Poor Cursor Behavior Makes For Bad First Impression

[DavLud2]

New Domain Administrator here, in the process of deploying and training on a hosted Zimbra 4.5.5 system with the latest Firefox 2 for all users. I was solely responsible for the decision to migrate to Zimbra so I am getting much feedback from the first 25 new users at my facility.

First impressions are so important in trying to convince people to give up what they know on the chance that they will eventually prefer what they don't know. The number one line of comment I am receiving from our new Zimbra users has to do with poor cursor behavior, including disappearing cursors and unreliable tabbing from field to field.

This is embarrassing to me. I am being questioned by my superiors about my decision to choose a solution (Zimbra) which on the surface is "clearly not ready for prime time" and "obviously very buggy". Simple in-your-face usability issues like this are hard to explain away in a product that is at a version 4.5+.

I have reviewed Bugzilla listings on cursor and tabbing issues and it is very disheartening to see that so many of these issues remain unresolved and not even scheduled for resolution.

First Impressions are important! Simple and obvious usability issues like disappearing cursors, faulty tabbing, etc. should be prioritized and fixed right away.

Thanks for listening.

[padraig]

All Valid point & i agree with the tabbing/cursors issues, but i have to say in
zimbra's defense i find it v.stable easy to manage/install and the av/as are excellent.

As you can tell I'm a fan. Our users migrated from SQUIRRELMAIL! and our feedback was similar to yours. However now some months on complaints have faded and even the odd complement comes our way.

[DavLud2]

I am happy to report that I too am beginning to hear the occasional compliment regarding the decision to migrate to Zimbra, but it took a lot of adjustments to our original deployment plan and quite a bit of heartache to get to this point.

After dozens of criticisms that ran the gamut from "it's obviously buggy" on the first day of deployment, to "it's very slow" by the second day, followed quickly by "my spam is ten times worse", I finally had to give in and begin helping people revert back to their old email/calendar client applications. I really had hoped for a universal client application across all of the Mac/PC/Linux desktop and laptop platforms in use in our company, but I now realize that may have been just a bit too "pie-in-the-sky" of a plan on my part. Too bad, as I still think the idea is a good one for a variety of reasons.

The graphic designer types in our company were the first to jump ship, in fact due to their technical prowess, they had all reverted back to their old personal email client favorites before I even knew it had happened. For them, it was all about performance. They move massive numbers of attached graphics around daily between customers, staff, and freelancers. The combination of no "Outbox" to queue multiple outgoing emails, and no means of easily navigating to, and attaching to an email, the multiple files residing in the open folder sitting right there on their desktop adjacent to their Zimbra/Firefox window, resulted in a zero acceptance of the Zimbra email client application by this group of users.

Of the other users that demanded their old email client applications back, the reasons mostly had to do with performance (latency) and spam. No amount of explaining was able to convince users that the "ten-fold" increase in spam that they were realizing since switching from our old hosted POP accounts, would not be corrected by a simple change of email client application. I continue to get daily complaints from this particular group of users regarding spam, and have spent much time trying to help them set up effective email filters to redirect this junk.

On the bright side, most of the other complaints have pretty much gone away at this point, and users are loving the cross-platform sharing of calendars and easy access to shared documents.

Hoping to hear more compliments as time passes!

[RyecoAaron]

With regards to the spam, have you lowered your kill percent and tag percent? I have the kill set at 36 and tag set at 24. I hardly ever get any spam that makes it to the inbox. Still a few that make it to the junk but that shouldn't bother many people.

[DavLud2]

Thanks for the suggestions...much appreciated.

Ah the trials and tribulations of a hosted email solution... I have no control over such things, but I will pass this on to my service provider and see what happens.

Thanks again,
Dave

[jholder]

First Impressions are important! Simple and obvious usability issues like disappearing cursors, faulty tabbing, etc. should be prioritized and fixed right away.

Sorry to hear about your first impressions.

The cursor issue isn't a problem with Zimbra. It's a bug with Firefox. We're tried very hard to put in hacks to try and have it not happen.

See firefox cursor problem - Google Search

As far as "faulty tabbing", that is our issue, and we've debated internally on fixing it, the problem is that there aren't many votes.

If we weighed priorities soley based upon complaints, we would never be able to move forward. We weigh them on votes, and security. Doesn't sound like a security issue, and there are 7 votes for it.

Bug 10027 - KBNav: limited focus landings when tabbing through options

Our project management reveals that these have priority:
Zimbra Product Portal

Who controls the priority? You do, and everyone else does.

Democracy is great, but only great when people vote.

[DavLud2]

So Firefox is the problem!...well don't I feel dumb for moving everyone away from Safari and IE!

I added my vote to the "faulty tabbing" bug report. Funny thing is, after the first day, no one here seems to complain about that one, hence it had not even been one of the 17 bugs I had voted on! It certainly was a big deal on that first day of deployment though, as it caused me to get a lot of unwarranted comments from new users regarding the "obvious buginess" of the product, and required me to make an extra effort to convince these users otherwise.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Dave

[DavLud2]

It appears that this post describes the Firefox cursor disappearance problem precisely, but does the solution actually work?

qianqin.de - personal homepage of Qian Qin (秦谦) » Blog Archive » Mozilla Firefox cursor bug

[greenrenault]

First Impressions are important! Simple and obvious usability issues like disappearing cursors, faulty tabbing, etc. should be prioritized and fixed right away.

I concur. Zimbra is a great product, but unfortunately some very small but important usability factors are letting the team down. Disappearing cursors is a big problem and I can appreciate that Fire Fox may be partly to blame here.

However, logical cursor placement for actions such as when composing the new reply, new email, forward is created then the cursor SHOULD appear at the top of the body text. See Bug #11384, Show Votes

The barrier to adoption for new users would be much easier if bugs like this were addressed.

We rolled out 2 Zimbra installs this week which we are very happy about (email migration flawless, minimal downtime). Feedback from users has been mixed on Zimbra webmail client. Some love it, whilst others are very vocal in their dislike. Those that are having issues with Zimbra identify areas which can easily be resolved.

So we are now providing our customers with instructions on how to register & track bugs with Zimbra. So that those that strongly dislike Zimbra and want changes can take a direct part in the process. So heads up Zimbra, expect more real end user bug reports!