MBOX-Line: From tss at iki.fi  Tue Dec 29 14:27:48 2009
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:43 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Childless noselect mailboxes
In-Reply-To: <D00B7DFA-492B-4DBE-87C7-A5F294BE8910@umn.edu>
References: <1262106049.26478.745.camel@timo-desktop>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.0912290938230.18442@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<1262111858.26478.842.camel@timo-desktop>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.0912291042070.18442@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<1262114250.26478.864.camel@timo-desktop>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.0912291237311.18442@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<D00B7DFA-492B-4DBE-87C7-A5F294BE8910@umn.edu>
Message-ID: <1262125668.26478.927.camel@timo-desktop>

On Tue, 2009-12-29 at 16:17 -0600, Brian Hayden wrote:
> > Correction: crappy clients display \NoSelect mailboxes in a  
> > confusing way.
> 
> Has anyone studied this from a user perspective? I suspect that you'd  
> have to come up with an interaction method that is both new and  
> intuitive (something that is quite the rare gem) to have the concept  
> have any meaning to the user in a client interface -- \NoSelect seems  
> quite foreign to everything else they encounter on a computer system  
> (or in any other interface, for that matter).

I've never studied, but my personal opinion:

The most annoying thing that a client can do is pop up a message saying
"Mailbox isn't selectable." This is what most clients seem to do.

What I think they should do is (lets assume a GUI client similar to
TB/Outlook/etc):

 - In the window where it would typically show list of messages or
message body, it would show a text something like "This mailbox doesn't
exist, it only contains children." (or something similar to that,
whatever is the most understandable text to user)

 - It could show also a button: "Create this mailbox."

 - It might also show "Child mailboxes:" and have a list of them. This
might be too much.

Hmm. Now that I think of it, I think clients usually show whatever the
NO reply to SELECT is from server. Maybe I could make that a bit more
informative.
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