On Nov 13, 2008, at 7:31 AM, Alan in Toronto wrote: > On Wed, November 12, 2008 8:31 pm, Scott Haneda wrote: >> Currently I would like to improve on the issue in this image: >> http://www.newgeo.com/web/misc/172910-sm.png >> There is plenty of room to show more of the name, how can I >> accomplish >> this? >> >> As seen in this image, there is a grey area to the right, this can be >> larger at times, is there any way to get full expansion of the table: >> http://www.newgeo.com/web/misc/17316-sm2.png > > It's absolutely possible, and could be adjusted easily by users, if > we could > encourage those developers who write core and plugins code to use > better HTML, > without fixed dimensions in elements like tables, and to make > liberal use of class > and ID attributes. Then the whole SquirrelMail UI would be more > flexibile and > adaptable and could be adjusted or even transformed by use of CSS > (Cascading Style > Sheets). > > Right now the SM team writes good PHP, but the HTML is "old school" > and infexible. > Without much work, the excellent base that they've built could be > improved by > cleaning up its HTML and adding attributes that can be targetted by > CSS. > SquirrelMail could look much better and be much more customizable, > without a lot of > work. I tend to agree, and I am working on the latest SVN as well. To deal with the issues I was having, I tracked down the CSS selector in the table that is iterated in the message view. I download the themes folder in SM, and searched all files for the name of that selector, and can not locate it. I am sure it is there, but I only put a small amount of effort into it. I think there are a few important things to take note of from this. First, SM is in wide deployment, major ISP's, schools, and other places use it. It has proven to me, and to others, by users using it and speaking with their actions, that it is the best IMAP web client around. That said there are at best, 2 good skins for the application. Both are paid, and both modify the source of the SM install, and are much more than just css file sand graphics. I do not at all mind paying for the work, but I do mind that they have a ridiculous upgrade policy. SM moves fast in development, and skin makers do not move so fast. I do not want to have to trust their code, instead of just trusting a benign css file. The skins that come with SM, largely, to me, look a lot like terminal coloring gone bad :) Of all the installs I have used, I have never seen more than just the default classic in use by others. I have seen a few of the 2 aforementioned skins in use, but again, they do not keep up with the rapid development cycle of SM. @Mail is really excelling in this area, unfortunately, they make a non compliant IMAP web client, and are bad on support, they simply do not offer it, and their mailing list of is no help. Their web client looks and works how a web client should, but it simply does not work with all IMAP RFC standards. For me to trudge through their code, without any help from them to even enable a debug mode, is of no interest to me, I would rather put my time into this community, where there is solid support, and people who seem to genuinely care, over pushing a semi-free web client in order to ultimately push a sellable 'enterprisey' version. I have been doing php development for as long as I can remember, 15 years or more, along with a lot of other languages and server admin stuff. I have more than enough CSS skills to help out in this area. I think a good deal of people do not use SM because they install it, and judge a book by it's cover. For lack of a better word, SM needs a 'web 2.0' skin, maybe not so heavy on the AJAX junk, but something that gives this book a good cover. I have wanted to do this for a long time. I see some hurdles. As the above poster mentioned, there are not the best of ways to hook into the core code. I can not simply start working on the CSS. This is not a case like CSS Zen Garden, where every chunk of html is referenced by a CSS class and you can go to town. If you disable all CSS in SM, it does not degrade down to a text only display, but seems to be very table driven, and the frames, those may or may not need to go, depending on which side of the fence you are on with that debate. I am very much willing to put the time into this. The problem is, I will be making changes to the core, and I am not in the slightest bit familiar with how those changes get back into the main core release. I would be making a massive change to the look and feel of SM, I would not have much desire to make my changes, and then make a second skin to drop SM back down into the current standard look and feel. So this would very much be a totally new default design for SM. If I fork it out, then I get into the same issue of having to take the current version, and re-apply my changes to it. I think that sums up the stumbling block I am talking about. If someone can suggest to me if this is even a want of most users, and how to best go about it, I would love to get started. As it is now, I think the only way to do it is to take a version, change it, and release it as a skin with the source code modified as well. This is a maintenance mess for a skin developer. SM needs to drop down to a html validated, compliant, text only version when the CSS calls are removed. If that is done, then anyone can simply grep out all the CSS classes, and go design crazy with it. I think there would be more relevant designs if this burden was removed. Thanks for listening. Any comments are appreciated, and please, do not take this as me taking any stabs at SM, as I said, it is the standard of rock solid IMAP clients out there, there is nothing even close when it comes to just working, but we do need to deal with the judged book by it's cover issue. -- Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ ----- squirrelmail-users mailing list Posting guidelines: http://squirrelmail.org/postingguidelines List address: squirrelmail-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx List archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.mail.squirrelmail.user List info (subscribe/unsubscribe/change options): https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/squirrelmail-users
