Hi,

I just 'discovered' something so simple, it is nearly a shame I did not 'see' it before, and I regard this to be a 'tip' every user of MailWasher really should know: Copy/paste the contents of the field 'Filter name' into the field 'Status description', and do this for every filter you have Then it becomes so easy to see, from the 'Status-field' in the 'main window', 'why' a mail gets flagged, and to adjust your filters accordingly, if wanted Also, the summary-statistics will become so much more informative, and this applies to the 'Mail log'-tab as well as to the 'Junk mail'-Figure.

Surely, advanced users will be doing this routinely since ages. Moreover, I now see advanced users 'answer' suggestions/problems in this platform 'as if' everyone already uses this 'tip', and this often creates misunderstandings Up to now, however, all I could see in the status column, was: 'Filtered', and this will apply to most 'newbie's'. In fact, this 'tip' is mentioned nowhere in the 'manual'. The 'best' I can find is: "Why would I use different colors for my filters? These appear on the status column and are activated when an email is intercepted which has triggered your filter.", and that is all, only the color is referred to.

In fact, this 'copy/paste-tip' makes a lot of suggestions made on this platform obsolete. In fact, a number of the suggestions I made myself are now obsolete; specifically the suggestion that a filter should change color or 'blink', when one of the active mails is 'hitting' on that filter. Sorry, I made that suggestion out of sheer ignorance

On the other hand, no 'action' on the users' part should have been necessary to accomplish this! The 'advertisement' clearly states: "We took the view that if we can't understand how to use a piece of software in under 5 minutes then it's probably always going to be hard to use." To fulfill these expectations in the future, I suggest the following improvement(!) to the program:

In every new filter, the fields 'Filter name' and 'Status description' are neither 'open' nor 'closed', but 'shaded', or 'half-open', and are completely... empty! Then, as the user starts typing in filter-words/statements (in the fields under 'Rules', the column on the right), those words will AUTOMATICALLY appear in the fields 'Filter name' and 'Status description' as well! (Say with a maximum of the first 40 characters, or whatever). Then when the user is finished with defining the filter, he/she may decide on his/her own behalf, to go to the fields 'Filter name' and/or 'Status description', and start editing those fields further. Upon editing those fields, the 'shaded'/'half-open' character will change from 'half-' to completely 'open' (and will remain so). This last option, 'manually' adjusting the 'Filter name' and 'Status description', is then only necessary for more 'advanced users' , who use 'complicated' Regular Expressions, which may not 'work' very well as a name or description. The 'standard' name in 'Status description', however, should NOT be an uninformative 'Filtered', but should reflect the essence of the filter involved, and this should be done AUTOMATICALLY. It took me about half a year to 'discover' the convenience (nearly the necessity, in this context, i.e.) of placing the name of the filter in the 'Status description'-field, and half a year is somewhat more than 5 minutes.

In fact, to make the program really a little bit MORE user friendly, the entire distinction between 'Filter name' and 'Status description' should be dismissed! How often do these entries have to be copied (typed over) in the current user interface, and how often does it really occur (is it really necessary) to have something different in the 'name'-field as in the 'description'-field The balance is most probably such, that more is won than lost by discarding the 'description'-field entirely! (I.e., the 'name' will function as 'description', or vice verse). Naturally, some advanced users will (again) object to my suggestion, but it would really make the program MORE user friendly

Regards, Ernest

Ernest,

You're getting the hang of it now.

I like the suggestion about the filter name being automatically entered....and especially like the part where you think of us 'Advanced Users' who might then like to change the Automatic entry to suit our own tastes.

By the way...there are a lot of things that MWP could do to improve the user interface.....just be patient...they are a small group of programmers (IMHO good ones) that are writing some good software. They have been slowly improving this package and concept...and have paid attention to the suggestions posted by their users.

If it is something they can do quickly...and they believe that it would be an excellent addition, they have moved quickly on it. If it is something that may require a little more evolution of the code before they can implement it...they seem to be able to target that pretty well also...it just takes more time.

Keep you suggestions coming.....but remember...some of us like the flexibility that a software package that has more than 'menu selections' to offer.

As an example...MS Word is an excellent Word Processing program..and even though it is full of 'Menu Selections', if that is all that it had to offer it would be difficult to use it for its primary function.....creating written documents.

You gotta allow the user to type something in, or it just wouldn't be any fun...

Maybe something as simple as copying the filter name to the filter description when the focus changes from the filter name field and the description is blank.