Hi Justin:

All of these ideas sound great Simplify

I would vote to incorporate the features of the scheduler into the main sending window and do away with that as a separate plugin

One complaint that I hear about the sending process is that there is no way to save work between sessions So if you are designing an HTML email and you need to get approval before sending, you are forced to either leave the browser window open or save the plain text and HTML parts out to a separate text file on your hard drive

The work around is to use the scheduler but it isn't as robust as the standard way of sending email (at least in the version we are currently using)

I know that it involves setting a cron which makes it difficult for some to use but if there was a config variable that was off by default for "use scheduler" then those bits would be hidden unless specifically enabled by those able to use them

R

// Rob Taylor \ TD Media // http://www tdmedia com

\ 760 438 9393

>

Um,

The, "Send a List Message" screen is in dire need of redesign The design hasn't changed much since 2 0, released a million years ago and things have just been tacked on

I'm wondering if anyone can give me a good idea on how people are using this screen and what gets in their way and what feels clumsy?

Some ideas I had:

• Get rid of the, "Simple" and "Advanced" screens It makes things messy in the code and the different layouts get confusing

• Separate the various form fields (There are a few ) into their logical parts:

  • Message Headers
  • Message Body
  • Everything Else

• Have the most obvious things viewable, have everything else hidden For example:

  • When you first view the screen, the only form elements to edit (and are visible) are the Subject: and the PlainText Message

  • Have an easy way to toggle the visibility any other Message Headers, so you can edit them, /if you want/

  • Have an easy way to toggle the visibility of the PlainText Message and the HTML Message fields, so you can edit, what you want

  • Allow a way to save the preferences of what gets shown by default and what gets hidden by default, so if you don't like my default idea, /you can change it/

  • Allow a preference that says, "Don't show this form field, at all" (Say I want to use the FCKeditor and never, ever want to write a plaintext message and I'm setting this up for a client that would be confused with that weird, "PlainText Message" field)

  • Allow a preference to populate the PlainText and HTML form fields with the PlainText or HTML mailing list message templates

• Do away with the weird popup menu of choices in the, "basic screen"

• the ones that says,

  Format:

  PlainText HTML Plain Text - HTML version will be created Plain Text - HTML tags stripped

No one really knows what to do here If you want PlainText, write it in the PlainText, textfield If you want HTML, write it in the HTML textfield That's it!

The "Plain Text - HTML version will be created" was sort of an idea on making an HTML email, without HTML knowledge If you want that, use the FCKeditor - it'll do what you want and gobs more I have no idea why you'd want to use the, "Plain Text - HTML tags stripped", feature

And above all this, have some sort of way to hook up an outside form that has similar form elements to actually send out an email This basically means documenting what the form fields do and provide some sort of authentication scheme that's not the list control panel's session stuff

Comments? I'm hacking together a mock up now

-- Justin Simoni

Dada Mail - Write Once: Distribute Everywhere Software url: http://mojo skazat com

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