My Exchange service also has IMAP settings, so I tried them out.
Not all HTML messages were loading properly.
The sync settings per folder were a little confusing. For some I wanted to download headers only, and others headers and bodies w/attachments. Didn't see options for this.
Settings screens in general were inconsistent. Navigation didn't work so well between fields in a screen. Couldn't scroll down a screen always in some of the settings screens, when according to the scrollbar, there was more to see.
Looking good though, a couple version number changes away from my credit card
I downloaded and installed the new version of Flexmail over the top of the old one and I have no problems so far. Right now, I just use it for POP email and it seems to work fine for my needs.
But I do have a few questions for you.
1. I am using PhoneAlarm and it has an icon on the Today Screen for new email. Even though FlexMail is my default email client, when I receive new mail this icon doesn't indicate this. Is there a setting somewhere that I am missing or perhaps a registry key I can change to make this work?
2. When I try to Send a web page link in PocketIE by choosing Menu-->Send Link via email, it seems to only work with Pocket Inbox and not FlexMail. What do I need to do so that the system uses Flexmail for these actions?
3. Do the mail notifications work better with the newly released Spb Phone Suite application. I am thinking about trying that to replace PhoneAlarm as I am a big Spb software fan.
I also agree with another poster about the complexity of the menus. I don't know where I stand as the 'typical' user, but I only have 1 email account in Flexmail (I've had 2 or three at one time in the past) and when I want to manually check for mail within the program, I need to click the Menu softkey, go down one to Send and Receive, go to the right to bring up another menu and then down one to my account just to refresh my inbox. Would it be possible in the future to customize the softkeys so one could be configured for Send/Recieve? Either that or just include a basic Send/Receive command in the first menu that pops up.
Tried it yesterday. In fact I have tried every version of FlexMail since 1.0.
I used to have the SMS issue on my MDA w TMobile.
With this version, on my new TMO Dash, things worked fine. However the performance make the app essentially unusable for me. I sync my work email using MS Direct Push. Filing a message into a another folder takes 8 full minutes every time to load up the list of folders. Just unusable.
That simply doesn't sound right. Now granted - as I've written thousands of times - FM is a IMAP/POP3 app primarily and we support ActiveSync more so on the side than in full which means that FM is MUCH faster with IMAP/POP3 than ActiveSync, but I don't know if we've seen that kind of slowness reported with AS folders before. Then again, that wasn't really an optimized/common action in our users.
How many folders did you have? I'm interested so we can put that into the test bin.
Quote:
I also found the UI to have too many sub-menus. I should not have to go through 3 level of indirections to do a simple task.
The interface is designed still for Pocket PC far more than Smartphone. This is our first SP rev and it shows. I won't make any excuses for that. We did implement a tremendous amount of the feedback on the SP UI but simply put its not optimized for SP.
Also if you use the hotkeys, most things you don't have to go to the menus for. Press H or 0 to get to the hotkes.
Quote:
Other than that the interface is nice and it has very nice improvement over pocket inbox. Just wished the tool requirements would have been thought more thoroughly
They were I know that most people on THIS site are going to be Exchange users and FM does have a lot of work put into it to make it a usable MAPI (ActiveSync/SMS/Hotmail) client. But that's not our focus because really there is not much you can do when those account types have severe limitations that simply cannot be written around. Our focus is business level email using standard protocols: IMAP and POP3.
I use Direct Push with Exchange, but I can tell you that the experience using FM with IMAP IDLE is superior to Exchange Direct Push and Messaging because of the per email notifications and frankly better controls. That's not to say we can't improve our support of AS accounts and all, but its not going to be our primary focus.
As I told Microsoft, our goal is not to compete with them on Exchange connectivity. I can't. Our goal is to provide a much better email experience for everyone else. And I think FM 2007 Rev 2 does that.
I think its a testament to the software's leap in quality, reliablility, and usability from Rev 1 and previous versions that the complaints we get are primarily with MAPI stuff. Even with the adolescent Smartphone UI (which is getting improved dramatically more in Rev 3 based on feedback we got during Rev 2 beta) that doesn't get mentioned as much because the software works very well for what its designed for: IMAP/POP3. Now that we've finally overcome the curse of previous versions on the core, I think we can start to expand on its abilities in MAPI and elsewhere.
Tried it yesterday. In fact I have tried every version of FlexMail since 1.0.
I used to have the SMS issue on my MDA w TMobile.
With this version, on my new TMO Dash, things worked fine. However the performance make the app essentially unusable for me. I sync my work email using MS Direct Push. Filing a message into a another folder takes 8 full minutes every time to load up the list of folders. Just unusable.
That simply doesn't sound right. Now granted - as I've written thousands of times - FM is a IMAP/POP3 app primarily and we support ActiveSync more so on the side than in full which means that FM is MUCH faster with IMAP/POP3 than ActiveSync, but I don't know if we've seen that kind of slowness reported with AS folders before. Then again, that wasn't really an optimized/common action in our users.
How many folders did you have? I'm interested so we can put that into the test bin.
Quote:
I also found the UI to have too many sub-menus. I should not have to go through 3 level of indirections to do a simple task.
The interface is designed still for Pocket PC far more than Smartphone. This is our first SP rev and it shows. I won't make any excuses for that. We did implement a tremendous amount of the feedback on the SP UI but simply put its not optimized for SP.
Also if you use the hotkeys, most things you don't have to go to the menus for. Press H or 0 to get to the hotkes.
Quote:
Other than that the interface is nice and it has very nice improvement over pocket inbox. Just wished the tool requirements would have been thought more thoroughly
They were I know that most people on THIS site are going to be Exchange users and FM does have a lot of work put into it to make it a usable MAPI (ActiveSync/SMS/Hotmail) client. But that's not our focus because really there is not much you can do when those account types have severe limitations that simply cannot be written around. Our focus is business level email using standard protocols: IMAP and POP3.
I use Direct Push with Exchange, but I can tell you that the experience using FM with IMAP IDLE is superior to Exchange Direct Push and Messaging because of the per email notifications and frankly better controls. That's not to say we can't improve our support of AS accounts and all, but its not going to be our primary focus.
As I told Microsoft, our goal is not to compete with them on Exchange connectivity. I can't. Our goal is to provide a much better email experience for everyone else. And I think FM 2007 Rev 2 does that.
I think its a testament to the software's leap in quality, reliablility, and usability from Rev 1 and previous versions that the complaints we get are primarily with MAPI stuff. Even with the adolescent Smartphone UI (which is getting improved dramatically more in Rev 3 based on feedback we got during Rev 2 beta) that doesn't get mentioned as much because the software works very well for what its designed for: IMAP/POP3. Now that we've finally overcome the curse of previous versions on the core, I think we can start to expand on its abilities in MAPI and elsewhere.
First of all, I'd like to state that I am a big fan of your company. I have been a pocketinformant user for many years (whenever I had a PPC , I switched back and forth between PPC and smartphone).
In terms of folders: I have about 100 folders on my exchange server mailbox. I use it because it is the only way I will get my corporate email in real time. not allowed through IMAP and this is my primary messaging need.
It feels like your implementation polls the server every time, vs. caching folders. When I file a message in pocket inbox, the list of folders appears immediately. Doing so in Flexmail takes about 8 min as I said, every time.
Loading the app is too slow as well, I am sure you know that
On the menu complexity, I will make the same comment for PPC: simple common tasks should be accessible in a first level menu (as an Engineering manger I have faced usability requirements many times...). Less important tasks can be in a sub menu. Very advanced or very infrequent ones, in a sub sub menu. The fact that a task like marking a message read is in a sub sub menu makes the app less usable.
Don't get me wrong: I really like the app and the UI you designed, but if it takes me a lot more time to do simple tasks over pocket inbox, it will in the end make me less productive.
Also on your point that this is mostly a POP/IMAP client: focus is great and optimizing this is very good, but realize that - as these are convergence devices - having 2 apps to deal with essentially similar items (an SMS, exchange email or POP/IMAP message) should be treated identically and as a user, I do not want 2 apps. So if one app does a very good job at one and a lesser good job at the other, and tool B does a reasonable job at all, I'll go for tool B which allows me to deal with all my messaging needs in one place (just wished pocket Inbox would also handle my voicemails......)
Would be happy to provide more feedback and beta tests future releases...
First of all, I'd like to state that I am a big fan of your company. I have been a pocketinformant user for many years (whenever I had a PPC , I switched back and forth between PPC and smartphone).
In terms of folders: I have about 100 folders on my exchange server mailbox. I use it because it is the only way I will get my corporate email in real time. not allowed through IMAP and this is my primary messaging need.
OK, understood. 100 MAPI folders - not a good thing for FlexMail at this time.
Quote:
It feels like your implementation polls the server every time, vs. caching folders. When I file a message in pocket inbox, the list of folders appears immediately. Doing so in Flexmail takes about 8 min as I said, every time.
No, we don't pull it from the server. We just do it via MAPI each and every time, but I think we do so in a very ineffcient way. As I said, this was not a focus of FM so it was not handled efficiently. Since we're working on Rev 3 specifically with performance and optimizations in mind, I'll note your config.
Quote:
Loading the app is too slow as well, I am sure you know that
For the same reason of the above. We enumerate all MAPI folders and that's slow at this time. I know two things we are doing for Rev 3 to improve this dramatically.
Quote:
On the menu complexity, I will make the same comment for PPC: simple common tasks should be accessible in a first level menu (as an Engineering manger I have faced usability requirements many times...). Less important tasks can be in a sub menu. Very advanced or very infrequent ones, in a sub sub menu. The fact that a task like marking a message read is in a sub sub menu makes the app less usable.
To you its a common task. To others, its not. We have a rule that no menu can scroll if its on a QVGA Landscape screen or PPC Square screen. So we've got reply, forward, delete as the primary commands that most people want to do. So while I agree with you, I think we are doing exactly what you say. Its just you want a command you use a lot to be top-level while its not top level for most users because they have things set to mark as read if its shown in preview for 3 seconds or opened.
Quote:
Don't get me wrong: I really like the app and the UI you designed, but if it takes me a lot more time to do simple tasks over pocket inbox, it will in the end make me less productive.
I can agree with the principle of your comment. One thing to remember is as I said - the app is still PPC centric. On PPC tap/hold is very much used and if you tap/hold on a group of messages or that single message you get all those items in the first level menu. When you have the soft key alone, your specific example is not considered a common command. It may be for you and a lot of other people, but it was not for the sample of people we worked with.
Quote:
Also on your point that this is mostly a POP/IMAP client: focus is great and optimizing this is very good, but realize that - as these are convergence devices - having 2 apps to deal with essentially similar items (an SMS, exchange email or POP/IMAP message) should be treated identically and as a user, I do not want 2 apps. So if one app does a very good job at one and a lesser good job at the other, and tool B does a reasonable job at all, I'll go for tool B which allows me to deal with all my messaging needs in one place (just wished pocket Inbox would also handle my voicemails......)
I agree with that, except you have to focus. There are millions of users out there that use POP3/IMAP and a much smaller amount that use Exchange. We support ActiveSync/SMS/Hotmail because they are desired by many people. And we will continue to work on those areas. But let me turn it around on you. If FlexMail came out and was an excellent MAPI client and bad POP3/IMAP client - what would be the point of buying it? MAPI limits you to what MAPI provides and Messaging does everything MAPI provides. Unlike Pocket Informant where we can innovate, MAPI does not allow that. So at the very best FlexMail can only equal Messaging in ActiveSync/SMS/Hotmail. It can never be better. With IMAP/POP3 on the other hand, we can be better.
So our focus must be where we can actually improve the situation. As such our focus is IMAP/POP3. But just because one's focus is there doesn't mean we ignore MAPI. Rev 2 has many MAPI improvements. Speed just wasn't one of them. Rev 3 will have many more MAPI improvements (we have a lot on our list).
Thank for your answer. As you could guess from my previous post, I am a big fan of your company and have used your applications for years now, with great pleasure.
So, I'll keep testing FlexMail as new releases come out. And I may be part of a minority of users, but all I can say is that the primary requirements that I personally have as an individual are:
- offer a better, more sophisticated tool than pocket Inbox - you do that today and do it well
- consolidate all my messaging needs in one app: SMS, exchange, POP/IMAP. Most important to me being exchange first, SMS second
- have a lean, one hand operations UI. I do a lot (too much in fact) while driving and cannot deal with convoluted UI's
at the end of the day, it is about letting me do things faster and better than I do today.
Again, I have been for years and will remain an adept of WebIS. I am looking fwd to the next iteration of FlexMail. You have come a long way since I tried out (and in fact bought) WebIS Mail 1.0 on my ipaq 5455 with a BT connection to my SE T68i
Sadly, I had to uninstall it finally. I had SMS messages disappear as I tried to retrieve them and the over all feel of the application is just to sluggish. My alerts all got changed after the install. I have two IMAP email accounts, IMAP IDLE didn't seem to like either of them. This is not meant to be a scientific opinion, just a personal one. My primary email is Exchange. FlexMail just wasn't up to snuff in that department either. The interface is clumsy and convoluted. There are way too many menus to navigate to do a simple send and receive. I hope someday this application is ready for prime time. WM needs a good email application. The built in one is still the better alternative.
I am using PhoneAlarm and I had the problem of the icons on the bottom always defaulting to outlook.
I was able to get my hands on 1.10 beta 5 and that fixed the problem.
The one problem that i am still having is that when i go into the contact list and select a person to sms, it still kicks me back to outlook. Also I believe that the PhoneAlarm notify is still getting it's info from outlook.
any idea if there is a way to get the smartphone to default to flexmail, when sms'ing from the contact list?
Linear Mode
LinkBacks (?)
