Re: Yanoff questions and comments

Gregg,

All in all, this is a very good app, and I was quite pleased with the functionality (even surprised in some instances).  So, while I have "wishes" I can't say that there is a lot to really "complain" about.  You might get more input from me over time.  I work in support, and I sometimes feel like a "professional" beta tester!  I don't really expect Yanoff to be a desktop replacement, so don't ever feel like I'm trying to be "unreasonable" when I bring up ideas - they are just "perfect world" wishes <g>.  And of course, a lot of it is just over time coming up with "new ways" to do "old things" - it's easy at first glance to say "this isn't working well for me" and then over time finding that by simply changing the WAY you do something comes up with the same results and works just fine when you get used to it!

> It is very uncommon that marking un/read is actually useful in itself; it is
> generally done as a preparation for some kind of deletion operation...

Well it is for me <g>.  As I said, I don't delete any messages because I need to go back often to check previous messages, and not always things I know in advance that I should keep  - and of course, I won't use the phone as my only/primary NNTP reader.  So if I've been using the PC for 3 or 4 days, and then need to use the phone (for example I'll be "on the road" for 5 days next week), I'll want to download the messages, but then mark them all read to "catch up".  I will rarely delete messages outright - I will use the "purge old articles" instead.   "Mark all read" is a fairly common thing I do, even in my PC reader.

Here's some examples of how I work, and how Yanoff could work "better" for me (but as I say, a lot of it is just learning over time how to adjust HOW I do things).  For example, someone else might be handling an issue just fine, and then a later message makes me think "hmmmm - that's not quite right, it should be xyz" - but it's only 10 messages into the thread where I feel like jumping in <g> - so I don't know in advance that I will need the parent of THAT particular message until later, so by not deleting things as I read them I can still go back and look.

I can see that in "casual" NNTP usage this wouldn't be terribly important, but for the kind of work I do it's very important to keep some history.  Of course we discourage a lot of unnecessary quote-back because NNTP is a threaded environment, and we can "get" to the prior information easily through NNTP, just by "going back".  That only works, of course, if you have the history to look at (or a way to ask for the parent).

> I have to hard-code new parameters every time Palm comes out with new HW.
> It works on the earlier Treos but I haven't released an update since the 680
> came out...

Yes, Palm is so nice about that <g>.  I've had every GSM Treo made since the 90, so I know all about relearning my way around frequently!  Keeps us sharp!

Now, while I have your attention, I do have a couple more "wish" items:

1. The newgroup list shows how many messages are in each group, but doesn't indicate if there are any "new" messages. Because I DON'T delete everything,  not being able to tell which groups has new messages is a slight annoyance.  I know that since you expect most people to "delete" anything they are not using, you might not have ever run into another request for this.

2. Relative to #1, I have a button in the message list to go to the "next newsgroup 1st unread message" - it would be nice if this could skip to the "next newsgroup containing unread messages" so I can avoid landing on groups with nothing new.  This would even be useful for your "tidy" users who delete everything.  I currently have 37 newsgroups defined on the Novell server - so you can see that I end up clicking through a fair number of newsgroups throughout the day when there are no new messages.

3. It would be nice if "locked" messages could behave as "unread" messages when  you enter a group (merely because I've used PC programs that do that, and I "like" it).  I realize that I could "mark" messages and then "unread all marked" and "lock all unread" before a move to a new group so that next time the messages I'm "working" on are still "unread" and "locked" - but that's getting complicated!  Maybe someday we'll be able to chain actions to a button!

Thanks!  And again - it's a great program!  I'm happy to have it now!

Danita



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