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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!
Posted by Kevin at June 1, 2006 04:55 PM
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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.
Posted by: dave jenkins at June 1, 2006 06:17 PM
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.
Posted by: Marc at June 2, 2006 07:42 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
Posted by: Richard Parker at June 2, 2006 08:38 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.
Posted by: KevinH at June 2, 2006 08:43 AM
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!
Posted by: Denis Braekhus at June 2, 2006 03:32 PM
Very slick Kevin. Are the extra functions and zimlets that you have displayed be available in 3.2 also?
Posted by: FunkyPenguin at June 6, 2006 05:05 AM
Yes. You'll find those additional Zimlets in the /opt/zimbra/zimlets-extra directory.
Posted by: KevinH at June 6, 2006 07:24 AM
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.
Posted by: cabotine at June 19, 2006 11:32 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.
Posted by: jm at June 20, 2006 06:46 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.
Posted by: KevinH at June 21, 2006 03:29 PM
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