Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 19 2021, Eric Wong wrote: > > Son Luong Ngoc <sluongng@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> [...] > >> 3. Isssue with archive: > >> > >> - I don't find the ML archive trivial for new comers. It took me a bit > >> of time to realize: 'Oh if I scroll to bottom and find the "Thread > >> overview" then I can navigate a mailing thread a lot easier'. > > > > (I'm the maintainer of public-inbox, the archival software you > > seem to be referring to). > > > > I'm not sure how to make "Thread overview" easier to find > > without cluttering the display near the top. Maybe I'll try > > aria labels in the Subject: link... > > I'd say the bare-bones style of it is probably jarring to most users > today. I had to check if the site even had any CSS at all. > > I.e. I think a more intuitive UI to users today would probably be some > collapsible side-bar on the left of the screen, which would have a > threaded view. The "Archives are clonable" would probably belong in some > "help" tab in such a UI. The plan is to support read-only JMAP, so it's a stable API that users can build their own displays on top of (of course, NNTP and IMAP support already exists). I can't make drastic UI changes such as a sidebar without breaking things for users who like the current UI. I only know about GNOME3 and Digg because they made drastic UI changes that angered their existing userbase. The current UI is designed to for a terminal with w3m|lynx since it's the lowest common denominator. Graphics drivers/stacks seem to be most frequently broken thing on GNU/Linux systems, so it's important users can find patches/configs/help easily with a text-only browser in order to get graphics working.
