This week, I accidentally made Kolab Now Beta really beta — though pre-alpha more than beta, strictly speaking — completely intentionally;
I can now proudly announce it runs off of otherwise public GIT source repositories directly, and the developers working on the projects involved have direct access to it [^1].
All of them have explicitly agreed to our explanation and their understanding of the conditions under which they are provided access to this part of the world’s privacy asylum — under Swiss law, compliance is secured with prosecution and potentially jail time.
What it gives us is a responsive skin for Roundcube — the Kolab Now web client. This should enable its use on tablets and smaller mobile devices such as smart-phones, and make use on left- or right-hand parts of wide desktop screen real estate significantly more reasonable. Naturally, this is in addition to the existing three-column view already in production (read more here).
This is a work in progress. It means that many of the additional functionality that Kolab has brought to Roundcube needs adapting to become responsive [^2]. I will certainly work to make beta.kolabnow.com appear more “kolab” — a logo or two, some colour scheme, you know the drill.
If you have an existing Kolab Now account, use beta.kolabnow.com/apps/ to see what’s what. Bear in mind some things might not work, or it in its entirety might not work, for some of many moments.
We’ll be more than happy to collect your feedback; Test it with all the devices you have (no seriously, please do).
I have two topics to propose come next on our agenda;
- One-Time Password support (for the web client). More on this later, albeit I have spoken about this before. Stay tuned!
- A campaign under which you suffer the consequences of using beta.kolabnow.com exclusively (which may include a discount or bug bounty program).
Of course, more insights are appreciated under #thankskolabnow 😉
Footnote ^1: When I say “direct”, I mean that everything that’s echo’ed to the terminal (despite potentially being redirected) is centrally logged, and the use of sudo is required.
Footnote ^2: This is what you normally do with a retrospective; provide stakeholders (you) the opportunity to provide feedback on all too recent developments.
kanarip 
This is awesome!
It works great on an iPhone 6s, and I love the expandable panel available (for contacts, calendar) from the side when required, which otherwise stays unobtrusive.
Further – on a laptop, it means I can multitask, like read an article whilst keeping eyes peeled for new incoming emails (as doing now). The persistent sidebar of apps means one can switch task easily.
This will be the best improvement on the Kolab Webclient so far, however the need for real-time email updates in webclients is needed much in the same way desktop clients provide instant updates IMAP-Idle clients whilst maintaining a connection over iMAP-idle. Hopefully Roundcube Next is brewing somewhere in the background – but in the meantime, this is a very meaningful prelude/taste of things to come 🙂
Keep up the great work
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