Hot take: local system generated emails were very good UX and we should bring them back.
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:19:19 JST Rich Felker
- Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: and Phantasm like this.
- Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:, Paul Cantrell and feld repeated this.
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:21:46 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
@dalias Like cron emails? -
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:24:01 JST Rich Felker
Example of very bad modern UX:
(paraphrased) "Android has detected that these apps were not frequently used and removed all permissions for them." as an ephemeral notification with no way to go back and see history of what happened and no chance to undo unless you catch the notification without dismissing it.
Obvious right way:
Email from local system telling you a list of apps that are frequently unused and good candidates for revoking permission, with links that take you to a UI (but without themselves granting permission to that UI) to do it if you want.
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this. -
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:24:17 JST Rich Felker
@lanodan Yes.
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:24:56 JST Rich Felker
@navi Yeah, I don't mean they no longer exist in those contexts, just that newer things haven't copied the idiom but replaced it with much worse things like modal popups and ephemeral notifications.
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anna (navi@social.vlhl.dev)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:24:58 JST anna
@dalias i still use cron local emails to this day, it's such a simple way to be notified of job failures, love it -- and i don't think any alternative even exists? (well, one that wouldn't require custom protocols and a phone app or smth) -
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:28:22 JST Rich Felker
Tangential general principle here:
Notifications should never have unique information content themselves. If used, they should be highlighting information that exists in non-ephemeral form elsewhere on the basis that it might merit immediate attention. But dismissing/ignoring them should never be a "lossy" operation.
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Joe Groff (joe@f.duriansoftware.com)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:37:45 JST Joe Groff
@dalias "this modal dialog could have been an email"
Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: likes this. -
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 00:37:55 JST Rich Felker
@joe 😂
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Chris Bohn (docbohn@techhub.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 01:51:41 JST Chris Bohn
@dalias Related: if a clickable element (including but not limited to notifications) occupies part of the screen that was occupied by a different clickable element within the last half-second, it should ignore having been clicked/swiped.
Or, perhaps: ignore being clicked/swiped for at least the first half-second of occupying a particular part of the screen.
Yes, I've dismissed severe weather notifications when I meant to dismiss an email. And other notifications that I couldn't see through my finger. But I've also clicked on too many wrong links on webpages that like to rearrange themselves.
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groxx (groxx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 02:51:15 JST groxx
@dalias it is like actually insane that Android's "notification history" feature isn't advertised all over. It's super useful for this kind of thing.
And toasts need to die in a fire.
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 03:52:54 JST Rich Felker
@ELS @DocBohn Seriously. 20 years ago we had memes about grandma popping up while you were cybering on ICQ, and the dumbasses getting paid 6 figure salaries for UX still can't get this right.
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eswillwalker (els@sfba.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 03:52:55 JST eswillwalker
@DocBohn @dalias Yes, this is an annoying problem that will eventually cause a disaster when I accidentally click something dangerous.
Rich Felker repeated this. -
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 03:56:27 JST Rich Felker
@elithebearded It's only "unrelated" because it's not the norm to look there anymore and because every platform has decided to have it's own inbox it controls rather than letting you pick where to receive messages.
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Eli the Bearded (elithebearded@fed.qaz.red)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 03:56:28 JST Eli the Bearded
Yeah, no thanks. I'm old enough to have hosted my own email in the 1990s and I would not want my phone emailing me. Your "easy to find" assumes the email is very searchable and that you'd think to look in an unrelated system for messages.
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feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Jun-2025 02:24:33 JST feld
@dalias they never went away on FreeBSD... Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: likes this. -
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jomo (jomo@mstdn.io)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Jun-2025 02:59:04 JST jomo
@dalias I have dismissed so many notifications by accident on Android because my finger moved slightly more horizontally than vertically for the first 2 pixels when swiping up or down, but the entire thing is then parsed as swiping sideways.
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Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Jun-2025 03:08:05 JST Rich Felker
One thing I should clarify about this: "email" doesn't mean it has to go through a third party hosted or publicly addressible self-hosted mailbox. It can even be completely local delivery.
The defining characteristic of being "email" is that it's sending to a common inbox that you can manage, transport, backup, search, etc. with software of your choice, not something locked within a particular app that the events were associated with, where you know the information is yours and immutable once it's delivered rather than at the whims of the producing process whether it will be available in the same unmodified form or at all in the future.
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.