[horde] Interface design Horde 4.1/5.0

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Hello Jānis,

Quoting Jānis <je at ktf.rtu.lv>:

> Citējot Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>
> Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:47:52 +0100:
>
>> As mentioned earlier (http://wiki.horde.org/ReleaseManagement), we  
>> plan to work on some redesigning for the next Horde release.
> ...
>> The right pane contains the actual application content. The main  
>> content area is completely up to the application to fill and lay  
>> out. At a later step we are probably going to standardize layout  
>> elements for applications too, but for now we concentrate on the  
>> application "frame". If applicable, the main application area is  
>> going to have a button bar on the top that contains all actions  
>> that apply to the content displayed below. This could be further  
>> restricting of the displayed content (think of views in the  
>> calendar, or filters in webmail), or doing anything with the  
>> content (deletion, replying/forwarding mail, etc.)
>
> As the user vulgaris I'd like to suggest to be not overzealous in  
> interface changing to avoid interface flames like for kde 3/4 or  
> currently - gnome 2/3 which may result in migration away from horde  
> (like it is with kde and gnome, where xfce wins the hearts of  
> conservative ones, at least - it seems so.)

The main reason for giving such a redesign a high priority is the fact  
that we have been told many times that Horde looks outdated in  
comparison to similar applications.

My own experience has been kind of desastrous in that regard: Kolab  
Systems is currently trying to move the Kolab ecosystem from Horde to  
Roundcube. To a large part due to the fact that is is being considered  
"to look slicker".

Roundcube is not the only contender in that area. Google, Tine 2.0,  
Open-Xchange, Zarafa all offer frontends with a more consistent  
interface than what we provide at the moment.

Several packagers and resellers mentioned Horde usability as an issue  
when we went to LinuxTag last year. Another large German packager  
deactivated the calendar because they considered the interface to be  
too different from the webmail frontend.

My personal feeling is that we are far from "overzealous" and that  
some users are in fact already migrating away from Horde.

Taking into account that I consider Horde to be a wonderful solution  
from a technical point of view I really would be happy if it is also  
attractive on the outside :)

> From my experience - my users do not use the sidebar and only one  
> gadgetist uses dynamic view.

That sounds like it is pretty much along the lines of what we want.  
During the Hackathon we discussed the different modes the top  
navigational bar should support. While it should allow to replace the  
sidebar, a bare-bone variant would simply list the various  
applications. And would thus be somewhat similar to the current top  
bar we have. We felt it just does not make too much sense to have both  
- as your users seem to see it as well.

It is good to know that most of your users use the static view. We  
discussed whether it actually makes sense keeping the static variants  
or not.

Cheers,

Gunnar

>
> Janis
>
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