Hello beautiful VDG folks,

the PIM team is look into making KMail look a bit more 21st century-like . One of the parts that needs a facelift is the default mail header theme, so we'd like to ask you for help with designing one. We think that having something that is based on Breeze would make KMail fit better with other apps, that's why I mention it in the subject. But of course if you think something slightly different would fit better we won't argue with you It would also be nice if we could have light and dark versions to go well with the default color schemes.

Below is a screenshot of the current header theme. The amount of headers is variable (users can configure which headers to show). The photo is read from X-Face header, addressbook, or newly via Gratavar (if enabled). When no photo is found, the current theme does not show anything, but we could replace it by some default image in the new one.



There are few points that are to be considered, and that I am not sure we have any guidelines or existing uses of:

1. Should the headers be in a frame like the current ones, or maybe should they have some background (like a Plasma widgets have for example)?
2. What should the subject look like - i.e. font size, color, background(?)
3. Where to put the avatar - left (before the headers) or right as in the screenshot above (this needs to support ltr as well as rtl languages)
4. Row spacing - is there a default spacing value for lists/tables like this?

Thanks!

I miss the "More..." link (which expands the header), and actually all interactions (left/right click on links). Seems you do not talk about UX but visual aspects only.

Right, we don't want to change the interaction (unless really necessary), the context menus and behavior of links is something we are happy with and don't think it needs change, we indeed only want to refresh the looks. The button to collapse/expand certain fields when they are too long (like when there are too many recipients) is injected by KMail later on, so it's available all the time independently of the current header theme. That's why I did not mention it.

PS: UX side of KMail/PIM in general is another huge topic that we will want to address eventually, but that's for some other time.

I'd like to make some header suggestions. Could you point me to the original source code part for the current header? I know it's just a small piece of HTML and CSS, but I'd like some reference material. I can't find the needed files in the Git repository.

I just saw that there is a Breeze theme already on kde-look.org: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Br ... ent=171320
I think it looks pretty neat and about the same as I imagined it. Maybe you can contact the author if you can use that as a default?

I notice that some custom headers don't show attachments. That's fine if that's what you want, but I would say for a stock header, it MUST show attachments. This wouldn't be much of an issue if the message list properly showed attachments, but it doesn't (and there is an old bug filed about this), so displaying attachments in the header is a definite must.