I support the proposal to drop Evolution and leave it at that. Not
just webmail, but dare I say Gmail is more expected than the client.
A shame the usability test was not performed with Fedora 24.
They are not that different. The whole user experience did not turn
around in 24.
Misha
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Misha
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On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 5:47 AM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro(a)gnome.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2016-03-12 at 11:10 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
>> I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and
>> many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and
>> confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring
>> drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution
>> project.
>> Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident
>> that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks
>> who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We
>> intend
>> to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started
>> developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done
>> so
>> yet, pending further discussion.
>
> One of our interns performed a usability test on Evolution. The results
> are at [1] and are highly negative. It seems the users had difficulty
> configuring Evolution to use their mail accounts; in particular, Gmail
> always rejects your password without any error message unless you
> configure Gmail to allow access to "less secure apps." Users found the
> interface to be outdated. All of the users indicated that, outside of
> the usability test, they exclusively use webmail.
>
> Upstream, we emphasize the recommendation to not install Evolution by
> default by including it in the extra apps moduleset, rather than the
> core moduleset. I really no longer see the value in diverging from
> upstream here. Users who want it can easily find it. We might move
> Geary into core in the future, now that it's actively maintained again,
> if it improves to the point that it provides a really compelling user
> experience, but the Evolution developers have been clear that they
> don't want any UI changes. We should drop it (without replacement) for
> F26. I don't agree that mail clients are expected functionality for new
> computers in the age of webmail. And anyone typing Evolution in the
> overview will still find it, thanks to the Software search provider.
>
> /$0.02
>
> Michael
>
> [1]
https://dkripak.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/ux-test-results-part-ii/
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