iOS 11 and the actions rotor in the mail app

By jprykiel, 1 October, 2017

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

hello there,
this is my first post here so I hope I'm doing it right.
Here is an article I came across, which I thought might be of interest, and with which I totally agree.
http://mosen.org/cupertino-we-have-a-design-problem/
I hope it did not already get posted on Applevis, forgive me if it did.

if you find this relevant, I think the Apple accessibility department should be informed about this problem, even though They already are, but more requests they get, More chances they can fix the problem, even though they don't think it is a bug according To this article.
Happy reading,
regards,
JPR

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Comments

By peter on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

I don't know whether this was a poor design decision or a butg on Apple's part, but I am hoping that Apple has been receiving enough feedback from the folks using VoiceOver so that this problem gets addressed fairly quickly. This is not only a very annoying and frustrating issue, but leads to lots of uncertainty as to what action will actually be performed and lots of errors and lost mail items.

Either way, the behavior seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes the action will be stuck on the previous action selected and sometimes the action will actually be the default action of "activating" an item with a single finger double tap. Also, it would be nice if the behavior of how the action items work is consistent across all apps (and this odd behavior only seems to happen in the mail app).

How could this have gotten past testers and getting user feedback?

--Pete

By Toonhead on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

The sad part is a bug can be reported day after day after day, but it's never fixed. This is why as many people as possible need to write to the accessibility folks at Apple so the bugs get more attention. They aren't going to fix a bug if only one person reports it.

By peter on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

Yes, I've done my part and written to Apple Accessibility about this and other issues using VoiceOver. For those who would like to add their voice on some of these accessibility issues, here is where you can write:

By jprykiel on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

according to this article, this behaviour is intentional. The article even explains Why it is inconsistent.
If you swipe from a single Mail to a conversation, or vice versa, the actions Roder will come back to its default value. Nevertheless, this is terrible, and absolutely wrong. Hope Apple gets it.
JPR

By LadyMunch on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

"i am in two minds on this. First I like the new rotor actions because they enable you to whiz through a lot of mail for which you want to delete, for example. I have, however had to retrieve mail from my trash folder because I forgot which item it was set to. I hope this makes sense. With luck in time people will be able to remember where they are on the actions rotor and switch options by muscle memory, much as we do with other rotor options now.

By sockhopsinger on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

I agree with the above poster. The problem, and it's the crux of the issue, is that the roter is inconsistent. If it consistently focused on the last action performed, it would be useable and, after a good bit of grumbling and re-learning, would probably be a good thing to most people. However, when you can't get consistency it makes you want to go bang someone's head into the wall.

By jprykiel on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

I do think that mail should not be an exception in the rotor's behaviour. And I also do think that the Deletion of mails should not be made too easy and should require an extra gesture whatever you did before.

By peter on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

Even if this isn't a bug but rather a poor design decision, we all need to make Apple aware of how many people who actually use VoiceOver do not like this! I can't believe who would.

--Pete

By david s on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

Hello,

I wonder if this is a bug or a feature that works properly on the iPhone X.

It seems inconsistent that it might be a bug. OTH, I hear from the grapevine that there are some gestures on the X that behaves differently on devices with the home button.

I guess we’ll find out when someone receives their X.

By peter on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

I don't think it should be up to the user to remember the last rotor position. That is why we have computers! The user should be able to count on the "default" action being consistently performed across all apps at all times.

If one closes the mail app or works with another app for a while, should the user have to remember what the last state of the rotor was for the mail app independent of what the state might have been in any other app? I don't think so. I depend on certain hotkeys and actions retaining their default function. There is no reason why sometimes performing a single finger double tap should "activate" and item and other times do something different.

In either case, as a previous commented, it should be more difficult to delete a message than to open it since nothing is lost by opening a message but critical information is lost by deleting a message.

--Pete

By DPinWI on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

After being bitten by this a couple of times, and having to retrieve accidentally deleted emails, I got the bright idea to turn on the Confirm Deletion option in the Mail app settings.

I turned it on, and it does nothing. I can still purposefully, or accidentally, delete an email with a double tap, with no confirmation request.

It's bad that this design change is here, and worse that the means to mitigate damages is broken.

By peter on Thursday, October 5, 2017 - 18:56

I believe that the delete confirmation notice will only work when you delete a mail mesage using the Delete button at the bottom of an open message. If you just delete from the list of messages itself, the confirmation dialog does not pop up.

Too bad because it could avoid accidental deletions when relying on the new behavior of the action menu in mail.

--Pete