[dev] Skinning Horde

[Steve Hughes]

Hello everyone.

I have just joined the list with this being my first post so let me start out by
saying thank you to all those past and present that have contributed to the
development of Horde and all the modules that are available for it. You have
all obviously put in a lot of time, effort and thought into making Horde and
mods one of the very best open source projects on the web. So again thank you
and congratulations ..

Some background info.
My name is Steve, i live in Canada and have been using Horde/imp for my webmail
needs for almost 2 years, at this point i think i would be lost without it as i
have dropped all other clients. I have been very satisfied with the look and
feel of Horde in general, made a few slight changes to soot my needs but until
recently never really delved into the back-end to completely customize the look
and feel. I run a small hosting business and offer my clients Plesk as a control
panel and thought it would be nice to customize the look of Horde to match the
skin selected in plesk by the clients. I set up a test server and started
tweaking and modifying realizing that there was quite an extensive way to
customize Horde that has been put in place but i found it difficult at first as
although there is extensive documentation already available i had a hard time
finding what i was looking for. It ended up taking me a very long time and i
also had to make changes to templates and core files to accommodate the look i
was striving for.

For anyone interested here are some screen shots:
Please keep in mind that this was a deliberate attempt to mimic the interface of
Plesk for the sake of consistency in application use.
http://shughes.ca/images/screenshots/login.jpg
http://shughes.ca/images/screenshots/mail.jpg
http://shughes.ca/images/screenshots/message.jpg
http://shughes.ca/images/screenshots/options.jpg
http://shughes.ca/images/screenshots/filters.jpg

After working on this i realized that i had ended up with a modified version of
Horde that i will have to maintain and modify every time there is a new release
- (Not Good). ..
After being enlightened by one of you (thanks Chuck), I decided to offer my
contributions, (if everyone is cool with that), and update the main Horde
version so that changes can be done hopefully once and enjoyed by everyone.

Cut a long story short.
Although extensive work has already been done by everyone here I would like to
offer some changes, patches, to the core templating system of Horde in an
effort to make it much easier to skin and create a more consistent movement
from one application to the next. Once complete I would also like to perhaps do
some work on a style guide for those interested in creating their own styles.

I am currently re-reading all available documentation, and would like to start
my efforts from scratch as having done a custom skin once was a great way to
discover all the fine work that has been put into the project already but most
definitely lacks any serious comments, suggestions, advise, input and concerns
from the professionals that have worked so hard on Horde.

I have never worked on or contributed to an open source project before so am
kind of just jumping in here and hoping that i am doing the right things to
move forward on this project so if i am stepping on anyone's toes here please
accept my apologies.

If anyone can offer any advise on documentation, please do so.
If anyone is already working on the template system or making mods to facilitate
an easier skinning process please say so.
If anyone has concerns, comments, suggestions? i would love to here them all
before i start as i need to create a blueprint first.

Thanks for reading ..
Steve..