[Kolab-devel] Future of the Webclient: lets take a modest approach, dropping IMP and MIMP

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Hi Sascha,

Quoting Sascha Wilde <wilde at intevation.de>:

> Hi *,
>
> Thomas and I had a little talk on various aspects of Kolab and
> Kolab-Server, one topic was the web client and one immediate outcome
> was, that as long as we still use the current Horde3 based solution
> (which surly will be the case for a couple of releases to come) we need
> to get it as good and usable as possible with as few afford as
> possible[1].
>
> One important step to make this possible is to drop support for IMP and
> MIMP.  Currently we are advertising three variations of the web client
> on the login screen and all of them are having there specific set of
> problems and limitations.
>
> We want to concentrate on one of them to get it as good as possible.
> The natural choice is DIMP, as it is the most advanced with regard to
> user experience and a bunch of improvements have already been made,
> which are not ported yet to the other incarnations[2].
>
> What are the practical implications of this?
> - We will remove the choice between IMP,DIMP and MIMP from the login
>   screen of the web client.  DIMP will be used always.
> - Problems with DIMP gain higher priority, as the alternative IMP will
>   no longer be valid.[3]
> - Problems with IMP, which don't exist in DIMP might not be fixed.
> - Requested feature only have to be realized in DIMP, which makes them
>   more likely to get realized.
>
> We hope that we get by this a better tested, more stable and less ugly
> client until the time is ripe for greater changes.
>
> Any objections to this plan?  "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace!"
> ;-)

While I don't have objections in general I'm still uncertain about the  
specific course of action.

Right now it looks to me that we do not have a concrete  
"must-have"-list for dimp. There are of course a few shortcomings we  
already identified but to my knowledge we didn't have time for a  
thorough analysis yet. Thus it is hard to estimate the required effort.

And I assume there will be some overlaps with things that have already  
been completed in Horde 4 (e.g. support for PGP in Dimp).

I'm certain we will have a good amount of testing on the web client  
anyhow. So if we are going to invest that it might be the better  
choice to go for Horde4 even if that is not maximally stable yet.

I'm not at all saying that this is the best way to go. I just want to  
consider that option which is why I'd like to add the corresponding  
Horde4 packages as soon as possible so that we can evaluate it.

Cheers,

Gunnar

>
> cheers
> sascha
>
> [1]  no surprise here, we currently don't have big resources to spend.
> [2]  partly because no one has gotten around to do it, partly because
>      porting would be hart or impossible for technical reasons.
> [3]  kolab/issue4080 (DIMP: Mails can not be copied to other folders)
>      comes to mind...
> --
> Sascha Wilde                                          OpenPGP key: 4BB86568
> http://www.intevation.de/~wilde/                  http://www.intevation.de/
> Intevation GmbH, Neuer Graben 17, 49074 Osnabrück; AG Osnabrück, HR B 18998
> Geschäftsführer:   Frank Koormann,  Bernhard Reiter,  Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
>



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E-mail : p at rdus.de                                 Dr. Gunnar Wrobel
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