Recipient selection UX issues

[uli-heller]

Expected behavior

After entering to, subject and message, the send button should become active so I can send new messages

Actual behavior

The button remains inactive, see screenshot above. Replying to an existing message works fine, though.

Mail app

Mail app version: 1.1.3

Mailserver or service: Postfix

Server configuration

Operating system: Ubuntu-18.04
Web server: Apache
Database: MariaDB
PHP version: 7.2

Nextcloud Version: 18.0.1 and 18.0.2 - I created a common mail configuration for all users via Groupware - MailApp

Client configuration

Browser: Chrome 80.0.3987.132
Operating system: Ubuntu

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[uli-heller]

I tried to activate the button via browser developer tools. Pressing "send" afterwards leads to this:

Strange: Sending mails works when replying to an existing message...

[ChristophWurst]

You didn't select the recipient. Click the suggested row in the dropdown to make a selection.

Sorry for the confusion. We have to improve this.

[uli-heller]

@ChristophWurst : I'm trying to select the recipient, but it does not seem to be possible. Clarification: It is possible, but strange...

• I typed the email address
• A drop down appears
• Clicking on the dropdown shows a "hook"
• You have to click somewhere outside of the dropdown to effectively "select" the entry

Afterwards, the "send" button is active and sending the email works OK.

[ChristophWurst]

Yep, that is the UX flaw I tried to describe.

I don't think there is a better description of the problem, so let's actually keep this ticket open.

[rakekniven]

Related discussion:

https://help.nextcloud.com/t/mail-send-buttion-greyed-out/77114

Looks like the UX should be improved here.

[jancborchardt]

The "To" and "Cc/Bcc" fields have some additional UX issues when compared to other mail apps:

• You should not need to click into the dropdown to have the email you put in accepted. The dropdown is for suggestions, not the reflection of the list.
• When you have content in the "to" field and click in it, the dropdown shows but the content vanishes from the field, very strange.
• Just putting in emails separated by comma should work, but now it seems to error as the app thinks it’s all one email
• When you have nothing in the field, it doesn’t make sense to show the dropdown at all

[ChristophWurst]

@nextcloud/mail who can help with this?

[janklostermann]

I have a behavior I did not see described here yet, but is related:

Trying to type a new email address into the To: field starts showing the pop-up selector that takes over what is written into the To: field for the first letters, but then stops.
I can continue to write the full email into the To: field behind the selector, but the selector stays with these first letters.
(How many is quite arbitrary, seems to depend on the writing velocity in the beginning: What was already written at the startup processing of the pop-up selector is taken, the rest not any more.)

The app will not accept the written address in the To: field, but only the stuff from the pop-up selector. Having the address in the To: field and selecting one of the multiple available empty lines from the selector provides me with an activation of the send button, but when I click the send button, it either gives an error message about a missing sender or once it even said Sent! but nothing is received at the address from the To: field.

Very wired! Makes the sending of new emails (where you cannot reply) impossible. :-(((

I have this behavior in current Chromium and Firefox on Ubuntu 18.4. with Mail 1.1.2 and NC 18.0.3.

[mlthlschr]

Looks like it is a problem/flaw of the multiselect given by nextcloud. I just tried using the original multiselect, like as follows (adding vue-multiselect to package.json first):

// import Multiselect from '@nextcloud/vue/dist/Components/Multiselect'
import Multiselect from 'vue-multiselect'

Here it behaves better/as in the examples found in the docs. Maybe someone needs to take a look what is happening with multiselect in nextcloud-vue.

[alexanderdd]

As mentioned here #3242 pressing tab after typing a name should add that recepient.

That issue is now closed because this functionality should be covered by this issue here.

[jancborchardt]

Issues we found during the brainstorming:

• As @uli-heller said above, when not explicitly clicking on a result in the list, the value is not taken. Ref Select the only option on blur shentao/vue-multiselect#536 – we could use the blur event (which could work for mouse click in another field as well as tab)
• We modify the component so that when you click into the field, it doesn’t show in the input anymore – this is confusing and we should just use the default.
• Adding a comma inbetween email addresses is not recognized as separate entries.
• If we have avatars of the people (e.g. from Contacts or user management) it would be nice to show those in the dropdown as well as in the chips.

[dehnhardt]

@jancborchardt
We modify the component so that when you click into the field, it doesn’t show in the input anymore – this is confusing and we should just use the default.
Do you mean the manual written search-text should be deleted? If not, this should be added as well ti this issue. It's annoying to have to delete the written search-text to add the next recipient.

[jancborchardt]

No, nothing should ever be deleted from the input unless people specifically delete it via backspace or pressing on the x next to the email chips. :)

What I mea is that it's weird that if you e.g. have 2 emails in the "To" field and click in it, the 2 emails vanish and only show in the dropdown. The component we use (https://vue-multiselect.js.org ) does not do this, and it's much better.

[dehnhardt]

Maybe you didn't really understand what I meant: If I want to enter multiple recipients, I start typing "jan b" for example. Then Jan Borchardt appears in the drop-down list and I select him. I would like to select Christoph Wurst as another recipient. So I start typing, but there is still "jan b" in the editbox - although I have already added Jan Borchard. So I have to delete "jan b" from the edit box before I can start typing "christoph...".
Are you sure that this is the desired behaviour I get upset about it every time.
If it's meant to be, it would be a compromise to highlight the letters you typed. Then I can either delete them with one keystroke or keep the already entered text by typing "arrow left" once.

[alexanderdd]

We are aware of that, thanks. Roadmap is merely for features.

@ChristophWurst feel free to mark as off-topic, I just want to understand: First you said that bugs like this don't go into the Roadmap, but now it's in the Roadmap?

I am happy that you are working on this.

[ChristophWurst]

@ChristophWurst feel free to mark as off-topic, I just want to understand: First you said that bugs like this don't go into the Roadmap, but now it's in the Roadmap?

My thoughts are not very consistent :)

[ChristophWurst]

@GretaD is this all done after #4401?

[GretaD]

@GretaD is this all done after #4401?

Yes, the problem is resolved. I will most probably shoot another PR soon to improve some small stuff but all is good now.

[tallship]

You didn't select the recipient. Click the suggested row in the dropdown to make a selection.

Sorry for the confusion. We have to improve this.

Yes indeed. It is causing a LOT of confusion, even for experienced users. One shouldn't have to enter an email addy, tab to subject, then body, and then go back with a mouse to select the recipient again. That just doesn't flow.

I see there's a new mail app, I'll test install it later after you've sent in those other PRs and see if it fixes the breakage once those pulls are merged.

For the time being, I'm getting complaints, but I can live with that, because that's all they are now that they are aware of what to do :)

[ChristophWurst]

I see there's a new mail app, I'll test install it later after you've sent in those other PRs and see if it fixes the breakage once those pulls are merged.

The linked PRs are merged but not included in the v1.9.x releases. You'll have to wait for v1.10.0.

[tallship]

@ChristophWurst , Thank you so much for that heads up! I'll put a watch on for that release.

[groehner]

Today I installed Mail version 1.11.6
Apparently the problem with the disabled send button still exists

[GretaD]

Today I installed Mail version 1.11.6 Apparently the problem with the disabled send button still exists

After you select an recipient the button doesnt become active?

[groehner]

Today I installed Mail version 1.11.6 Apparently the problem with the disabled send button still exists After you select an recipient the button doesnt become active? Yes. But it was my first time using Mail in NextCloud, so no recipients can be selected. I typed in an email address but the send button stayed inactive. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2769 (comment)> , or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AMXNFS4VI3LB2B4F5CJNWDTU2FFTPANCNFSM4LQ227VA> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub> . You are receiving this because you commented. <https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AMXNFS42EOTFIJQF33RF6DLU2FFTPA5CNFSM4LQ227VKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOHWIDMAA.gif> Message ID: ***@***.*** ***@***.***> >

[alexanderdd]

@ChristophWurst I think this should be reopened. Since version 1.10 it's already better than before, but it's not fixed yet.

Steps to reproduce:

1. compose new email
2. enter email address by hand (i.e. not from the address book)
3. click into "subject" or "message" field

Actual behavior:
The email address is there, I can type subject and message, but the send button stays grey. Because the email address ist not properly selected. When you enter the email adress in the To: field, the same address is shown in a dropdown with a "+" in front of it. You have to click it. Then the address will have a border around it, and sending will work.

Expected behavior:
when you enter an email address and click away, it should be accepted as a recepient

[ChristophWurst]

Let's do this in a new one please.

[GretaD]

This is the famous ux problem that after you add an email address on the field, you need to click also the suggestion above to actually add it on the to/cc field. And you can see on the screenshot on this issue that was not added. This is not a bug, this is how multiselect works. But we will change it soon and use the entitypicker.

[dingo35]

Any progress on this? More than a year later, I cannot sell this misleading user interface to my users, so not releasing the Mail App now for over a year....

[GretaD]

@dingo35 are you a partner of us? Do you have a subscription with us? If yes, then please contact your AM to talk about solutions related to this.

If you're selling the community version of nextcloud, then we would appreciate a lot if you can help us make the mail app better.

[dingo35]

@GretaD, so in Feb'22 "but we will change it soon and use the entitypicker."

changed to "we would appreciate a lot if you can help us to make the mail app better" ...

Im sorry but if you are in any way trying to promote this App, this is the first thing that any user is going to be surprised/annoyed on.
Moving on to one of the other zillion solutions out there. Have a nice day!

[GretaD]

@GretaD, so in Feb'22 "but we will change it soon and use the entitypicker."

changed to "we would appreciate a lot if you can help us to make the mail app better" ...

True, other priorities got in the way. Also, the recipient picker was improved a couple of times meanwhile probably we can do better, but i guess you havent checked it out.

Im sorry but if you are in any way trying to promote this App, this is the first thing that any user is going to be surprised/annoyed on. Moving on to one of the other zillion solutions out there. Have a nice day!

It a bit disrespectful to show up in a thread asking for stuff to be fixed for you when you are selling our software without giving anything back. A thank you sometimes is enough. Have a nice day you too!

[dingo35]

I am not selling any software, and I certainly won't thank you for software I deem sub par.

I can recommend Snappymail App, it's user-interface is more logical, it can search full text through your emails, it supports Sieve, and has native support of encrypted emails without using any browser plugins.

[tallship]

You didn't select the recipient. Click the suggested row in the dropdown to make a selection.

Sorry for the confusion. We have to improve this.

Yes indeed, it's been an ongoing issue and the subject of much confusion and many complaints for a couple of years now.

• No other MUA that I'm aware of forces this behavior which is foreign to most users and difficult to grasp as it feels unnatural - people want to enter in an address, and press send, and have it be that easy all the time.

• Merely filling out the recipient field manually with any syntactically correct iteration of an email address in the form: recipient@SLD.TLD should suffice - one should not be constrained by forcing an entry into the address book and then requiring the sender to select from there.

This is an obvious and relatively simple fix I think?

⛵

.

[schmidtinger]

Hello dear mail app developers,
I would also be very happy if this problem was fixed.
Unfortunately I can't contribute as I can't program code, but I would like to thank you in advance for the fact that problems from users are taken seriously here.
hp in Mail 3.3.1 the problem still exists.

[GretaD]

Hello,

we have created a component only Select that will improve the select experience in general. We will implement it soon. Sorry for all the inconvenience :(

[elBoberido]

I also stumbled upon this the last days and it took me quite some time to understand why this happens. Ideally Send should never be grayed out and a missing recipient or subject or any other reason the mail cannot be sent should display a warning with the exact reason when the send button is pressed.

[GretaD]

I also stumbled upon this the last days and it took me quite some time to understand why this happens. Ideally Send should never be grayed out and a missing recipient or subject or any other reason the mail cannot be sent should display a warning with the exact reason when the send button is pressed.

this is actually a very good suggestion. Can you please open a feature request so this doesn't get lost?

[elBoberido]

@GretaD I think this would fit in #5616. What do you think?

[mtissington]

I've been looking at the Mail App - great but the Send button disabled is very strange.
Is there a fix for this yet?