IMP meets Outlook meets XMLHTTP
Horde's menu system has been extended to integrate data provided by the applications, for example to allow Outlook-ish folder lists in the menu tree. Even cooler, these tree portions can be automatically updated in the background by XMLHTTP requests.
On the right you see a screenshot of the new menu with a part of the portal page.
The menu was already driven by javascript code categorizing the applications into categories like "Personal Information", "Mail and News" or "Office", and allowing to expand and collapse these categories.
This custom javascript code has been replaced by using Horde's Tree API that renders tree structures using DHTML and falls back to plain HTML if the browser doesn't support it.
"Blocks" being the plugins for the Horde framework can be dropped in to extend this tree of applications.
This has been done examplary to add an often requested feature, a mail folder list on the left side that doesn't disappear if you navigate through the applications similar to Outlook's layout.
As if this wasn't already cool enough, an XMLHTTP client has been created that can be used to update portions of this tree (and obviously other UI elements in the future) in the background without needing to reload the whole page. See this posting for an idea where to go from here.
