Subject: [Tools-implementation] A usability anecdote on the mailarchive tool

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2020 11:33:08 -0500

I was catching up on the gendispatch list today using thunderbird to 
read the list through the IETF imap service.

I encountered a couple of days of messages that were not being served 
correctly through that service (Ryan is looking at fixing that). They 
were served through the http-based mailarchive service just fine, 
however, so I shifted to those to complete my goal of catching up.

And I found that I was significantly more than twice as slow reading the 
view via mailarchive than I was reading it through thunderbird. I 
started poking at why, and a lot of it has to do with how the css at 
mailarchive renders whitespace around quotations. Some has to do with 
contrast, and some has to do with the need to scroll more.

I also lost time to learning to discard things that were in my face but 
I didn't have to read. Those would eventually be trained into me, but 
before accepting them I think perhaps I should push back about them. 
(Like the thread index at the bottom of the message - that should 
perhaps be collapsed or otherwise made very visually distinct).

So I wonder if we should look for outside help in assessing how the view 
can be made more ergonomic (and also assess how the community is really 
using the tool)?

RjS

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2020 19:23:38 +0200

> perhaps be collapsed or otherwise made very visually distinct).

+1

Collapse and greyed-out when collapsed, and not visually part of the
message pane.

> can be made more ergonomic (and also assess how the community is really 

Ack.