This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Kliwon Klimis on 28th October 2008 425 cilce, , frood, grradt, 525254
The World of Zimlets
An Overview of Zimlets
As mentioned earlier, Zimlets are third-party applications or "mash-ups" that are used to enhance the user experience. Zimlets add additional functionality to the
Web Client so that users have more options and tools to communicate more effectively and efficiently. Zimlets are displayed in the Navigation Pane of the web-client. Below is a list of some of the Zimlets that are installed and deployed by default:
Flight Explorer |
Enables the user to check updated flight status on flights directly |
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from their email client. |
Amazon |
Provides users with access to search Amazon.com. |
Date |
If any part of the message body of an email is a date (i.e. April 10, |
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2007) by hovering the mouse cursor over the date, Zimbra will |
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automatically display any appointments the user has that day. |
Gtranslator |
Google Translator displays a pop-up window for users to enter in |
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phrases they would like translated into another language. |
RSS |
Used as an RSS feed client for users to receive RSS feeds in their |
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email client. The RSS feed takes the place of the calendar in the |
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lower left hand side of the client. We will walk through the RSS |
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Zimlet in more detail, later in this chapter. |
Search |
Provides users quick access to Zimbra Search. |
YMaps |
Yahoo! Maps is now integrated into the email, so that if an |
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address is displayed anywhere in the body of an email message, |
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by hovering the mouse cursor over the address, a map of the area |
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will appear. Unfortunately, this works only in the US. |
Hopefully, by just getting an overview of seven of the Zimlets that come default with a Zimbra implementation, you are starting to see how much functionality could truly be added to a Web Client. It is important to keep in mind a few items when thinking about Zimlets:
1.Developers and System Administrators can create and deploy custom
Zimlets and are not limited to the ones offered by Zimbra.
2.In order to optimize the performance of the Zimlets, it is best (at the time of this writing) to use the Firefox web browser. In fact some Zimlets (i.e. RSS) only work within Firefox.
3.Although Zimlets run on the client side, they are still secured on the server.
An example of this security will be discussed.
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