Michael Heydekamp wrote:
Am 15.11.2012 21:00, schrieb Thomas Bruederli:
The general decision was to only have one skin provided by the core team.
Ok, this is new to me. Has this been stated elsewhere before, and I may have missed it?
At least it sounds a bit different to what you posted before under this subject (see my previous posts).
And this will definitely be the new Larry skin.
Hmm. :-( But that's of course your decision.
And yes, we heard your complains about wasted space in Larry, along with others saying the same, and we'll try to improve the header section anytime soon.
Not sure what you mean with "header section", I didn't lose a word about that (yet). It's simply every single message in the message pane which does already take way too much space.
Attached see comparison between Classic and Larry skin on my laptop, with identical config settings:
- Classic is displaying 14 messages in the message pane, Larry just 9. A
decrease of approx. 35% (wow).
- Classic is displaying 26 folder levels in the folder pane (with still
some space left at the bottom), Larry just 19 (with no space left at the bottom). A decrease of approx. 27%.
- Although the text font in the Classic skin is a lot larger than in the
Larry skin (I didn't patch the Larry skin to the larger font yet), Classic is displaying one more line of the body than Larry.
- Links in the message header "Mailing list" are not visible as such (=
not underlined), unless you hover them. But why should you do that, if you don't get the idea that they might be links?
So which skin would YOU choose...? ;-)
I choose Larry :-)
The amount of information which is displayed on the screen isn't the only measure for good UI design. Decent spacing, structures and a clear typography all contribute to the readability and the quick recognition of elements displayed on the screen. And these things have improved with the new design. Unfortunately on the cost of the information desnity.
Ok, I'll stop here.
Good. We heard you and all the other voices who have spoken up against the new UI. And we're constantly looking to improve things by taking into account all the different factors. But it's damn hard to make it right to everybody and mostly there are contradictory arguments to deal with.
But here's the good news to all of you who don't like the new skin (or anything else about Roundcube): it's free software. And it makes it relatively easy to change the UI with the skin concept, as opposed to other software products.
You have the freedom to modify and tweak it all the way you want it to be. Even if the stupid core developers don't understand your arguments or don't want apply your suggestions for whatever reason.
My impression is: The guys who invented this skin must have been sitting in front of a huge screen and didn't care too much about us poor laptop users. Not to speak about smartphone users (luckily, I don't have one).
Forget smartphones. Roundcube isn't made to be used on smartphones. And please don't start yet another discussion about this topic.
No offense, though.
I'm sure some people clearly took this as an offense...
Regards, Thomas