The new face of Imail is disgusting. Since it is a service that almost every student makes use of, it makes sense to have an attractive and ultra-usable interface.
This new system has neither.
The previous sign-in screen and main screen were easily more attractive. The new face design reflects Hotmail’s design. Its color scheme is completely different from the previous one.
The previous one was primarily black, which set a soothing tone for the system user. It also had complete frames. Scroll down to the bottom of the frame that subject line shows up in. About an inch of unused space shows up at the bottom. Little meaningless gray lines scatter this area like construction scaffolds.
Also, in the top part of the screen, a large logo now stares out of the computer screen at the user. Do we have to look at advertising in our student e-mail accounts in addition to everywhere else?
The new interface is extremely tedious. The login page is confusingly similar to the login page for blackboard. There are no check boxes to make sorting or trashing e-mails convenient or fast. Only if the user is savvy enough to know the ctrl-select trick can multiple e-mails be deleted at once. Also, the frame that displays new messages runs off of the screen.
This is annoying.
Some of us want to see all the information contained in that line displayed on the screen. Utility aside, it is bad design.
The actual functions used while composing an e-mail, like the attach option, are in places where one doesn’t immediately look.
Using the new system is inconvenient over all. It has a nasty design, in terms of both aesthetics and function.
And obviously, whoever designed this new system did not take it for a test run on a Mac. After successfully signing into Imail on one Mac, the message “An error was encountered while processing your request. Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”
Not only was no request made, but the computer lingo is undecipherable.
Other Macs have to be tricked into letting the e-mails be shown, by pushing the forward or reply button and then the back button on the browser.
It seems like the new Imail should have come with a users manual.
The old adage warns against fixing things that aren’t broken.
It is probably useless to ask for the reinstatement of the old system.

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