Freron MailMate

For about my first week with MailMate I would occasionally "lose" my inbox, or rather, it would seem to be emptied out or replaced with nonsense. I eventually figured out that when I double-clicked on something in the list a search was done for that item. The only visual confirmation of that was that the back arrow came alive and there was a "Subject is" line above the list.

Now that I know what's going on I don't mind, and I love the search features, and I like it being so fast and instant. My mom would never figure this out. Of course, my mom is not the market for MailMate, but I think that there a lot of relatively geeky users who like me would be confused at first, and some subset of them may dump the program at that point, thinking that it's just glitchy or buggy.

So from an interface standpoint I think something should eventually be done about it. For instance, a dialog could be thrown up saying "Search for subject = _____? [Cancel] [OK]," perhaps with a few more refinements or options for the search, or the single-line "Subject is" could be expanded a few lines with options and more detail and a "Return to Inbox" link, so as to be more obvious. Or there are probably better solutions. Maybe this should wait until the next Indiegogo round to raise money to retain a UI and design consultant.