Webmail: Heralding a new era
The new Webmail email interface, which OUCS launched throughout the University to much fanfare last March, is continuing to come under fire from frustrated students.
The system, which replaced the somewhat antiquated "Wing" interface as Oxford University's official online email service, has been generating a host of complaints from individuals struggling to get to grips with its unfamiliar layout and apparently numerous glitches. Some have even requested that the old interface be kept online beyond the planned 1st June withdrawal date.
One of the most frequent complaints voiced about Webmail regards the habit the interface seems to have for displaying outdated email messages when a user first signs in. Rather than instantly being shown his or her most recently-received messages, an individual will tend to begin a Webmail session faced with 20 emails from the distant past, residing somewhere in the middle of the inbox in question. One will then be required to go to the effort of navigating to the most recent messages manually - a source of great frustration to some.
Further annoyance has been generated, it seems, by Webmail's propensity to cause older computers to function slowly - or even crash - when it is in use. A number of students are known to have suffered the loss of unsaved work as a result.
Other problems reported include a frequently slow connection to the email server, with the web browser often claiming to have "timed out" when in the process of performing a function (a particular problem for students connecting via dial-up networks) and the occasional inability of the interface to properly "wrap" text - with the inconvenient result that email messages are often displayed as single, long lines of text that must be scrolled along to be read.
Many students have thus resorted either to continuing to use the older Wing service - which, though perhaps less aesthetically pleasing, is at least free from the majority of these problems - or connecting to their accounts via a specialised email client, such as Outlook Express. Yet the latter option is seen by many (perhaps wrongly) as being beyond their technical expertise, whilst the former will cease to become an option if the university computing service, OUCS, proceeds with its planned withdrawal of Wing in June.
Responding to the criticisms levelled at Webmail, OUCS Systems and Operations Group Manager, Alan Gay, pointed out the many advantages that the interface has over its predecessor - though, contrary to the experiences of many, these allegedly include "improved ease of use" and "word-wrap of long lines". Acknowledging the problems some have experienced, however, Mr Gay stated: "there may be minor bugs, as with any system", and promised to "fix these as soon as we hear of them."
13th May 2004