Mark Stosberg wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been having some performance problems with Thunderbird, so I
> thought I would give Evolution 2.8.1 a shot (on Ubuntu Edgy).
>
> I'm most concerned about the reduced keyboard usability of Evolution, so
> I'll cover that first, and then provide miscellaneous feedback beyond
> that.
>
> Although I had to install several extensions to accomplish it, I was
> able to make Thunderbird 1.5 rather keyboard-friendly. I'd like to know
> if there are Evolution shortcuts I'm missing to match the efficiency
> I've found with Thunderbird.
>
> (An article about my Thunderbird setup is here:
> http://www.summersault.com/community/weblog/2006/07/20/five-power-tips-for-thunderbird.html
> )
>
> With TB, I can quickly label messages as Important, Work or Personal
> with 1, 2 and 3. It seems to the do the same in Evo, I would have to
> type:
>
> Shift-F10-L-M, (Important) Shift-F10-L-W, (Work) Shift-F10-L-P
> (Personal)
>
> Ouch. With the GmailUI extension, I can use just "y" to quickly file a
> message to a default archive folder, like Gmail. Evo seems to have no
> such concept or extension. The closest I can come is "Control-Shift-V"
> for "Move". And then *only if the folder name has been exposed*, I can
> start typing "archive" to find the match.
>
> This limitation of only searching visible folder names this way was
> especially frustrating when searching for the "evolution" news group.
> The search feature does not good unless you have already selected "comp"
> and then "gnome", at which point you've already found "evolution"!
>
> Likewise, with the Nostalgy extension, I can type "g" and then any
> unique part of a folder name to go there. In Evo, I first need to use F6
> to go the folder pane, which I need to keep exposed for only this
> reason. Then again, only if the folder is already visible (not
> collapsed), am I able to use type folder name to search for it.
>
> Also, the missing ability to use an external editor is a huge blow to
> keyboard-centric users. This is especially sad since someone did the
> work to integrate vim with Evo three years ago:
> http://www.opensky.ca/~jdhildeb/software/gnome-vim/
> The best alternative in Evo seems to be copy/pasting back and forth, and
> using "Insert File" in some cases.
>
> One more keyboard detail: When viewing a newsgroup list, TB does the
> sensible thing with "Control-N" in this context and opens a compose
> window addressed to the list. In Evol, there's "Post New Message to
> Folder", but there's no keyboard shortcut for that, and the concept
> seems wrong. I don't want to post to the folder, I want to post to the
> group!
>
>
> With all the keyboard grumbling out of the way, I have some other
> feedback to share, including some positive things. :)
>
> - Well, so far I have definitely had better performance. The IMAP
> performance seems to beat the pants of Claws-Mail, at least for the
> initial load. I suspect this is because Evo is only loading folders "on
> demand", while Claws-Mail tried to load all subscribed folders at once,
> bogging down on some folders with thousands of messages in them.
>
> On the other hand, sometimes NNTP performance was worse, because Evo
> doesn't seem to have a limit to the number of messages downloaded like
> TB offers, so it bogged down on some bigger lists.
>
> - Of course it's nice that Evo integrates very nicely with the Gnome
> desktop.
>
> - Evo has a real, full-featured address book.
>
> - The plain test formatting toolbar through me off at first (I assumed
> it was for HTML), but I like the concept. However, I quickly ran into
> missing features that real text editors have, like "rewrap this
> paragraph".
>
> - I appreciated that my labels and colors from TB were preserved.
>
> - I like that encryption support came built-in.
>
> Aside from the important keyboard efficiency issues, I'm generally
> impressed with the features and ease-of-use that Evolution offers.
>
> Mark
>
>
Mark, I find your post interesting as I have moved from Thunderbird to
Evolution (not by choice though) and find that my productivity has taken
a nose-dive due to similar issues as yours.
I don't have the luxury of imap so my functionality is even worse.
But my point is, did you send this with Evolution and did you mean to
send multiple copies? Or are we just having more Exchange server issues
again.
--
Due to the move to M$ Exchange Server,
anything that is a priority, please phone.
Robin Laing
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