Hello guys, I'm working in a small team and we're developing a webmail application. I'm about to create the GUI and I'd like to do a quick brainstorm here Do you like current webmail GUIs? Could you imagine the webmail interface of your dreams? How would it be? Ok, I'm going to help you, please have a look at these webmail GUIs: http://www.neuridia.org/tmp/gui/samples/atmail.jpg http://www.neuridia.org/tmp/gui/samples/gmail.jpg http://www.neuridia.org/tmp/gui/samples/icewarp.jpg http://www.neuridia.org/tmp/gui/samples/live.jpg http://www.neuridia.org/tmp/gui/samples/smartermail.jpg http://www.neuridia.org/tmp/gui/samples/yahoo.jpg What do you like in these GUIs, and what don't you like? What about mixing the forum GUI and the webmail GUI? Sort of having a forum interface but to read mails? Forums and webmail have a lot of similarities after all... I'm just thinking at loud here Please let me know your opinion and suggestions Thanks.
Well, lets see, first off I'd like to share a great webmail app you didn't list here: RoundCube (roundcube_dot_net) The best one in your list seemed to be icewarp, and what made it good is it looked/worked exactly the way you'd expect mail to work. It looked good, better than smartermail (similar layout) even though they likely work the same, and it had the design in balance. I'd rather gouge my eyes out slowly with a toothpick then spend an hour looking at Microsoft's livemail design. It's overdone, tacky and prolly made some bad designer very rich. Keep it simple, more bling than gmail, whic was obviously designed by programmers, but not as much as hotmail. RoundCube is a little on the bling side of perfect, but the reason I wanted to show you was because it's open source, you can freely download the source code and see exaclty how they did it, can't quite do that with the others hehe Best of luck, innovati!
Thanks, actually I didn't list RoundCube...Because of its interface IceWarp is not bad. What exactly do you like in it? Is it the colors? I like Gmail too, for its minimalist layout. Some people like a preview pane, some don't. What about you? I was actually a contributor to the RoundCube forum, but I got tired of it, it's not designed the way I want, from a technical standpoint, and also I don't like the look & feel of it. Any other comment is welcome! Thanks.
I use gmail, I love the service, but what I find frustrating is that it lacks visual contrast. I can't clearly see the difference between the side navigation and the inbox, or the navigation and that chat thing. Everything's made out of that flat sky blue and flat white. I have no sense of depth, weight, containment or direction. What I liked about the others was that they looked more like mail programs, they referenced something that peopel know how to use, and are also very very intuitive. I think it's funny that you don't like roundcube hehe, I thought it looked nice. Now, I will say this though, you may not have access to a mac, but the Mac Mail client is the best/slickest mail app I've *ever* seen. it's so beautiful, simple and easy to use, and there's almost nothing to it. It's really a power-app in sheeps clothing. I think Apple's Mail client would be a perfect starting point for user experience, UI design and layout, and it would translate perfectly to an HTML/css layout. I think there are some good videos on Apple's website showing off Mail! If you're looking for free/opensource icons that you can use or modify I also strongly recommend 3 sets, Tango Icons from FreeDesktop, Oxygen-icons from KDE, or Crystal Project from Everaldo. They are all open-source and the best icons I've seen out there for any price. Best of luck with the design!
As an Outlook user for desktop and PDA email it is the interface that I am most familiar with and so the closest mirror to this for webmail makes it feel familiar and you know where to go to do what. To be honest, its email, people arent going to be looking for the most beautiful thing as it is much more about simplicisty and functionality. As such, by mirroring the look and feel of the most popular clients will help people feel comfortable with it quickly