Why is Zimbra so buggy?

[rschoenbach]

Finally, someone saying what I and many of my colleagues forced to use this new client have been saying--only the person clearly knows more technical detail. For me, it's just a user-end thing. I've just spent at least a half hour looking through these forums trying to find how to solve one of the glitchy things--downloading attachments (since Drag and Drop isn't an option yet?!?) to a SPECIFIC folder on my desktop, not just the "most recent" 3 folders. With Zimbra, I feel like my whole email experience has mittens on it--very slowed down. I'm wondering if I should try to use Gmail and somehow link up my work account. Any ideas how to do that welcome. Meanwhile, I'll go back to searching for the answer to my most pressing question (and just deal with annoyance about less presssing glitches).

[ewilen]

Don't know if you've found an answer yet, but to download an attachment to a specific folder, you should be able to do it the same way you would do if you were downloading a file from a normal web link. I.e., right-click and "Download linked File as..." (or similar depending on your browser).

[edwin.arneson]

Originally Posted by rschoenbach

downloading attachments (since Drag and Drop isn't an option yet?!?) to a SPECIFIC folder on my desktop, not just the "most recent" 3 folders.

Ewilen gave you the solution. I might add that the download behaviour is browser (and OS) specific. From the behaviour you describe I can't guess what browser you are using.

Originally Posted by rschoenbach

With Zimbra, I feel like my whole email experience has mittens on it--very slowed down.

If you are using Internet Explorer, you'll find Zimbra to be much faster using Firefox or Safari.

I've found both the search capability and the shortcuts (both folders and tags) to be enhancements over other e-mail clients I've used.

Originally Posted by rschoenbach

I'm wondering if I should try to use Gmail and somehow link up my work account. Any ideas how to do that welcome.

If your Zimbra server is set up to allow POP access, you can connect to it via Gmail. See Settings/Accounts/Get mail from other accounts.

[nrc]

It's worth noting that around 20 of the 60 or so issues that the OP raised have now been resolved, including 6 of the 9 priority 1 bugs. That's in just over two months. Of course most of those fixes won't arrive until 6.0 goes live, but the key point is that you'll accomplish a lot more by filing bugs or voting for existing bugs than by simply complaining.

Votes are important because they raise the visibility of an issue. Just commenting on a bug is not sufficient, you need to vote for it.

• When you file a bug, vote for it. If you think it's important post a link to the entry in bugzilla here and ask people to vote.
• If a bug you file is marked as a duplicate, be sure to vote for the original issue.
• When you see a bug that you would like resolved, vote for it. Just commenting in the bug report is not sufficient.

[ewilen]

On the other hand, I'm sure commenting is beneficial when it exposes real-life cases or other dimensions of the bug.

Also, I sometimes find bugs which are essentially duplicates, with votes scattered among them, which haven't yet been marked as duplicates. I try to leave cross-references in comments so that the duplicates will be closed and votes consolidated, which should raise the visibility of the issue.

[jholder]

Thanks for all the feedback. I seriously mean that.

The sad fact is, no matter how hard a company tries, there will always be those who don't like them, or their product. If someone has made up their mind on an issue, it usually takes a lot to persuade them otherwise.

I had similar incident with Symantec's Norton Antivirus for windows. For years, I hated it. Bloated, and really just crapware. It was sometimes better to run the risk of getting a virus because running norton just made it impossible to use the computer.

When I got my new laptop, I researched, and found a review on their new 2009 product. I thought I would give them another try based upon the article. Sure enough, every single problem I had with their software, they fixed. It was fast, reliable, secure, and quite honestly, a great user experence. I now love it, an don't mind it at all.

My point is that companies do try. Sometimes they fail, and sometimes they win users back. But no matter what, someone will be unhappy.

The needs and wants of the majority always outrule the minority. Hence, Bug voting.

In a stunning bit of cander, I will say this: Yep, sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we miscalulate thngs (ie Read Receipts). Sometimes we don't listen as well as we should.

But isnt that the mark of a good company? The people you know, are still here. We still try to listen, and we don't really censor. We work for you, you pay our bills.

I'm reminded of the whole Microsoft thing. When the buyout offer was made, people worried about Zimbra. Our response:
"We've got biger things to focus on than Microsoft's offer. We have a job to do."

That, my friends, is a mark of a good company. Somone who can aknowloedge their faults, try hard to fix them, and never settle.

Hope we can do better in the future.

-john

[carr]

I think, that what a company produces reflects their standards.
I don't know much about user experience and bugs on the frontend, as don't use it. But for me programming Zimlets and changing skins means constant frustration.
Frustration because of a complete lack of good documentation.
Frustration because not one developer takes a look into the forums, answering questions, that would take them about 5 minutes, instead of a hole day for me browsing through code or trying to guess soap requests.
Frustration because I find HTML inside core JavaScript files instead of Template files.
Frustration because of inconsistent use of code or frontend elements (e.g. checkboxes).
Frustration because of poor HTML and CSS and no attempt to clean it up (e.g. tables everywhere!)
Frustration because a lot of dynamically created elements don't differ in CSS classes even though they are different (e.g. OK_BUTTON and CANCEL_BUTTON)
Frustration because even the support doesn't answer development questions... am I supposed to guess everything?

I do really really think, that the Zimbra frontend is a bad product. Yes it is hard to put in such functionality and keep sane. Yes it is hard to have clean code. But for ****s sake write a documentation or at least answer questions in the forums.
People would actually contribute if they would know how.
And please no more features. There are enough. Try to clean up your code... just once.

[rschoenbach]

Hi,
Yes, it WAS a browser question, and I solved it. Next two questions that ARE Zimbra:

1) What is the best place (forums, wikis, etc.) to go to just ask a simple user question like the following?

2) How can one attach multiple documents onto an email without having to go through the cumbersome search, attach clicks for each one?

Thanks.

[edwin.arneson]

Originally Posted by carr

And please no more features. There are enough. Try to clean up your code... just once.

Since they need to complete with desktop clients like Thunderbird and Outlook, there are features that are missing and should be included.

However, I think they should pause the addition of new features to fix bugs and cleanup things for a while. Also, I still think that there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed somewhere in their development and/or testing processes that allow products to be released with so many obvious bugs.

[ewilen]

Originally Posted by rschoenbach

Hi,
Yes, it WAS a browser question, and I solved it. Next two questions that ARE Zimbra:

1) What is the best place (forums, wikis, etc.) to go to just ask a simple user question like the following?

2) How can one attach multiple documents onto an email without having to go through the cumbersome search, attach clicks for each one?

Thanks.

The forum is the place, although searching the forum will often get you an answer faster than just posting w/o doing some research.

If you have IT staff that are maintaining Zimbra, I would ask them before anything.

In answer to (2) I believe you can drag & drop attachments with Firefox. You might need to have a FF plugin.