Face it: We all have at least 3 different e-mail accounts. For me, I’ve got Hotmail(live), GMail(beta), Yahoo(beta), work, and my personal account. Each of those services have their own distinct look. So, we decided to have fun with one of them.
Imagine if this service [we’ll just call them "BMail"] ran on a Zimbra Server. You’d have our upcoming chat feature, searching within attachments, archiving & discovery, tasks, documents, and mobile sync. . . not to mention:
you’d own the server. It’s like "BMail++".
So. . .what would a "BMail" on a Zimbra server look like? That’s a question that Roland and Parag have answered for us. They have written a skin for the lite-html client that. .well. . looks like and acts like "BMail". (Click for a larger image)
We call it ZMail. We’ll never release this skin publicly because we’re just messin around. It’s also not for sale.
We wanted to show off what someone can do on a couple weekends. You can customize Zimbra however you want with a skin.
on June 18th, 2007 at 9:48 am
For a moment I was excited. It looked good, it looked like a reason to use the lite client; but it’s not for public consumption.
Shame.
I suppose it wont be long before something similar is released though.
on June 18th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Oh, you’re killing us. It’s gorgeous. Release it already — if you don’t someone else will just re-engineer it anyway.
on June 18th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Sure looks familiar… oh ya, gmail theme! haha
on June 18th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Impressive, even down to the advertising on the right hand bar.
on June 18th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
LOL. They even replicated the Google Ads in the sidebar…
on June 18th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
that’s awesome, and if it handles like the “G” it should be amazing!
on June 18th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
you need to release this … it’s awesome
on June 18th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
PLEASE release this skin. I don’t care if it’s unsupported beta whatever, just don’t tease us like this.
on June 18th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Yeah, RELEASE it already.
on June 18th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
It’s not because it’s a ‘beta’ - the point of:
“We can’t release it, but that doesn’t mean that no one else could come up with their own skin.”
Was legal ramifications/being sued by Google…
on June 18th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
sexy.
on June 18th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
This is fake. That’s why they’re not releasing it.
on June 18th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
@Anon
Nope. It’s the real deal.
The point isn’t that it’s a competitor. The point is that using Zimbra skins, you can skin it any way you want, while keeping the Power of Zimbra.
Zimbra + Your Own UI = Your Own Server.
on June 18th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Very nice, cohesive interface. Thanks for this.
on June 19th, 2007 at 2:11 am
uh… whats the difference between this and Gmail?
on June 19th, 2007 at 2:59 am
There is an inconsistency. The blue background of directory names (left name) should have rounded corner on the left-hand side.
on June 19th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Minor clarification: This is what someone who happens to have architected the original skins and interaction behavior can do on a couple weekends.
Wth the HTML Lite skin. I’m sure the screenshots are real, but it probably doesn’t do a few of the things that its competitor does. The AJAX skin would be a lot harder, because it does a lot of things that the competitor doesn’t.
/blog/archives/2007/05/comcast_zimbra_future_of_unified_messaging.html notwithstanding, it would be a really bad ide afor most organizations to rebrand extensively because then all the screenshots in the (excellent!) online help would be wrong.
on June 19th, 2007 at 7:21 am
We actually run Zimbra at work, maybe I could copy this. It can’t be too hard to whip up an html file with some CSS.
on June 19th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Personally, I hate their interface, and much prefer Zimbra’s standard interface. Before zimbra, I heavily used pine for my e-mail client. I still do, but now only for my personal e-mail. Can you skin it to look like pine?
on June 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am
There is already a email service, here in Portugal, called ZMail. Coincidently enough, it uses Zimbra. It’s operating already for at least 4 years now, formerly by a company named ZSystems, now bought by Olibite who changed the mail system to Zimbra.
http://www.olibite.com.pt/
http://webmail.zmail.pt
on June 19th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Haha, this is cool!
on June 24th, 2007 at 7:44 am
oh yes please release
on June 26th, 2007 at 9:03 am
My God..
its excellent..
Pls release it, let public use it
on July 12th, 2007 at 9:39 am
iZimbra
It’s been a highly guarded secret here @ Zimbra Headquarters. We locked Roland in a room with his iPhone and he came out with iZimbra. Roland is a Zimbra co-founder, and the same developer whose team brought us our AJAX…
on July 16th, 2007 at 1:20 am
We also called it ZMail… in 2001.
on July 26th, 2007 at 1:55 am
i want to open my email id with Zmail what i have to do please guide me