Improved Work Flow on Message Titles

[mlgtechuser (Leland Parker)]

SITUATION:

Filling out the recipients of a message expands a ‘Search’ bar over the message Title. The natural place to start is at the top with ‘Add users or groups’.

That Search Bar won’t clear any other way than clicking somewhere else.

… [Enter] won’t close the Search Bar.
… [Tab] won’t close it,

• though [Tab] will skip to the Title if you press it twice. You can’t see what you’re typing but you can type a Title.
• Tabbing to the message body and typing there still doesn’t close it.

…just to expose the Title field.

RECOMMENDATION:

Rather than messing around with coding and keyboard events, move the Title to the top with the addressing below it. This is natural since most email clients that I’ve used (maybe all) are laid out this way. With this change, the Search bar expands over the top line of the message body but doesn’t obstruct the message body. It’s easy to click in the message body and start typing when you’re done (but impossible as far as I can tell to click on Title with the current layout).

I tend to do the Title and Addressees and then pause to collect my thoughts before writing anyway, so grabbing the mouse to shift into the message body fits with this natural flow. Having to [1]click the mouse away from the vicinity of the Title field just to close the Search bar and then [2]move the mouse back to the Title field and [3]click the Title field so I can continue setting up the message prior to composition is not a natural flow.

ALTERNATE1:

Make the Search Bar half width and right-justified. This way we can either [Tab] into it and see what we’re typing (though for only half of the Title field width), or we can mouse click[1] into the Title Field directly and start typing. For the first method here, we’d want the GetFocus event on the Title field to close the search bar.

ALTERNATE2:

Make the LoseFocus by Tabbing event on the Search bar close the Search Bar. This requires multiple Tab presses, so is not desirable. Only included here for completeness.


P.S. (REF: The SIDE NOTE in this post and A Complaint is a Gift.  

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

I generally agree here that the technique GMail uses is more intuitive.

This mode where there is an explicit X element attached to each email when you are editing means that there is no duplication.

Back pre select kit 3 we had this “non duplicatey” mode, I wonder if sk4 plans involve reviving a less duplicatey mode. It would be handy for tags as well.

@joffreyjaffeux any thoughts?

[1101010 (Theo)]

@mlgtechuser

move the Title to the top with the addressing below it

I agree with this. Feels cleaner to me.

As a side point: are there any thoughts on fixing the issue where you don’t get the message link on private profiles? There’s a separate setting to block people messaging you but a lot of our users keep their profiles private which is fine, but messaging them is then more annoying because I have to click through to the messaging section and manually mail them rather than just clicking their profile.