Zimbra XUL/AJAX rich client?

[voidless]

Hi,

I discovered Zimbra a day ago and I have to say I'm astonished by both the quality of the native AJAX based web client and the underlying Zimbra architecture.

However, I was wondering if anybody thinks AJAX client is suitable for mass deployment inside a larger company, as a replacement MS Outlook. I see AJAX client rather as a supplement for MS Outlook Web Access, therefore the question is - is it worth building native Zimbra client in some more powerful language say as a XUL/AJAX application running atop of XULRunner?

The port would be much easier than building the client up from scratch in C++/Java while the robustness seems better for me. One would even got benefits of either installing the client to local stations or running it from a server (XULRunner can AFAIK download and run XUL files from a remote server).
Also the UI would be better as XUL is more suitable for UI than css-styled xhtml.

Any comments from developers?

[KevinH]

We don't have plans inside Zimbra today to create a XUL version of our client. While we don't think every Zimbra user will only use the AJAX client we here at Zimbra use it extensively. There are many corporate environments where a fat client just won't cut it. However we do offer IMAP/POP and as we've said before are working on an Outlook provider, ActiveSync and Blackberry support.

That said if the community has it's heart set on a XUL app our SOAP api's would make this pretty easy to build. Take a look at ZimbraServer/docs/soap.txt, it's a good place to start.

[voidless]

OK, got it, thanks.