SmarterMail 16 webmail editor not usable on mobile

Problem reported by Software Operations - 1/3/2018 at 2:12 AM

Resolved

Tried the latest SmarterMail v16 and liked the admin interface. But users immediately started complaining about the web interface on mobile (December 29, 2017 build). A problem, as version 16 is being touted as being responsive / mobile friendly.

We have been requested to rollback to v15, which we have done, due to user pressure.

All complaints have disappeared.

Attached is one example screenshot. With the onscreen keyboard shown (you need a keyboard when you are writing an email), the SmarterMail top header does not scroll and there are 4 lines (4?!) of toolbar. On all the phones we tried, this limited us to seeing one or two lines of the email we are writing, which makes it a nightmare to use on mobile. That particular screenshot from a Samsung S8+ (one of the current Android flagship phones).

We would love to see v16 being a usable product in all areas, as a lot of it is really great, but all modules need to be usable, and writing emails is a pretty important part of a webmail client.

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Matt Petty Replied

1/3/2018 at 7:47 AM

Employee Post

As a temporary solution you can minimize the toolbars for the editor with the minus button. I'll bring this up with the rest of the team and see if there is something we can do.

Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Software Operations Replied

1/3/2018 at 9:33 AM

Thanks for the feedback and for promising to bring up with the team. I recommend getting your coding team to actually use the interface on mobile to send their emails for a day (or even an hour). The editor would improve very quickly...

We don't need a 4 line toolbar full of options we'll likely never use on mobile, and we don't need to have the send from/to/subject visible and locked on screen the whole time we edit a message - the whole page should be able to scroll like most other systems. That example phone has a 2960x1440 resolution, but gets less than one line of actual text editor.

(It was not apparent that a minus button would minimize the toolbar: It looks like every other tool item, I would expect that would do a horizontal rule). On mobile that toolbar should all be hidden away under a tiny dropdown.

Have a look at Outlook.com or other competitive systems, which do work well on mobile for comparison.

In the meantime, we've already rolled back to SmarterMail v15 due to user pressure.

viv burrows Replied

1/3/2018 at 10:12 PM

Thanks for the advice Matt, I always took it that the - sign was a hyphen, the screen is huge now. We have had similar feedback from users about the text entry area, I can at least send an update mail out to users who are patiently struggling with v16

Employee Replied

1/25/2018 at 7:28 AM

Employee Post

We have modified the mobile editor toolbar to be a single line and added a button next to the subject line that can be used to collapse or show the From and signature fields and the To / Cc / Bcc fields. These changes will be in the next maintenance release.

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