Owen our UI and CSS guru has been hard at work the last couple weeks revamping our UI skin framework. In the next release it’s trivial to define a color palette and generate the CSS required to re-skin or re-color Zimbra. As part of this the basic skins that ship with Zimbra require little or no images to create the layout. Initial tests have shown that Zimbra actually performs slightly faster since it doesn’t need to load/render images for all the round corners and UI effects. Two of the new skins that will ship with ZCS 3.2 are ‘Sand’ and ‘Sky’.
Got a skin or color set you’d like to see in the next release. Add a comment with some colors and a name and it may be the newest Zimbra skin!
on June 1st, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Huzzah!
I dig the idea of skinning the email app– we may go with something ‘outdoorsy’. But the biggest cause for my ‘huzzah’ is the removal of round corners– no end user really cares, and the performance savings are big. We see this same issue as we attempt to optimize our ecommerce experience.
on June 2nd, 2006 at 7:42 am
This is awesome. I really wasn’t feeling the default skin…and oddly enough I am pretty sure that is one of the reasons I haven’t gotten around to testing Zimbra yet (superficial as that may seem).
Making it customizable is the way to go.
on June 2nd, 2006 at 8:38 am
Will the skins be user selectable, from options the admin provides? We have a user who is color blind. I’m sure what would work well for him might not be as pleasing to some others.
Richard
on June 2nd, 2006 at 8:43 am
@Richard - Yes. The user can select the skin they want. They are listed in the Options area under the General tab. At this time it lists all the skins that are available on the system. As we developer it further we want to provide a way to add them on the fly and allow the admin to control the list that each user can see.
on June 2nd, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Nice, I am looking forward to this. The default 3.1 skin is quite okay, but I have never been very fond of the brushed metal looks of either Apple or anyone else..
If you could make a pretty skin with few colors, something a bit like the google and yahoo webmails, mostly blues and whites that would be cool!
on June 6th, 2006 at 5:05 am
Very slick Kevin. Are the extra functions and zimlets that you have displayed be available in 3.2 also?
on June 6th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Yes. You’ll find those additional Zimlets in the /opt/zimbra/zimlets-extra directory.
on June 19th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
I would like to have a green one:#ACE149
Dont know how it looks if its to much, but may be you can try and post it.
Regards and keep up the good work
C.
on June 20th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Hmmm, how about functionality first.
Say, share calendars with others using a Distribution list.
Be able to search personal contacts with a “.”.
Public folder.
Delegated permissions to mailboxes.
Don’t get me wrong, a very good application and the support team at Zimbra is great. I just think efforts should be focused on the core of email/groupware, rather the eye candy.
on June 21st, 2006 at 3:29 pm
@JM - Yes we understand the importance of the items you list. All of those are features that are planned for upcoming releases. I’m sure you can understand that the UI/graphics team is different from the folks who will implement delegated mailbox access or public folders. We are working on those items now but the development time is longer.
on June 1st, 2008 at 7:06 pm
My users like the skins and the color options available now. One thing I keep running into is people wanting more color selections for their calendars. We share a lot of calendars, and doubling up colors is a pain. Thanks!