Version: 0.3 (using KDE 3.4.1 Level "a" , SUSE 9.2 UNSUPPORTED) Compiler: gcc version 3.3.4 (pre 3.3.5 20040809) OS: Linux (i686) release 2.6.8-24.16-default I get korn to check my emails for my account every couple of minutes. However, I have various problems with my connection where I cannot access my account sometimes. For example, I sometimes have trouble setting up my wireless connection when I change access points, my email server crashes quite a lot etc. The problem is, korn does not alert me to when it failed to check my emails. For example, I could be working for one hour thinking that I don't have any emails waiting for me, when korn is actually not able to access my email account. This is important and the user should be altered to this. I think a solution to this would be to add another configuration list for the icon/text appearance for when the connection is broken (like what you already have to indicating no messages and one or more messages). For example, you could set the korn inbox icon to change to a red exclamation mark or a broken envelope icon when the account could not be checked. Kbiff does something similar to this, but has the annoying habit of popping up a dialog box, which is disruptive to the user.
Thanks for the report. You can see if checking was succesfull by checking the tooltip of it. It checking failed, it says "invalid". It looks like a dublicate of bug #99028. Another point: what should it do if you have two accounts and one was unsuccesfull?
No problem, thanks for the great software. :-) I'm no usability expert, but I don't think the tooltip feature is the best solution. One usability principle is that the user should always be aware of status information and by using a tooltip, you are putting the burden on the user to find out what the current email status is. For example, imagine you were waiting for an important email to arrive while working with other software and you kept glancing at korn to check if it is in your inbox yet. If the only feedback you get is from a tooltip, by just looking at the korn applet, you cannot tell if you haven't received a message yet or if your connection is broken. In this scenario, you will have to periodically hover your mouse over the applet to check the status just to be sure it's working, interupting what you are currently doing. The software should work to help the user where possible and the tooltip doesn't effectively communicate what should be considered an important message (i.e. your inbox cannot be checked). I know this might sound silly, but my mail sever is currently having problems staying up, my DNS server fails to resolve hosts occasionally, I forget to change to the nearby wireless access point when I log in etc. For the two accounts issue, there isn't really much you can do with the space if you are combining multiple accounts into one status box. I think a good solution would be to show an icon (e.g. a red exclamation mark) if one or more inbox could not be checked. You could then get more information from either the tooltip or a context menu option. A dialog box or passive message would also be good, but you don't want it to be disruptive. I imagine most users only have one regularly checked account, so you should definately implement a good solution for the most common case.
Well, at the moment I see the tooltip option more as a temporely solution. There is another workaround to see it some more on the foreground: make a script that checks if the connection is still working. A script will look something like: while[ true ]; do ( hostx "some host to check" 2>&1 >/dev/null && echo "1" || echo "0" ) ; sleep 300; done You can then setup KOrn such that it display's red if "no emails are found", and transparent, or not at all if "email is found". The type of account should be "process". The configuration box seems a bit crowdy at the moment; especcially if another column is added, but that kind of problems are to be solved... BTW: the suggestion for a passive popup looks as a good addition to this (of course only if passive popup is selected). *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 99028 ***