list handling. to me a mail-list message is just another message, so I don't really have a need for any special handling of this (if I did, I assume I would be able to create my own filters anyway…)
Filtering capabilities. YES ABSOLUTELY! I would expect at minimum the filtering capabilities of M2
E-mail aliases (so you can send and receive from several accounts). I assumed this meant multiple account support so I can view all mail or only for one account; and I can choose which account to start a new mail from… in which case YES ABSOLUTELY again. But AyeSpy's response doesn't seem to be based on that same assumption so I'm a little confused.
Signature(s) well doesn't everyone use a mail signature? It's not something I care that much about but I can't imagine an e-mail client without it.
Client side spam filtering. would be nice to have, but as long as the spam ends up in the trash I don't care too much
Scheduled send. Being able to set a time for e-mail to send. not important for me
External address book integration like Google Contacts I can imagine some people would like this - but for me it's more important that this can be synchronised as part of the Vivaldi user profile!
Calendar. see above
Detecting and deleting duplicate messages. I see this as an option within a A TOOL TO HELP THE USER SORT AND CLEAN THE MAIL DATABASE. Past experience with M2 has shown that the database can get corrupted, and because there's no built-in tool to detect where e.g. messages have been deleted but are still indexed or there are messages in storage which are not indexed, it is a PITA to track down and fix these problems. In other words, I don't want the system to automatically delete duplicates, I'd rather have the option for the system to look for them and let me decide which ones to delete. Other options would then be to test integrity of the indexes and to search storage for unindexed messages.
Encryption not high on my list but I know others have wanted it since the beginning of time…
Automatic archiving YES ABSOLUTELY. As long as the user has control and as long as messages removed from the server are still indexed with the rest of the messages. Please don't do the Outlook way where they're segregated in the UI - just make archived messages have a flag, but you still see them and can search them along with those "current" messages on the server.
Tagging and labeling e-mail I never had a need for this since the filtering did a better job than manually tagging. In the rare cases I needed to mark out a group of messages, I would just create a (self-learning) filter and drag them there. Oh yeah, SELF LEARNING FILTERS PLEASE.
Schedule e-mail i Inbox. this is a must for POP isn't it?
Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox. don't know what that meansNow on to my own wishlist:
RSS as a special mail account since visualising RSS articles as messages in the message interface is still a brilliant idea
RSS index sync my life would be so much easier if I could start Vivaldi on any device and see what new news there is without having to manually delete all the articles I already read somewhere else!
Good import/export tools M2 interface was a bit clunky when it came to selecting which messages should be moved to sent and selecting the account to import to - it would be good if this could be autodetected (with manual override option, of course). Would be nice if import/export would also handle various other client formats like Thunderbird and Outlook databases. (I know the last one might be tricky since I went to a lot of trouble to find a solution to import work mail from Outlook…)
User-selected local mail location I would like all my home-based devices to be able to use mail in a storage location on the home network! The system would need to be robust enough to handle occasional WiFi dropouts - something M2 is not good at (hence my concerns about database-fixing tools above…)
"Proper" quoting I cannot stand the way Outlook deliberately makes it difficult for the user to respond inline (question and answer style) to a long mail full of discussion points. As an old-schooler, I also hate top-posting so I'd like the option for replies to start in the correct place under the quoted text…
simple "no-mail" startup option if one of my laptops is usually linked to the mail database at home, I would like it to launch elsewhere gracefully without getting in a mess when it can't find the mail databaseIdeally, what I need is this:
- have multiple mail accounts (preferably set up automatically through sync when I install Vivaldi anywhere)
- read/write mail on multiple devices (with read/unread state being synchronised)
- have RSS similarly available and synchronised
- have (self-learning) filters, address book and calendar synchronised across devices
- all the above also on my phone…
- have one central database location on my home network
- have all messages automatically archived to this database after X days
- have archived messages indexed at home but not on the portable devices
- be able to use Vivaldi without mail when I take my home-based laptop away from home (another option would be to have different startup options for e.g. [archiving mail database on network]/[non-archiving local mail database]/[no mail])
The last point might be tricky but I suppose the sync server would only keep indexing info for non-archived messages. The client would not synchronise indexing info for messages flagged as archived.
I think that just about covers everything I can think of for now.
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Aliases means sending emails bearing multiple "from" addresses from a single account.
Different accounts are not aliases. They are different accounts.
To snooze an email means to have it presented to you later (theoretically when you have more time to look at it) as newly received.
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To snooze an email means to have it presented to you later (theoretically when you have more time to look at it) as newly received.
I can see some use in that. But the way M2 worked was just fine to handle that type of situation - by utilizing the 'Unread' folder. New or 'unseen' mail would be highlighted in blue. Then, after viewing the new email, the text would be black but still in the Unread folder (or list). Extra input (keyboard: K) marks the email as read, it goes in the received folder and is removed from the unread list.
That way I could keep emails I plan to respond to later (or hold some information, like an appointment that I'll want to find quickly) in an easy-to-find place. And when I'm done with it, I press K and it's not on my list anymore.
Maybe people who handle higher volumes of mail might need a more elegant solution. But that was fine for me.
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Here's my list of answers:
Mailing list handling. Not a priority (this can be handled by filters).
Filtering capabilities. – YES YES YES MUST – Also, please, with more than one filtering criterion (i.e., let us combine criteria, such as : "from contains '@gmail', and cc does not contain '@hotmail'"), and also the possibility to forward and / or redirect mail to an external mailbox.
E-mail aliases Absolutely. Without aliases, I do not think that I would use the mailer.
Signature(s) Yes.
Client side spam filtering. Yes (but not a top priority. I have yet to see a really good spam filter).
Scheduled send. Not a top priority, but would be nice.
External address book integration like Google Contacts. Importing address books in a standard format would be good enough.
Calendar. Not a priority, would be nice.
Detecting and deleting duplicate messages. Good idea!
Encryption. Yes (PGP).
Automatic archiving. Can't the messages simply be left where they are, until I delete them?
Schedule e-mail in Inbox. I don't see a necessity for this.
Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox. Not a priority, but it could be nice.Very important:
Multiple mailboxes for more than one mail account. -
A database is not how emails are archived or stored. Its how emails are found. EVERY mail client has databases and database operations.
You are right. I have used the wrong words. It's not a database but a container like pst or mbox. Opera M2 doesn't use a container. So if your database gets corrupted you can still acces all your mails. And of course the container can't get corrupted as well because there is none.
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Please keep it simple and clean! I love Claws-Mail for its essential interface. I think no one really needs an Apple Mail style client. At least, if you will do so anyway, please make it in a way that all "under the hood" features are easily configurable and - if wished - with the possibility to turn them off!
What i'd like would be the possibility to easily configure proxy access like it is done, for example, in sylpheed. So, no need to use a tool like proxychains or torsocks. And easy migration (transfer of contacts and pswds).
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A database is not how emails are archived or stored. Its how emails are found. EVERY mail client has databases and database operations.
You are right. I have used the wrong words. It's not a database but a container like pst or mbox. Opera M2 doesn't use a container. So if your database gets corrupted you can still acces all your mails. And of course the container can't get corrupted as well because there is none.
Interestingly, Thunderbird now also offers the option to store emails as individual files.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't these two require that emails are stored server-side as well for it to be possible?
*Schedule e-mail i Inbox.
*Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox.Unless this is implemented in a funky way that "hides" the email and then mimics a "mail received" behavior to show them again. That could work I guess.
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I loved M2 and have been waiting for M3 since Vivaldi appeared.
But the world has changed a lot, and so have my expectations / workflows. For example, I don't use any local calendars anymore, only ones that are syncable to my smartphone.
Also, I don't use (private) e-mail as heavily as 3 years ago.So these are my requirements:
Required:
[ul]- E-Mail in the browser: That is, one or mutliple e-mail tabs right in the browser. Groupable, Pinnable, etc.
- Multiple E-Mail-Accounts: The ability to show mails per account or combined, and to send from each account
- IMAP
- Quickly access all conversations with an account
- Fast full-text search
- Good performance: M2 was able to quickly open my database with >100k mails from 8 accounts over 10 years
- Notifications
- Basic labeling/flagging
- Automatically mark as read when seen
- Show full e-mail headers and source on demand
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Nice to have:
[ul]- Reduce mail display to the minimum (subjects, text), especially in conversations
- Calendar integration with the main providers like GMail, Outlook.com/Hotmail, OwnCloud
- A good spam filter
- Auto-filtering based on headers and subject
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I don't need/want/care about:
[ul]- mailing list handling: I hated the way the mailing lists cluttered the navigation in M2
- Scheduled send
- Duplicate message detection
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I'm in basic agreement with your priorities.
I was especially pleased with M2's search abilities. The only problem it ever presented to me in that regard was the inability to search for strings which were included within a name or word but were not at the very beginning of same.
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Realy liked the way M2 handle al my mail's account ! So here is what i'd like to see in M3 :
Mailing list handlind : yes
Filtering capabilities : of course !
E-mail aliases (so you can send and receive from several accounts) : i absolutly neet this
Signature(s) : yes (but you could add it later from my point of view)
Client side spam filtering : not necessarely (maybe later ?)
Scheduled send. Being able to set a time for e-mail to send : same as before
External address book integration like Google Contacts and Calendar : that would be avesome (but then do not forget CalDav)
Detecting and deleting duplicate messages : maybe
Encryption : maybe
Automatic archiving : yes
Tagging and labeling e-mail
Schedule e-mail i Inbox : yes
Snooze e-mail a la Google Inbox : I don't what it is
Add on option to mark as read automatically.I think that you could add a lot later but this for the first realeses would be great.