OSX Mail Theme [Beta]

[gouksss]

Hello all,
I was eager to try Skaero's theme, and having had no answer quick enough (not a criticism, we all have lives )
I created my own version. you can find screenshots attached and the zip download...
It has unobtrusive folder collapsing included, with cookie status storage.
and it has a Leopard Mail look...
File Download : http://www.unity.fr/osxmailb01.tar.gz

PS. it's Firefox and Safari optimized for now, and bugs might subsist...


UPDATE : Uploaded ß0.2 :

• — Improved with ideas from Skaero :
• Messages counter and arrows are now Combined buttons
• "Actions Menu" to bring bottom options back at top of screen


• — Changed layout a bit (multi-buttons, or Combined Buttons) like in Mail.app
• — Several bug fixes
• — Loading, Errors... Notifications happen in the messages bar, they are now more discreet. I'll let you give me feedback as if this is a welcome change.
• — Cosmetic Changes
• — Added back the Identities tab (it's disabled on my server, forgot to enable it back)

File Download : http://www.unity.fr/osxmailb02.tar.gz

Tested for Safari and Firefox.

UPDATE : Uploaded ß0.3 :

• — Fixed text overflow for taskbar buttons, will now display on mouse over without conflicting
• — Integrated Vicelow's icons (but not the core patch, I'll stick with 100% theming)
• — Corrected action icon (had a static path name) - and btw, it was Skaero's idea originally
• — Corrected Preview pane attachment background color
• — Added a nice semi-transparency and drop shadow to action menu and autocomplete for email adresses menu
• — Themed autocomplete email addresses menu
• — Preload icons images (static list of preloaded images for now)

File Download : http://www.unity.fr/osxmailb03.tar.gz

UPDATE : Fixed download links above thanx to MormonMacMan and oldschool

UPDATE : Uploaded ß0.4 :

• — Added mouse over status to message navigator buttons
• — Fixed folder collapsing on message pages

Edits thanks to vicelow
File Download : http://www.unity.fr/osxmail.tar.gz

Enjoy !

[Vicelow]

Thanks a lot, that's a good one!! Great start! Even works with just some flaws in IE6.
But despite all that sugar I noticed some drawbacks:

- the folders distance is huge in my eyes
- the small arrow is too close to the folders and got the wrong color according to mail.app. Besides you mixed up the mail thread icons and the folder collapse icons. I'd prefer though the collapse icons
- it doesn't porperly support multilingual setups (taskbar translations hang over to the next item for german in my case)
- the folders don't use the mail.app folder icon (attached it to this post)
- the scrollbar in the message preview frame won't show up at all (!!!)
- the settings are not truly customized
- the login window is not really "OS X"-y
- I'd be great if the collapse settings were stored in the user settings in the database as a cookie is computer based and the sense of a webmail client is certainly to access your mail from ANY computer. I acknowledge that this is a programming thing which can't be solved by a skin, just wanted to mention itÂ…
- the message.div is in the middle of nowhere
- I made a hack for the notes and to do folders which are created in in leopard mail so they have their icon, are positioned below the default folders and are localized. If someone is interested, IÂ’m willing to post it. ItÂ’s very simple indeed (in the long run, a hack for displaying and creating notes/to dos correctly would be great).
- the hover colors for the folders and for the addressbook entries arenÂ’t consistent
- with displayed attachment column in the mail view it messes up the selected itemÂ’s background
- the addressbook icons aren’t “mailized”

I experienced all those things on Firefox 2.0.0.11 – Windows version.

Je supppose que t’es français... alors, je te remercie en tout cas de nouveau, c super marron que t’as fait le travail et s’il y en a besoin, je peux contribuire à solver les petits problèmes qu’il y a encore...

Bon week-end

Vicelow

[Vicelow]

P.S.: I got lots of errors in my console for the mail.css and common.css stylesheets!

[gouksss]

Merci Vicelow / Thank you Vicelow !!

Effectivement je suis français
Mais je vais continuer en anglais pour que tout le monde comprenne...
I'm French but I'll continue in English so everybody can read.

Thank you very much for your comments, I'll be sure to look out for them and correct everything.

It's still an early beta, it should be feature complete but lots of bugs remain, I'm quite aware of that.
I'm targeting IE6 as a minimum for a full experience, and IE 5.5 for compatiblility.
I still have quite a lot of work, but hey, it's a first release.

I wasn't actually trying to make a Clone of Mail.app, but it seems that people want that, so I'll get closer to the original.

About the folder collapsing, I know that a cookie based folder status storage is less than ideal, given that people change machines and access it from everywhere, but my goal has been to provide a totally contained package.
Nothing lives out of the skin folder, and for now I want to keep it that way so it's update-resistant, seeing it's used on the SVN releases.
I don't really like the way changes are currently applied to RC, it really needs a proper plugin architecture, but it's quite a bit of work to implement...


I have been developping the skin off SVN changeset 944 and it's not an ideal release to build off. I should have started from RC2, I know...

Anyways, I'll try to update the skin as frequently as possible...

and Thank you for your folder icon, I'll include it now I was too lazy to look for it... bad developer, bad...

[Vicelow]

Ben ouais, sur le web, c mieux en anglais, bien que j'aie bien envie de parler un peu en français.

Anyway: just as I said it's a very good start, actually I also had done a rudimental Mail skin which I didn't put online because of it poor quality - in fact just an adaption of the default skin and that's why I had the folder icon at hand.

I agree that a 100% copy of mail.app is not really feasible given the different architecture and the tools we webdesigners have compared to desktop development but where it makes sense, I see myself using a lot better a familiar interface which has proven to be a good and intuitive one.

I noticed for example that just changing the default folder icons to that ones used by mail.app (inbox, drafts, trash etc) made me navigate between those much faster because I'm just so used to them. I personally really like the idea to have my OS X mail.app powered through AJAX anywhere I go, even on a windows machine.
In the end that's up to you iniciator of that skin. (or up to the individual user me as for example I already changed the folder icon on my skin )

I'm really curious to see Skaero' theme, I also wondered when it would be released. As the thread started back in June or so I think it can't be long anyhow. Perhaps there is some possibility to throw your work together. No idea if that would be feasible. What a pity that he took so much time and particularly didnÂ’t give some clear hints on the release date so that you came up with yours.

In a perfect world you both would simply work together to make the best skin all around which would also make adaption to new RC releases much more reliable and fast (not having to depend on one person to do that job)

So letÂ’s see what the future brings.
As I use your skin on a daily basis, IÂ’ll give you more feedback as I discover more things.
(By the way, I tested it with the latest trunk - r938)

Looking forward to future versions!
Vicelow

P.S.: Tu viens d’ou? Sans outrager, tu parles super bien anglais pour un français

[gouksss]

Well thanks for all the compliments.

I'm a Frenchie from Paris, France, but you know the miracles the web and US movies can do to improve the world's English level...

I already have implemented your icon into the skin, and I'm trying to find out where the bug that's hiding the message preview is coming from ...

In a perfect world, yes I would be working with SKaero, I'm in fact all ok with it.
but I needed to have a quick mail skin done for the users on my server, having completed a migration from Exchange Server+OWA to Leopard Server, I thought going OWA->Mail.app was just too sexy...

If you have some bits you think I could use from your own skin, I'd be glad to look at them and maybe include them !

I hope I'll be able to put out releases regularly... =)

[Vicelow]

I'm here at work right now but as I have some time I'll have a look if I got some code that might be worth implementing... For sure I will code some things to adapt it to my taste that I can send you afterwards. Tomorrow I will be travelling to jan 7. so probably it will only be next year.

So far have a nice christmas and see you in 2008...

P.S.: if you find some time you might have a look on some of your mouseovers as there is a loading delay.... (for example the collapse double arrow)

[giuseppe]

Great job on the Theme. I really like it!

One thing I noticed is that the address book does not allow me access to the LDAP server. You mentioned that it hasn't been configured for IE yet so i won't go there. :-)

Again, Good Work!

[SKaero]

Sorry I have been so busy, I will try to finish it up soon with my new time off.

[pitit.atchoum]

salut!! vu que t'es francais je sais pas si je vais avoir la motiv de traduire donc je te le dis direct ^^
c'est de la bombe cette skin
apres je te cache pas qu'il y a quelques bugs par ci par la, mais j'imagine qu'ils seront corrigés
genre le tri des messages fonctionnent quand il en a envie (je viens de m'en rendre compte) et 2/3 autres trucs
enfin bon je vais pas te prendre la tete avec ca
passe de bonnes fetes et bonne continuation

++
Nico

translation :
this is the best skin i've ever seen (but with a few bugs ^^)

[gouksss]

Thank you very much, merci a tous...

I'm leaving for NY today, and won't be back till january 1st, so don't expect any new developments in the meantime.

But as soon as I'm back, I'll continue working on it and correct the outstanding bugs

[fluffels]

hey, i don't seem to be able to get the 'identities' tab from the settings page up.

has this not been implemented?

oh yeah, and on the latest firefox, no scrolling in preview pane. at all.

[gouksss]

It's fixed in ß0.2,
check first post.

[Vincent Ramos]

Hello,

Nice work but there's a small problem with the text labels under the icons when their text is too wide to fit. See for instance the screenshot below in which “Carnet d'adresses” (instead of “Adresses”) is partially masked by “Préférences”. Text may be even longer in other languages (“Catálogo de endereços”, “Caderno de enderezos”).

Edit: screenshot was taken from Firefox (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux i686 Gecko/20071004 Firefox/2.0.0.3).

[gouksss]

It should be fixed, see first post