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Evolution 1.5 has Been Released
SirPrize writes "As announced here, Evolution 1.5 is now available for download (obligatory screenshots, for those who want to click and see)" Congrats to all the developers responsible for this gigantic undertaking.
it truly is an Outlook killer
I'm not trying to troll here, as I think Evolution is a wonderful product... but I'd just like to dispute your claim on one of the finer points - nothing will be an "Outlook Killer" until it runs everywhere that Outlook runs (ie: Windows).
How about at least mentioning what features are new?
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I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of Evolution and why it may be impossible to run on Windows, but I think that if it were possible, it would be a large boon to the project.
Evolution is truly a first class application. Polished, debugged, good-looking, and professional.
... but where's the built-in support for remote calendars using an open protocol? Folks like me who are developing open source groupware servers are anxiously awaiting good clientware to connect to. How about putting WCAP in the standard build? It's well-documented and much simpler than the disgusting mess the IETF is proposing (CAP has the dubious honor of being the one protocol even uglier than IMAP).
That having been said, though, I am still disappointed by the fact that they are not supporting remote calendars out of the box. Sure, you can buy plugins to connect it to Exchange, or Netscape/iPlanet/SunONE/JES calendar server (whatever they're calling it this week), and presumably Groupwise (soon)
So how about it, codemonkeys? The sooner we get some real open source calendaring going, the sooner we can start to make a real challenge to Outlook. Microsoft loves the Outlook/Exchange lock-in. They love it so much that they're trying to do the same thing across their entire product line (Office 2003 has many ties to SharePoint server). The window of opportunity is open, but it won't be forever.
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In my opinion, borrowing ideas like that for a groupware/email client would be what distinguishes Evolution from the competition.
Oh, and pretty please make a Winders version for those of us that are stuck here? :)
one of the things i've noticed with the (dear me) evolution of Evolution is that when it originally reared its head it was almost a complete copy of Outlook from a UI point of view.
the version that comes with XD2 seems to have begun a move away from Outlook. and i'm debating in my mind if this is a good thing or not. surely the "switch"-like campaign would favour apps that looked and behaved more like MS apps for the sake of familiarity when moving across to a new environment. obviously the bad side of this is the whole innovation-stiffling argument that if one just mimicks Microsoft behaviour, what benefit other than cost is being added?
anyway, i would be in a better position to speak once actually having given it a test - but the UI on those screenshots seems a lot LESS intuitive than i've seen in previous releases. a few examples:
Calendar
it may seem obvious to a geek, but what is "Local"? and how does that differ from "On This Computer" in the tasks screenshot? also, what the heck is the "Component" button at the bottom there? and why do the buttons at the bottom there look so ugle. the ones on Tasks have icons, those don't. basically inconsistent UI.
i understand that this is a dev. release, but it seems silly to me to ignore UI in a odd release while developing the functionality and then maybe coming back to it in the following release. the way a user interacts with software should be considered throughout a development cycle as interaction changes can often lead to large programming changes.