5 ms·

Self-ejecting panels on three sides of the website are a horrible user experience. Other than that... The most important thing is not the protocol, it's the g

Self-ejecting panels on three sides of the website are a horrible user experience. Other than that... The most important thing is not the protocol, it's the gui. At the moment email's gui is horrible on all platforms without exception. If/when a decent gui appears, protocols will follow. Also, JMAP did reading can probably be just WebDAV?

andros 2mo ago
Why do you find the panel experience so bad?
- flexagoon 2mo ago
  It's very annoying on mobile, covering half of the page all the time
  - andros 2mo ago
    When you scroll down, they should all disappear. Do you have JavaScript disabled? What browser and device are you using?
    - zahlman 2mo ago
      FWIW, I'm on desktop but I do have JS disabled (more precisely, I use NoScript). This results in the top and left-side bars staying decorative and unobtrusive, but the concurrent visitor counter thingy is floating well above the bottom-right of the page. But then, as I shrink in the page width, the left-side bar and the concurrent visitor counter swap sides, and also a bunch of the content from the top is added to a new bar at the bottom. Eventually, the horizontal space between the side components becomes irrelevant such that they function as an additional bottom bar. At which point, maybe 40% of the vertical space is used for navigation and other shiny toys. This is really annoying, and the overall experience is inconsistent across widths. (Also, at all widths, the top-bar has a transparent background, so main page text interferes with top-bar text as it scrolls.) All of this is done in CSS, so presumably it can be fixed that way too.
      - andros 2mo ago
        If you want to eliminate any friction, I recommend enabling JavaScript. Otherwise, you can read it in terminal mode with: curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" [URL]
      - andros 2mo ago
        I disabled the chat for visitors without JavaScript; I hope this improves your experience. As for the other points, they are design choices. Thank you for your feedback. P.S.: For future interactions, please message me privately like everyone else. This is not the right place for this.
    - flexagoon 2mo ago
      Yes, but when I stop scrolling and scroll up even a little bit (by accident, or because I want to scroll up and read something I missed) they appear again. I think the only good UX possible is to have a button to show/hide them instead.
      - andros 2mo ago
        I'm sorry, but I disagree. The lowest interaction cost is scrolling; it's a natural, continuous, and almost involuntary gesture. Having to click or tap a button requires the user to stop, evaluate whether the title interests them, and decide to make the effort to tap. The interactions you're describing are intentional and measured. I'm sorry but if the content is truly all you care about, I recommend the previous option or activating your browser's reading mode.
        flexagoon 2mo ago
        > almost involuntary gesture Exactly, which is why attaching large UI shifts to that involuntary gesture makes the experience feel very unpredictable > activating your browser's reading mode Reading mode is a hack that's only needed because sites aren't already readable. You shouldn't have to activate it to be able to read the content. In addition, it doesn't always work well if the website didn't test it. On your website, for example, it removes all images from the text. > Having to click or tap a button requires the user to stop, evaluate whether the title interests them Purposefully doing things in a way that doesn't let the user decide if they want it is called a dark pattern. Its not far from those checkboxes that try to trick you into accepting marketing newsletters. "We can't give users an option to think if they want our emails! If they don't, why don't they just use their email's spam filtering?" You may not see it like that yourself, but huge links to your CV, talks and courses are exactly that - an ad that covers half the screen. You have multiple people telling you the experience is bad, and you asked for why, but when people give you the explanation you argue back. That's fine of course, it's your own site and you can do whatever you like with it without trying to suit anyone. But that doesn't make the reader experience less bad.
        2mo ago
    - dredmorbius 2mo ago
      The panels keep pushing back into the screen on Mobile. I quickly resorted to Reader View (Firefox/Android). Remove those, or stuff them below the article.
      - andros 2mo ago
        The mobile interaction is similar; it's not a bug, it's by design. If you were able to read the article without any problems, I'm satisfied. Thanks for the feedback.
        dredmorbius 2mo ago
        That was on mobile. If that's intent, the result is highly aggravating.
        andros 2mo ago
        I think you're focusing too much on your best practices paradigm and not enough on my design vision.
        dredmorbius 2mo ago
        Or perhaps the opposite is true. The content is solid. The presentation very much Gets In The Way.
        andros 2mo ago
        The presentation is adequate, it just doesn't suit certain tastes.
        hju22_-3 2mo ago
        Or perhaps you shouldn't get defensive of critique on your "design vision" such that you just write them off entirely like it has no value? You might like driving in the opposite lane, but rules say otherwise, and best practice can be likened to it because it's been decided on or landed that way due to multiple people being involved in the process of deciding those rules. Just as with best practices. There are best practices in design too, you know. Anyhow. Depending on the viewport your panels do get in the way, it's 1/3 of the screen on mine for example. If you're going to hide the panels, hide them properly. That you show them at the top and bottom automatically, fine, though they could be smaller on mobile. However, you could at least consider the UX of using it on smaller viewports. If I want to scroll up a little bit while reading, they pop into view, making me have to scroll down to hide them again. Meaning I have to scroll higher up than intended, so I have enough space to scroll down. Another common user pattern is to slowly continually scroll too, and a tiny jitter upwards causes them to reappear, but requires comparatively massive downwards scrolling to hide again. Your site is not the only one to do this, but it's just bad design. Vision or no, and it's no justification, just an excuse. And then, what about left handed people? It's easier to accidentally click into the message box field, which opens up the keyboard and you'll have to close it. Pair this with it taking up the majority of thumb space for scrolling, given its size, and, well. Is it unreasonable for people to tell you it's aggravating? No. And this is without considering, and doing the minimum for, people who may suffer with controlling devices for whatever reason. Not by "bending over backwards" as some would have it, but at least taking such into consideration. It's fine to have a vision of your intended or wanted design, but it's also important to be willing to reflect on how your vision may not necessarily be good design, depending on how one judges it, rather than just deflecting critique.
- aboardRat4 2mo ago
  They flicker in front of my eyes, distract me from reading, and are easy to misclick. Generally, there is zero reasons to add moving elements to a page.
andros 2mo ago
GUIs cannot be built either before or during the specification of a protocol. In fact, this is the part that should have the least weight. There are important steps, such as system auditing or making design decisions (like certificate rotation), that are not addressed. However, the goal is not to replace SMTP/IMAP, but rather to show how modern tools, when properly assembled, can replace older protocols with serious design flaws. JMAP is flexible, mature, and easy to connect with current technologies. It's a better option.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  You have two systems. One has awesome certificate rotation and crap UI. One has crap certificate rotation and awesome UI. Which one will take over the world, and which one will only ever have 10 users?
  - andros 2mo ago
    It's a false dichotomy; neither can survive in the long run. It's like asking yourself: would you prefer a car with a good engine but a bad steering wheel, or a car with good handling but a bad engine?
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      More people drive Toyotas than Ferraris.
dewey 2mo ago
> At the moment email's gui is horrible on all platforms without exception. How can you say that when it's one of the benefits of email that it's an open protocol and there's thousands of different apps built on top of it. Terminal UIs, web interfaces, chat interfaces etc. - that should be one of the cases where there's a GUI for anyone.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  And they all suck
marssaxman 2mo ago
> At the moment email's gui is horrible on all platforms without exception. This is obviously a matter of opinion. Of course there are endless different email GUIs, on all the platforms; if you don't like one, there are many alternatives. I cannot imagine that a "decent GUI" by modern web-development standards could be anything I'd prefer to what already exists. Email works and generally doesn't let designer ego get in the way.
- aboardRat4 2mo ago
  Which email gui supports managesieve?
isaachinman 2mo ago
Can you provide more feedback? What do you hate so much about current GUIs? (Working in this exact space)
- aboardRat4 2mo ago
  None of them have good (or any) support for managesieve. Without managesieve (or some other autotagging mechanism), email is just a big pile of junk. Even Gmail doesn't support editing filters on the mobile app. It's ludicrous in 2026. And their filters are strictly weaker than Sieve. None of them have a feature to "quickly generate a filter rule from a message". None of them have a way to generate a forum-like interface from a mailing list more or less automatically. None of them (except deltachat, I think), support displaying messages linearly, one below another, rather than one at a time. One at a time is also important. When I'm writing to my boss, I am writing a message as if it is a document. But when I'm writing to my girlfriend, I often want it to a be a one-line response. Overquotting is badly managed. Gmail hides the previous message under a button, which is super slow, but most of the time overquotting is not even needed. There should be a button to "not quote" and "strip quotes automatically".
  - isaachinman 2mo ago
    Will fast track these requests on Marco.

andros 2mo ago

Why do you find the panel experience so bad?

flexagoon 2mo ago
It's very annoying on mobile, covering half of the page all the time
- andros 2mo ago
  When you scroll down, they should all disappear. Do you have JavaScript disabled? What browser and device are you using?
  - zahlman 2mo ago
    FWIW, I'm on desktop but I do have JS disabled (more precisely, I use NoScript). This results in the top and left-side bars staying decorative and unobtrusive, but the concurrent visitor counter thingy is floating well above the bottom-right of the page. But then, as I shrink in the page width, the left-side bar and the concurrent visitor counter swap sides, and also a bunch of the content from the top is added to a new bar at the bottom. Eventually, the horizontal space between the side components becomes irrelevant such that they function as an additional bottom bar. At which point, maybe 40% of the vertical space is used for navigation and other shiny toys. This is really annoying, and the overall experience is inconsistent across widths. (Also, at all widths, the top-bar has a transparent background, so main page text interferes with top-bar text as it scrolls.) All of this is done in CSS, so presumably it can be fixed that way too.
    - andros 2mo ago
      If you want to eliminate any friction, I recommend enabling JavaScript. Otherwise, you can read it in terminal mode with: curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" [URL]
    - andros 2mo ago
      I disabled the chat for visitors without JavaScript; I hope this improves your experience. As for the other points, they are design choices. Thank you for your feedback. P.S.: For future interactions, please message me privately like everyone else. This is not the right place for this.
  - flexagoon 2mo ago
    Yes, but when I stop scrolling and scroll up even a little bit (by accident, or because I want to scroll up and read something I missed) they appear again. I think the only good UX possible is to have a button to show/hide them instead.
    - andros 2mo ago
      I'm sorry, but I disagree. The lowest interaction cost is scrolling; it's a natural, continuous, and almost involuntary gesture. Having to click or tap a button requires the user to stop, evaluate whether the title interests them, and decide to make the effort to tap. The interactions you're describing are intentional and measured. I'm sorry but if the content is truly all you care about, I recommend the previous option or activating your browser's reading mode.
      - flexagoon 2mo ago
        > almost involuntary gesture Exactly, which is why attaching large UI shifts to that involuntary gesture makes the experience feel very unpredictable > activating your browser's reading mode Reading mode is a hack that's only needed because sites aren't already readable. You shouldn't have to activate it to be able to read the content. In addition, it doesn't always work well if the website didn't test it. On your website, for example, it removes all images from the text. > Having to click or tap a button requires the user to stop, evaluate whether the title interests them Purposefully doing things in a way that doesn't let the user decide if they want it is called a dark pattern. Its not far from those checkboxes that try to trick you into accepting marketing newsletters. "We can't give users an option to think if they want our emails! If they don't, why don't they just use their email's spam filtering?" You may not see it like that yourself, but huge links to your CV, talks and courses are exactly that - an ad that covers half the screen. You have multiple people telling you the experience is bad, and you asked for why, but when people give you the explanation you argue back. That's fine of course, it's your own site and you can do whatever you like with it without trying to suit anyone. But that doesn't make the reader experience less bad.
        2mo ago
  - dredmorbius 2mo ago
    The panels keep pushing back into the screen on Mobile. I quickly resorted to Reader View (Firefox/Android). Remove those, or stuff them below the article.
    - andros 2mo ago
      The mobile interaction is similar; it's not a bug, it's by design. If you were able to read the article without any problems, I'm satisfied. Thanks for the feedback.
      - dredmorbius 2mo ago
        That was on mobile. If that's intent, the result is highly aggravating.
        andros 2mo ago
        I think you're focusing too much on your best practices paradigm and not enough on my design vision.
        dredmorbius 2mo ago
        Or perhaps the opposite is true. The content is solid. The presentation very much Gets In The Way.
        andros 2mo ago
        The presentation is adequate, it just doesn't suit certain tastes.
        hju22_-3 2mo ago
        Or perhaps you shouldn't get defensive of critique on your "design vision" such that you just write them off entirely like it has no value? You might like driving in the opposite lane, but rules say otherwise, and best practice can be likened to it because it's been decided on or landed that way due to multiple people being involved in the process of deciding those rules. Just as with best practices. There are best practices in design too, you know. Anyhow. Depending on the viewport your panels do get in the way, it's 1/3 of the screen on mine for example. If you're going to hide the panels, hide them properly. That you show them at the top and bottom automatically, fine, though they could be smaller on mobile. However, you could at least consider the UX of using it on smaller viewports. If I want to scroll up a little bit while reading, they pop into view, making me have to scroll down to hide them again. Meaning I have to scroll higher up than intended, so I have enough space to scroll down. Another common user pattern is to slowly continually scroll too, and a tiny jitter upwards causes them to reappear, but requires comparatively massive downwards scrolling to hide again. Your site is not the only one to do this, but it's just bad design. Vision or no, and it's no justification, just an excuse. And then, what about left handed people? It's easier to accidentally click into the message box field, which opens up the keyboard and you'll have to close it. Pair this with it taking up the majority of thumb space for scrolling, given its size, and, well. Is it unreasonable for people to tell you it's aggravating? No. And this is without considering, and doing the minimum for, people who may suffer with controlling devices for whatever reason. Not by "bending over backwards" as some would have it, but at least taking such into consideration. It's fine to have a vision of your intended or wanted design, but it's also important to be willing to reflect on how your vision may not necessarily be good design, depending on how one judges it, rather than just deflecting critique.
aboardRat4 2mo ago
They flicker in front of my eyes, distract me from reading, and are easy to misclick. Generally, there is zero reasons to add moving elements to a page.

andros 2mo ago

GUIs cannot be built either before or during the specification of a protocol. In fact, this is the part that should have the least weight. There are important steps, such as system auditing or making design decisions (like certificate rotation), that are not addressed. However, the goal is not to replace SMTP/IMAP, but rather to show how modern tools, when properly assembled, can replace older protocols with serious design flaws. JMAP is flexible, mature, and easy to connect with current technologies. It's a better option.

inigyou 2mo ago
You have two systems. One has awesome certificate rotation and crap UI. One has crap certificate rotation and awesome UI. Which one will take over the world, and which one will only ever have 10 users?
- andros 2mo ago
  It's a false dichotomy; neither can survive in the long run. It's like asking yourself: would you prefer a car with a good engine but a bad steering wheel, or a car with good handling but a bad engine?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    More people drive Toyotas than Ferraris.

dewey 2mo ago

> At the moment email's gui is horrible on all platforms without exception. How can you say that when it's one of the benefits of email that it's an open protocol and there's thousands of different apps built on top of it. Terminal UIs, web interfaces, chat interfaces etc. - that should be one of the cases where there's a GUI for anyone.

inigyou 2mo ago
And they all suck

marssaxman 2mo ago

> At the moment email's gui is horrible on all platforms without exception. This is obviously a matter of opinion. Of course there are endless different email GUIs, on all the platforms; if you don't like one, there are many alternatives. I cannot imagine that a "decent GUI" by modern web-development standards could be anything I'd prefer to what already exists. Email works and generally doesn't let designer ego get in the way.

aboardRat4 2mo ago
Which email gui supports managesieve?

isaachinman 2mo ago

Can you provide more feedback? What do you hate so much about current GUIs? (Working in this exact space)

aboardRat4 2mo ago
None of them have good (or any) support for managesieve. Without managesieve (or some other autotagging mechanism), email is just a big pile of junk. Even Gmail doesn't support editing filters on the mobile app. It's ludicrous in 2026. And their filters are strictly weaker than Sieve. None of them have a feature to "quickly generate a filter rule from a message". None of them have a way to generate a forum-like interface from a mailing list more or less automatically. None of them (except deltachat, I think), support displaying messages linearly, one below another, rather than one at a time. One at a time is also important. When I'm writing to my boss, I am writing a message as if it is a document. But when I'm writing to my girlfriend, I often want it to a be a one-line response. Overquotting is badly managed. Gmail hides the previous message under a button, which is super slow, but most of the time overquotting is not even needed. There should be a button to "not quote" and "strip quotes automatically".
- isaachinman 2mo ago
  Will fast track these requests on Marco.