Jacob Palme .se



File name: webmail-compare.doc

Last change: 99-04-09 20.23

Test of user interface for web-based mail services

Abstract

I tested some web-based e-mail services (Netscape webmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail) with an early development version of KOM 2000.

Table of contents

1. Summary table of results 2

2. Summary of conclusions for KOM 2000 3

3. Initial page for a user who does not have any account yet 4

3.1. KOM 2000 4

3.2. Netscape webmail 5

3.3. Hotmail 6

3.4. Yahoo mail 6

4. Registering a new user 7

4.1. KOM 2000 7

4.1.1. If an already occupied name is chosen by the user 8

4.2. Netscape Webmail 10

4.3. Hotmail 17

4.4. Yahoo mail 23

5. How an already registered user logs in 27

5.1. KOM 2000 27

5.2. Netscape Webmail 29

5.3. Hotmail 30

5.4. Yahoo mail 31

6. Writing an e-mail to two recipients 33

6.1. KOM 2000 33

6.2. Netscape Webmail 37

6.3. Hotmail 38

6.4. Yahoo mail 42

7. Receiving messages 43

7.1. KOM 2000 43

7.1.1. Yahoo 44

7.1.2. Hotmail 45

8. Receiving messages in HTML format, writing replies 45

8.1. KOM 2000 46

8.2. Netscape Webmail 48

8.3. Hotmail 51

8.4. Yahoo mail 52

9. Writing messages in HTML format 55

9.1. KOM 2000 55

9.2. Netscape Webmail 58

9.3. Hotmail 62

9.4. Yahoo mail 64

10. Preferences/Options 66

10.1. KOM 2000 67

10.2. Netscape Webmail 67

10.3. Hotmail 68

10.4. Yahoo mail 68

11. Attachment 1: MIME format of MHTML test message sent to various web mailers 69

Introduction

Here is a comparison of the user interface in some web-based e-mail services. The services being compared are:

1. KOM 2000 in an early test version of the e-mail interface (on “”)

1. Netscape webmail

2. Hotmail

3. Yahoo mail

All the tests were made on a Macintosh using Netscape 4.5 as the browser. The user interfaces shown below have sometimes been a little abbreviated.

Note that only web-based mail services were compared, not any mail services using for example POP or IMAP.

Summary table of results

|Function |KOM 2000 |Netscape |Hotmail |Yahoo Mail |

|Initial page when you log in |Login form for existing users |Advertising and overview of |Neat introduction and login |Neat introduction and login |

| |and new user registration |services |page with links for |page with links for |

| |form, strict, no fancy layout | |registering new users |registering new users |

|Registering a new user |Simple and straightforward. |Multi-multi-multi-page forms |Multi-multi-multi-page forms |Multi-multi-multi-page forms |

|Logging in as an existing user|Simple form goes to personal |Simple login page led to menu |Simple login page led to menu |Simple login page led to menu |

| |overview page which contains |page with simple start menu, |page with simple start menu, |page with simple start menu, |

| |too much info in the same page|information about new |list of new messages and |list of folders with number of|

| |(all activities, all outgoing |messages, quota status and |search facility. |unseen in each folder, and ads|

| |and incoming messages, the |display of some advanced | |for some advanced services. |

| |full address book) |services. | | |

|Writing a simple message to |Difficult to find any “write |Write mail command, direct to |Compose command direct to good|Compose command direct to good|

|two recipients. |message” command and problems |good message writing page. |message writing page, Spell |message writing page, Spell |

| |with specifying the recipient |Spell checking, save draft |checking, Save Draft, good |checking, Save Draft. |

| |e-mail addresses. Good preview|function. |preview function. Good confirm| |

| |function. | |function before final send. | |

|How messages look in Eudora |Confusing list of recipients, |OK | | |

|when received from webmail |including multiple “To:” | | | |

| |headers | | | |

|Coming back after leaving | | |Short, OK explanation. |Good, perhaps a little lengthy|

|computer logged in overnight | | | |explanation. |

|Receiving complex MHTML |Pictures correctly placed, but|Complete failture. Crash, |Only one of the inline |Text shown, but inline |

|message, produced with Eudora,|JPEG picture and EXCEL |could not show anything. |pictures shown, plus link to |pictures shown after the end |

|in webmail systems |attachment were corrupted. | |attachment. Main text and the |of the message, and both were |

| |Link to attachment looked very| |other inline pictures just |corrupted. |

| |funny. | |ignored. | |

|Writing HTML message with |User interface could do it, |Worked, but could not put |Could only send plain text. |Worked, but could not put |

|inline picture |but picture file was shown as |inline picture, only picture | |inline picture, only picture |

| |corrupted in the user |as attachment after the end of| |as attachment after the end of|

| |interface. But the sent out |the message. | |the message. |

| |message was perfect MHTML! | | | |

| |Neat “smart” way of producing | | | |

| |HTML. | | | |

Summary of conclusions for KOM 2000

KOM 2000 was the only system which was able to send e-mail with inline pictures and show them correctly, and was able to receive in correct format but some attachments were corrupted. The other systems were even worse.

For KOM 2000 to be a viable alternative to the other systems, it would need the following:

1) A neater login page

2) First page should not list everything, just give an overview and show links

3) Mailbox should only show unseen, or possible unseen plus limited number of recent messages, with link to get older messages

4) Write Message and Read Message in menu directly after login.

5) Write Message must have fields to directly enter e-mail addresses of external recipients.

6) Delete or purging function, possibly a maximum storage area for e-mail for eahc user.

Initial page for a user who does not have

any account yet

1 KOM 2000

[pic]

Comment: I got this window in Swedish the first time, with no command to switch to English. A Swedish-language welcome page must have a prominent “Switch-to-English” button.

2 Netscape webmail

[pic]

[pic]

3 Hotmail

[pic]

4 Yahoo mail

[pic]

Registering a new user

1 KOM 2000

[pic]

[pic]

1 If an already occupied name is chosen by the user

[pic]

[pic]

2 Netscape Webmail

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

3 Hotmail

[pic]

... ... ...

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

... ... ...

[pic]

4 Yahoo mail

[pic]

... ... ...

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

How an already registered user logs in

1 KOM 2000

[pic]

Question: Why is the user invited to write a message before logging in??? Anyway, I pushed the "Login" button.

[pic]

And got a not-very-compact view of my personal information in the system:

[pic]

[pic]

2 Netscape Webmail

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

3 Hotmail

[pic]

[pic]

Simple and easy, worked very good!

4 Yahoo mail

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

Writing an e-mail to two recipients

1 KOM 2000

[pic]

I pushed "Users" in the command row above, and then got:

[pic]

I filled in the form at the bottom, even though I did not really want to write any message to "users", and pushed "preview" and then got:

[pic]

I then pushed "Subtract receivers" and got:

[pic]

Now, my message already seems to be sent, even though I have not sent it.

[pic]

I push the "Administration" button and get

[pic]

I push "Add receivers" and get

[pic]

Where I fill in the additional receivers as shown above and push "Add receivers".

Now my message seems to have been sent:

[pic]

But what does the /cmc.dsv.su.se_7099/users/0/,/cmc.dsv.su.se_7099/users/0/ mean? Has the message been sent there, even though I subtracted "users" as a recipient?

2 Netscape Webmail

[pic] I pushed "Write mail" in this menu, and then got a new separate subwindow for writing mail:

[pic]

[pic]

When I pushed “Send” in this window, the window closed, and I got back to the main Netscape Webmail window again.

3 Hotmail

[pic]I pushed "Compose" in this menu, and got

[pic]

[pic]

I pushed "Preview" and got the preview message in a new window:

[pic]

Then I pushed "Send" and got this response:

[pic]

4 Yahoo mail

|[pic] |In the menu to the left, I pushed "Compose" |

[pic]

I got the form above, filled in the message recipients, subject and text as shown above, and posted it by pushing the Send button. Then I got this:

[pic]

Receiving messages

1 KOM 2000

Here is how I am informed of new messages in KOM 2000:

[pic]

Note: This will only work when there are very few messages. There is no facility to delete messages, and this will rapidly cause overflow when a user has many messages! Either there should be a facility to delete messages, or an automatic purge facility, or the user should only be shown the latest messages, with a link to get older messages!

Here is how the above message, sent from KOM 2000, looked like when received in Eudora:

[pic]

Note the large and funny list of recipients and the multiple "To:" lines.

1 Yahoo

Here is how it looked in when sent from Yahoo and received in Eudora:

[pic]

I left my computer on over night, and tried to continue my session the next morning. All the systems required me to log in again. Yahoo did this in a very clear way:

[pic]

Yahoo also remembered my name from the cookie, and only required a password to log in again. This might be a disadvantage if several people use the same computer to read their mail on:

[pic]

2 Hotmail

Here is the message Hotmail gave me when my time had expired:

[pic]

Receiving messages in HTML format, writing replies

After the interactions shown above, I received, in Eudora, the test messages, and wrote a reply in HTML format with an inline picture.

The reply I wrote looks like this when sent from Eudora:

[pic]

(The MIME-format is included as attachment to this report.)

1 KOM 2000

This is how the message looked like when received in KOM 2000; note that "users" is included as recipient.

[pic]

[pic]

The Excel attachment did not work, perhaps because it was labelled with the wrong Content-Type?? (When sent from Eudora, the Content-Type was specified as:

Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel; name="Forlust_Torgny=Lasse_98_ove.xls"

; x-mac-type="584C5338"

; x-mac-creator="5843454C"

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Forlust_Torgny=Lasse_98_ove.xls"

2 Netscape Webmail

When I had logged in, I got information that I had new mail in the following way:

[pic]

I could then read my mail, either by using the standard command menu in the left hand frame:

[pic]

When I opened my inbox folder, I got this pane:

[pic]

This is what happended when I tried to read the first (latest) message in the list above:

[pic]

When I tried again, I got this message:

[pic]

They had a very competent error reporting system, and I reported the problem to them using their system.

[pic]

I also had an automatic welcome message, the beginning of which is shown below:

[pic]

3 Hotmail

Here is my message from Hotmail, after I had logged in and when I had new messages:

[pic]

And here is how my complex test message looked like:

[pic]

Note that only one of the inline pictures is shown inline, but not the text of the messages!

The attachment (but not the message text and the other inline picture) was available for download and downloading it worked and it could be read with Excel.

4 Yahoo mail

After logging in, this is how I was notified that I had new, unseen mail in Yahoo mail:

[pic]

Clicking on Inbox above gave me:

[pic]

Check all started a Javascript which checked all the boxes! Nice!

Here is how my complex test message looked like in Yahoo mail:

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

Comment: All the information was there, even the Excel attachment could be downloaded correctly. The inline pictures were not in their right position but at the end of the message.

The original file name of the sent Excel file was:

[pic]

And this was modified by the two systems as follows:

[pic]

Writing messages in HTML format

1 KOM 2000

KOM 2000 will automatically convert all messages written to HTML, with conversion of double blank lines to , inline pictures to , etc.

First I wrote the text of my message like this:

[pic]

[pic]

Then I pushed the “Browse” button to add the picture. I located the file with the picture in it, and pushed the “Inline picture” button to get the picture in-line.

I then got a preview of the message which looked like this:

[pic]

Note the broken picture icon! This has worked before, it must be a new bug in the test version of KOM 2000, which I was using.

And I got a new “Edit message” pane, where I could add text after the picture:

[pic]

Here is how the message looked like when received with Eudora:

[pic]

The Excel attachments was correct, too!

2 Netscape Webmail

I wrote my message like this:

[pic]

[pic]

and pushed “Attachments Add/Remove”. This opened a new subwindow for finding the attachment:

[pic]

I pushed “Browse...”, located a file, pushed “Add”. then I got a new, empty subwindow during the file upload time. In this way, I was told that something was happening, this seems to be a solution to the bad confirmation people get when web browsers are uploading files. When the file had been uploaded, I got this window:

[pic]

Then I pushed OK, added text after the picture, and pushed “Send”.

[pic]

Here is how the message above looked like when received with Eudora:

[pic]

3 Hotmail

[pic]

I then pushed “Attachments” to ender the inline picture, and got this window:

[pic]

I located a file, selected the file type:

[pic]

I then sent my message, there was no way to indicate that the message was in HTML format.

Here is how the message looked like when received with Eudora:

X-Originating-IP: [130.237.161.11]

From: "Jacob Palme"

To: jpalme@dsv.su.se

Cc: jptest@dsv.su.se

Subject: Test message from Hotmail

Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 09:56:07 PDT

Mime-Version: 1.0

This is a test message written with KOM 2000.

This is the second paragraph of this message, with one word bold

-faced.

Here is a header

Here is an inline picture

______________________________________________________

Get Your Private, Free Email at

4 Yahoo mail

The starting of writing a message was similar to in Hotmail and Netscape Webmail. It was possible to indidcate that the message was in HTML format. Like the other systems, there was no way to indicate inline pictures, only attachments. And adding attachments opened a smaller subwindow:

[pic]

Here is the message as received with Eudora:

[pic]

Preferences/Options

Most systems had lots of preferences. Here is only a short summary.

1 KOM 2000

[pic]

:-) KOM 2000 was the only system with a command to change your gender!

2 Netscape Webmail

[pic]

[pic]

3 Hotmail

[pic]

4 Yahoo mail

[pic]

Attachment 1: MIME format of MHTML test message sent to various web mailers

From jptest@dsv.su.se Thu Apr 8 11:26:24 1999 +0200

Status:

X-Status:

X-Keywords:

Received: from [130.237.161.11] (dola.dsv.su.se [130.237.161.11])

by info.dsv.su.se (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP

id LAA00929;

Thu, 8 Apr 1999 11:26:17 +0200 (MET DST)

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="============_-1288558903==_============"

X-Sender: jpalme@mail.dsv.su.se

Message-Id:

In-Reply-To:

Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 11:23:09 +0200

To: "Jacob Palme"

From: Jacob Palme

Subject: Re: Test message from Hotmail

Cc: jptest@dsv.su.se

--============_-1288558903==_============

Content-Type: multipart/Related; boundary="============_-1288558903==_mr============"

; type="text/html"

--============_-1288558903==_mr============

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="============_-1288558903==_ma============"

--============_-1288558903==_ma============

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 20.38 +0200 99-04-07, Jacob Palme wrote:

> This is a message I am writing from Hotmail.

>

>

> ______________________________________________________

> Get Your Private, Free Email at

Reply to test message from Hotmail.

Gif-picture:

JPEG-picture:

End of message, attachment in Excel format included.

--============_-1288558903==_ma============

Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"

Re: Test message from Hotmail

At 20.38 +0200 99-04-07, Jacob Palme wrote:

> This is a message I am writing from Hotmail.

>

>

> ______________________________________________________

> Get Your Private, Free Email at

Reply to test message from Hotmail.

Gif-picture:

JPEG-picture:

End of message, attachment in Excel format included.

--============_-1288558903==_ma============--

--============_-1288558903==_mr============

Content-Id:

Content-Type: image/gif; name="europa-large-letters.gif"

; x-mac-type="47494666"

; x-mac-creator="4D534945"

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="europa-large-letters.gif"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

R0lGODlh9AF4APcAAAAAAAAAMwAAZgAAmQAAzAAA/zMAADMAMzMAZjMAmTMAzDMA/2YA

AGYAM2YAZmYAmWYAzGYA/5kAAJkAM5kAZpkAmZkAzJkA/8wAAMwAM8wAZswAmcwAzMwA

... ...

--============_-1288558903==_mr============

Content-Id:

Content-Type: image/jpeg; name="small-picture.jpg"

; x-mac-type="4A504547"

; x-mac-creator="3842494D"

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="small-picture.jpg"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAJAAkAAD/2wBDAAYEBQYFBAYGBQYHBwYIChAKCgkJChQODwwQ

FxQYGBcUFhYaHSUfGhsjHBYWICwgIyYnKSopGR8tMC0oMCUoKSj/2wBDAQcHBwoIChMK

...

--============_-1288558903==_mr============--

--============_-1288558903==_============

Content-Id:

Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel; name="Forlust_Torgny=Lasse_98_ove.xls"

; x-mac-type="584C5338"

; x-mac-creator="5843454C"

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Forlust_Torgny=Lasse_98_ove.xls"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

0M8R4KGxGuEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPgADAP7/CQAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAAQAA

AAAAAAAAEAAALgAAAAEAAAD+////AAAAAAAAAAD/////////////////////////////

... ...

--============_-1288558903==_============

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jacob Palme (Stockholm University and KTH)

for more info see URL:

--============_-1288558903==_============--

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