Kevin,

 

You clearly haven't met my boss that uses webmail with his phone & tablet (and doesn't use "switch to the mobile interface") and composes all of his emails in the subject field because he can't see the body field! ;)

 

There really is no excuse not to have a Responsive UI/UX on any web application these days. I'm sure that mobile-friendly isn't the only reason for SmarterTools going that direction, but it isn't unwarranted either.

 

If the majority of your users use ActiveSync that is awesome. We have only three users that do (making it .001% of our userbase). Two years ago the majority of our users used to be half Outlook users and half Web-mail users. Now, the majority of our users are either OSX or iOS using IMAP (the more sophisticated using CalDav & CardDav along with it) with maybe 10% using Web-mail and almost no one using Outlook. Times change and user demographics change along with them. Those who run SmarterMail in an Enterprise might have tighter control over what email clients their users run, but ISPs & MSPs don't have that luxury and have to roll with what their users choose for themselves.

 

I don't think that there is anyone here who would disagree that long standing issues need to be addressed in SmarterMail which I would suspect is why there are 2 major versions forthcoming this calendar year instead of 1. One major version will have new features and fixes to old issues, and the other will have the new UI along with hopefully yet more fixes to old issues.

The reason is simple - to make the product better.

 

With the death of IE basically complete there's so much more to the web that developers can make use of.

 

As for the mobile interface - versus having to keep both a mobile UI and desktop UI maintained a single responsive interface streamlines the process and ensures all devices get the experience.

Scarab & Brian, good discussion. I was on the same page a few months ago.

 

If you do a survey of smartphone users, I'm guessing over 98% access email with the built-in smartphone client/app. It's because users want convenience and things like push notification, contact syncing, calendar integration, etc. Hardly anyone (except for Scarab's boss :-) uses webmail on a smartphone, regardless of platform (Yahoo, Gmail, etc.).

 

 

"...So instead of spending 6 months writing a mobile-friendly interface for 2% of users..."

 

They're not writing a separate mobile friendly interface, they're building one responsive interface that works on all devices (desktop, tablet, phone, etc)

 

The current UI needs a revamp at any rate to make it better - theres more to UI/UX than just the colors and layout.

 

 

For the record, I'm not opposed to a new and improved UI. For example, here are a few posts I've made to improve the user experience:

• Left Pane for Calendar & other UI Enhancements
• Add Calendar Event directly from Inbox
• Emoji
• Drag/Drop doesn't work with Zoom>100%
• User Interface - more mobile friendly
• Move 'Sender Priority Override' in Admin UI

If the new UI could address all these items, that would be great. Just hoping ST is doing it for the right reasons (not for mobile only) and that it doesn't take forever (we're already in March and the 1st major update is still in beta).

Now that SM15 is released, I wanted to revisit this topic. Hoping ST will state the goal(s) of the new UI.

 

If the #1 reason is to make it responsive (mobile-friendly), then IMO that's a mistake (see reasons above). It will negatively impact the desktop experience where the UI is used most of the time. How? See the reply in this thread about ST's new responsive web site:

But if the #1 reason for a new UI is to create an Outlook-killer, then I'm all in and let's roll!

I'm with kevind - the current autodiscover implementation gets so painfully close to working it's a shame more time isn't invested in getting it to "just work".  99% of our customer base happens to be volunteers - they shouldn't have to type a server name in order to connect to their email; hell, their username & password is difficult enough.

Sorry, but I cannot find anything other than this discussion.  Where can I read more?  This could cause us to delay implementation if we know it's right around the corner.