HCI Forum topic DISS 720

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/a-simple-e-mail-design-idea/

I find the comments on these articles quite helpful at times.


April 9, 2008, 11:19 pm
A Simple E-Mail Design Idea

A good idea from a reader:

David, I had the simplest of ideas for helping people avoid “Reply-All” nightmares (where you humiliate yourself by clicking Reply to All, blasting your response to a huge group, instead of just Reply). E-mail programs like Outlook or Apple Mail should just not put the Reply-All button anywhere near the regular Reply button!

Visually, when the two are so close to each other, it’s easy to mistakenly click the wrong one. But if you had to go down into, say, the bottom-right corner to find the Reply-All button, that would likely jar you enough so that you wouldn’t make an error.

Hope that someone implements this some day soon!

(To which I add: Or how about, at the very least, requiring that you press a key, like Shift, as you click the Reply button to change it to “Reply to All”?)


To which I say (perhaps self-righteously) that those that use the mouse to send mail deserve all the pain and agony they get. At least in Outlook, pressing CTRL-r will reply to the current message, and SHIFT-CTRL-r will reply to all the current message. There’s the shift key you were looking for.

Keep your hands on the keyboard. Eschew applications that don’t let you use keyboard shortcuts for all activities. Or at least the most common ones!

— Posted by Randy

You can customize Apple’s Mail toolbar, at least, any way you want.

— Posted by Joe
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3.
April 9th,
2008
11:43 pm

“Are you sure you want to reply to all?”
press cancel or OK

— Posted by chewbee