From: ar@garnet.berkeley.edu (Tony Roybal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: Eudora1.3b90 Nicknames gripe!
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.comm
Date: 5 Oct 1992 07:28:28 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: tmfpc34.berkeley.edu

In article <norton.718252273@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>, norton@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU
(Norton Chia) wrote:
> 
> sdorner@qualcomm.com (Steven Dorner) writes:
> 
> >Eudora 1.3b89 is now available for anonymous ftp from ftp.qualcomm.com,
> >mac/eudora/beta subdirectory.  It has significant improvements over 1.3b46.
> 
> I've been using 1.3b90 for a few days now. One of the nice new features has
> to be the completely new Nicknames option. The only nagging thing is that
> instead of double clicking on a nickname to select it, it just toggles its
> inclusion on the secondary list! I would have thought it more intuitive to
> select a name by double clicking. C'mon Steve, you can do better than that!!
> 
> Cheers,
> Norton Chia

I disagree with your last point, Norton.

Select a name in the nickname window. Hit the return key. Or click the
"To:" button. The nickname is inserted into the "To:" field in the open
message window. Even better, without an open message window, select a
nickname. Click the "To:" button; or hit the return key. A new message
window is opened and the nickname is inserted. Since the "To:" button is
outlined as a default button, it is clear that hitting a return key enables
the same action that clicking on the button would.

Not only can the nickname be added to the "To" field of a message, it can
also be added to the "cc:" and "bcc:" fields by clicking on the appropriate
buttons.

All of this comes without having to first put the insertion point in the
appropriate place in a new message window, as in earlier versions. _And_
the insertion point moves to the subject line. But if you insert another
nickname, it will be put in the appropriate field, and once again the
insertion point will return to the subject line. Pretty cool.

Since the list of nicknames now shows a property--namely inclusion in the
quick-recipient list--it is intuitive to have that property toggled off and
on by double-clicking it. 

At our university, we found that the previous Nicknames window, which had
the button "Add as Recipient", confused many naive users who would
mistakenly click that button to save their changes when creating a new
nickname. 

I don't think that the new system is counter-intuitive; I think that it
justs takes some getting used to the change. There are many places in the
Mac interface where double-clicking and hitting the return key are
equivalent, but it isn't universal. (Opening a folder/file/application at
the finder, for example.) I think that the new method to add/remove
nicknames from the quick recipient list justifies the change in adding
nicknames to addresses.

The Nicknames window has added features--Thanks for the Notes field, Steve.
It's a feature that I hadn't even put on my mental wish list that will
become one of those things that I wouldn't want to live without--and
removed behavior that previously confused the more inexperienced users.
(One other example: you can no longer create an "empty" nickname.) 

Having said all this, I have to point to one small problem. The otherwise
excellent balloon help still states that double-clicking on the nickname
will insert it into the top-most message window. Well, no one's perfect...

my 2-cents...

--
Anthony Roybal                        Information Systems and Technology
ar@garnet.berkeley.edu                UC Berkeley