The welcome page is the first sign that things have changed for Fuser members. There's an entirely different design, which visually explains what the services does: Aggregation of email, social networking messages, and even Twitter messages.
By far, though, the biggest change besides the user interface is the performance, which has been sometimes sluggish because of the intense processing that's required for connecting to so many different services at one time. They've redesigned the entire backend to vastly improve the speed and stability of their service.
For the purpose of this review, we set up several different accounts in order to test the new service, with something an average user would actually use. For example, accounts for Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail, as well as MySpace and Facebook.
Once you're logged into the new Fuser you'll see an entirely different inbox setup. There's a tabbed navigation system for access to email and Twitter messages. Here's a glimpse:
Notice the checkboxes next to each service under the Add/Edit Accounts tab. That's the new way to filter which messages you want to appear in your universal inbox. For example, because all of the checkboxes are enabled, all emails and social networking messages will appear in my inbox.
As for those that prefer to view their Gmail messages in the normal threaded display, Fuser has ensured that you still have the option to do so. It will open a new tab to the right and show Gmail emails in the usual manner. Here's a brief screencast that demonstrates this.
There's also a handy option to filter which messages you want to view for each social networking service. For example, for MySpace you can choose to read all messages, comments and bulletins, or whichever ones you want. As for Facebook, you have options for messages as well as wall posts.
The email reading and composition tab area is also improved. Besides the general tab for reading all messages, there will be other tabs for each mail system. For example, Gmail's mail tab will display all emails in the familiar threaded method while Yahoo, Hotmail and others systems will appear as they do on their systems.
Here's a list of all the different email and social networks that Fuser supports at this point in time. They plan to add many more services as members request them.
