pigwin32 said:
My issue wasn't with the drawer itself, I agree it can be useful, my beef was with the implementation. Take another look at the image, the drawer is still there, it just goes all the way to the top, no more accidentally clicking on the application behind mail. Plus there are no icons in the toolbar above the drawer so if you close it, all the icons in the toolbar stay exactly where they are, i.e. exactly where you expect them to be. That's good UI design and demonstrates someone at Apple is still thinking about this stuff.
But it's entirely inconsistent with the rest of the OS. AFAIK it's the only tool with that interface. And I'd expect the icons to move left if I collapse the 'drawer'.
I've personally never had a problem with the old drawer metaphor or it's implementation. I've never clicked the wrong application because the drawer doesn't extend all the way up to the titlebar. You also don't seem to understand how they work. If you've still got access to a 10.3 machine, close the drawer, then pick up a mail from your open mailbox and then drag it to the side of the window pane - the drawer slides open for you to drop your mail into a folder. When done it slides away again. That is really cool if you don't want mail taking up masses of screen estate.
pigwin32 said:
I'm not sure why you would suggest it looks like an Outlook knock-off, I use Outlook at work and I'm finding it difficult to see where there is any similarity, oh wait, they both have an Inbox.
Because now we've got the same three pane classic old style mail application with a grey title bar and grey buttons with icons on and the folders on the left whereas before it looked like an OSX application, not a reskinned copy of Outlook with graphite buttons. The folders were on the right, putting what was important, your mail, in front of you reading from the left. It was a well thought out piece of human interaction.
Go look at the screenshot posted earlier of Mail with Preview behind it. That's two interface styles, and Preview rocks IMHO. And then we've got the iTunes/Finder metal style.
And the transparent widget style in iLife05.
And the Pro Video tools interface in darker grey with different tab styles.
And the wood in Garageband.
I don't care which ones they pick, but be consistent with where they are implemented. Their interface consistency has been shot since 10.3 came out and Mail makes it worse.
