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