Tim:
Icons, icons, icons! I can't find a damn thing by icons.
Tom Horsley:
Yes! A stop sign and an envelope are pretty much it for icons that make some sense, after those two it is all guesswork (and I wonder how the envelope will age with no one sending physical letters any longer :-).
On Evolution emailer, the first few menu bar buttons have icons & text:
New (message/folder/etc), send/receive, reply, group-reply, forward
They're as clear as day what they're for, and big enough to click on them easily.
The next few are tiny icons only, and only by hovering over them and waiting (an annoying delay), do you find out that the thing that looks like a paper shredder is print, the next one that looks like a volume knob is a wastepaper bin, the next one that looks like an iceberg is junk mail, the next one that looks like an iceberg with a red x is not- junk mail, there's a set of drawers which I just found out is to archive a mail (a function I've never used, and never will, though just tried it now and I have no idea where the message went), there's some back and forth arrows that I don't know if they mean next message in the thread or list (I never use them), and a stop sign (which ain't that great at aborting something that's going haywire).
You end up using just a few of them, and it tends to always be clicking second icon along, rather than clicking on icon with certain picture on it (because the pictures aren't intuitive).
And one or two hotkeys, because they're the only ones that stick in your mind.