In a recent email responding to my previous post Bruce D'Arcus writes:
Your comments are off, so:I have to say I think you're off on your rant about Thunderbird. The
reason for the behavior is not logic per se, but rather just as
fundamentally, consistency. Most applications (not just mail apps)
I've used use q for quitting. So I'd say Outlook got it wrong, and as
someone who never used Outlook, I'd be both perplexed and annoyed to
find that non-standard behavior.
I think this is a fair evaluation as I left out pieces in my post that should have made my point more clear. The post should actually be two separate posts.
1) The gripe regarding the keymapping usage of 'Ctrl-Q'
2) The OSS "We're free therefore we're better" rant.
Both points need further clarification but let me first respond to the first part.
My initial response to Bruce began:
Hey Bruce,and you would be spot on if you were the majority user. Much like
Firefox got it right by embracing and extending the IE key mappings,
Thunderbird should have done the same for the majority user profile
out there.I dont mean to sound like because your the minority your wrong. Just
that when the majority is used to a particular key mapping to do a
VERY common task, and that task instead kills the app without so much
as an "Are you sure?" with a check box to "Remember this?"<'snip/>
The snipped portion went on to state that I would make clarification to my comments which is what I am doing now.
Bruce then followed-up with:
But keep in mind my point about comparison here: it's not about email apps; it's about the behavior of all apps.Thunderbird is trying to keep consistent with the latter (including
presumably, Firefox).
My response to this [NOTE: I just now read his follow-up response so this will become my official response of which I plan to point him to when I'm finished] is quite simply:
I recognize his point, but I also would be hard pressed to believe that the Mozilla/Thunderbird project has never had the thought of becoming an Outlook replacement. You can't write an email client without such a thought pop through your head as a majority of those interested in using your product will be coming from an Outlook/Outlook Express-based world. Not everybody obviously, but most. And when I say most I mean potentially hundreds of millions of people who in one form or another use Outlook(including Express) on a daily basis.
To be fair, Mozilla hasn't as of yet announced any plans to begin development of an office suite. Outlook is a part of MS Office(TM) so if Thunderbird has targeted anything related to the Outlook family it would be Outlook Express. But even with Outlook itself out of the equation we're still talking about potentially hundreds of millions of users, all in which have be accustomed to one or more of the Outlook specific keyboard mappings. As such, there needs to be at *VERY LEAST* consideration for this fact is the Thunderbird folks wish to have any sort of adoption rate and impact that comes even close to that of which Firefox has had.
Now before anybody makes a statement such as "Its free software; aren't you being a little harsh on a project who's primary focus is promoting a free, standards-based platform in which embraces the standards set forth by the standards groups such that we can finally gain some consistency in our development lives." to which I would respond:
Comparing email clients and standards is taking things a little too far. By default, if you don't support a common MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) format, POP, and SMTP (which combined become the primary standards in which you absolutely MUST support to be considered a player in this space) you might as well forgot about even using the "adoption rate" as that's a pipe dream that most definitely won't be coming true.
Furthermore, if you are of the illusion that the Mozilla Corporation, Mozilla.org's recently announced for-profit creation, doesn't have any sort of aspirations as to give Microsoft a run for its money in regards to owning a significant piece of the future web-based desktop then chances are pretty good you weren't even aware they formed such a corporation. They did. This should showcase quite well what their true and real desires in this space are.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing! I LOVE the products that Mozilla produces, and keeping Microsoft honest by pushing even harder to develop competive products is a *GOOD THING*. In fact, it makes my keyboard mapping point even more valid as if you want to be a competitor you first have to recognize who and what your competition is.
But don't take my word on it. A FANTASTIC piece to help back-up my claim comes from none-other than Mr. Joel Spolsky, better known as "Joel on Software", in his article "Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!" in which opens with:
When you're trying to get people to switch from a competitor to your product, you need to understand barriers to entry, and you need to understand them a lot better than you think, or people won't switch and you'll be waiting tables.
I'll let Mr. Spolsky take it from here.
Enjoy!
[UPDATE: One quick addition to this: You can do both. Meaning, you can support both camps; those coming at it from an Outlook-based world who might be used to using Ctrl+Q to mark an email as read, and those coming from another world who find Ctrl+Q (Ctrl-Q for all you Emacs fans out there ;) mapped to "Quit this Application!" completely normal and within reason.
Dev-tool companies do this all the time... they will set up several keyboard map's and ask you during set-up which you would like to use. I should note that not all of them do this during set-up but most, if not all dev-tools allow the ability to easily switch between keyboard mappings for the more commonly used tools as, with what should be obvious, those who write code tend to both use and write *A LOT* of macros and then map these macros to specific keyboard settings. As a developer when you become accustomed to one set of mappings and you are asked to try a tool that doesn't support these mappings in one form or another guess what happens... It gets uninstalled just as fast (hopefully faster!) as it got installed. And if not uninstalled, at very least forgotten about.]