Deprecation of SuiteR & Suite7 themes - discussion on adopting SuiteP

šŸ’” Suggestion Box
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Hi Everyone,

Just would like to address a particular subject that has been raised within Github and gather the feedback from the community to take back to the team.

We at SalesAgility are planning to deprecate the Suite7 and SuiteR theme from the next future release of SuiteCRM (SuiteCRM 7.9) which is planned for May 2017 - reference from github here.

The reason for this change is simply due to amount of resource required to support all three themes we feel can be put to better use. We want to introduce more drastic and technological changes to the application and we feel as a company and main contributors to the project that we are unable to to do this without requiring to sacrifice certain areas of the system that is legacy and high maintenance.

We wish to express that with this freed up time that more resource will be able to tackle the many functional issues we currently have and focus more on improving the integrity of the application.

Although we will be stepping back from these two themes we will of course merge any bug/theme fixes provided by the community (and our older internal provided fixes on Github) into the master branch but we ourselves will not be providing those fixes for those two themes (SuiteR & Suite7) from 7.9 onwards.

Below are currently the plans of deprecating the two themes (SuiteR & Suite7):

Now there has already been feedback raised of this change and I would like to bring that to the attention of our team to make the transition into this decision more easier and less painful to our users.

@pgorod brought up the point that the largest flaw of SuiteP is the lack of the ability to customise the theme.
The issue we currently, as pgorod brought up also, is that the HTML and CSS are very much has been merged together with the business backend of the system. We ourselves jokingly say to our fellow Sugar and Suite developers (though not really, we cry in the corner when no one is looking) that the application is ā€˜kindaā€™ MVC ā€¦ but not. We know this is a limitation and we have already put into place steps to tackle this in our future, future releases, which has trickled down leading us, the team, to make the decision that we have presented to you today.
So we are here to find out from the community how to make SuiteP more adoptable as a theme and what is the biggest challenge people have to transition away from the legacy Suite7 & SuiteR themes?

A couple of ideas already raised:

  • Introducing a UI to change the SuiteP theme colours (similar to the existing Suite7 & SuiteR)
  • Ability and easily change a number of CSS variables i.e. padding, font size etc using SASS.
    • Would this perhaps be simply a nice tutorial us developers can provide on a few ā€˜predefinedā€™ padding ranges i.e. small, medium, large.

Your feedback and discussions are always welcomed and appreciated so please join us in how to achieve a happy medium to go forward with into 7.9.

UPDATED:

We at SalesAgility have heard your feedback, again - thank you for providing it, and have made the decision and put into place resources to continue to provide support for Suite7 & SuiteR via github for a limited time (though it will be a substantial amount of timeā€¦). We will however confirm that the depreciation of Suite7 & SuiteP will happen in SuiteCRM 7.9.

Regards to the SuiteP editor this is still in discussion and would more likely be a possibility in a minor release of 7.9.x or 7.10 to provide an idea of our timescales.

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Copying from another discussion of this on Github,

I propose a ā€œchallengeā€ of sorts, a simple criterion to set the moment of deprecation of SuiteR: when it becomes possible to tweak SuiteP (from a UI or from SASS variables) in order to get equal values to SuiteR on:

  • amount of visible recents/favorites listed on the side bar
  • amount of visible dashlet items on home screen
  • amount of visible lines on a list view
  • amount of visible fields on a detail view
  • height of navigation top menu
  • height of buttons
  • visible time slots in the calendar

Basically, when an unwanted change in compactness is not being forced on users, then the new Theme adoption will be painless, and weā€™d be able to appreciate all the positive points of the new theme.

Iā€™d prefer a UI for this (and for the colours), but Iā€™d be ok with any way to do it, like copying a SASS variables file and compiling it. But currently the SASS variables are not enough to achieve this goal.

Thanks for all the work and for the chance to discuss this here.

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Let me summarize how i see this:

You develop a new theme instead of fixing bugs.
So basically because of the time spend in the new theme there was no time left for fixing bugs.
And now you deprecate the only good themes in favor of a new bad theme because otherwise you wont have time for fixing bugs.

Applause.

And i look in the future, and i see, that the bugs still wont get fixed, because you have no time.

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I do use SuiteP as the default template
You will never please all with just a single theme for all instances.
I do understand that a software needs to focus only in one template, its a normal workflow.
Bug fixing and feature implementation needs more time.

Butā€¦
Users do not have lots of options to tweek the template. In the actual state of things, I assume editing the template isnā€™t a good thing for the SuiteCRM project tooā€¦ as it can easily break the application itself.
In the future the layout must be decoupled from the contents so creating templates would be an easy task.
Until then, and to avoid the rage from all users a ā€œLayout light personalizationā€ feature.

Layout light personalization is required on any software. So please include:

  • Color Schemes and an editable Color Palette in the admin area, one of them as a preset/default for testing issues.
  • Fonts schemes
  • Some layout config parameters so the layout could be considered ā€œCustomizableā€!

Note: Color Schemes would also be useful for giving that ā€œnew release looksā€. Each release could have its color scheme.
And believe-me, any SalesAgility developer will be bored and tired with the actual SuiteP color looks when releasing 7.9.
Then what? Redesign it all just to change a color tone?

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I agree 100% with pgr here- a good plan.
Iā€™d add - if SASS route is used: also needed is helpful easy-to-understand documentation to make it easy - A Wiki page / a video walkthrough/ maybe a couple of ā€˜pre-cookedā€™ examples people can quickly install and try.

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P.S. I just saw this ā€¦

This is like your TV setā€™s volume control having only 3 pre-defined fixed settings. Itā€™s impractical!

Just give the end-user the capability to fine-tune any settings to HIS needs ā€¦ 0 -100 for example. Never small, medium or large!

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Thanks guys for all your feedback!

Weā€™ll keep this thread going over the coming weeks and see what else the Community would like to share with us to understand how to make SuiteP the preferred theme.
But from your views already its sounds like to really comes down to the ability to customise the theme more precisely than even what SuiteR & Suite7 provide rather than predetermined ā€˜set of levelsā€™ i.e. small, medium large.
Also in regards to bug fixing and deprecating the themes they are in hand in hand and we have already scheduled dedicate time for bug fixing because of the freed up resource :slight_smile:

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My sub-conscious brain is working overtime, here!

If you are going to consider more theme customization capability ā€¦ colors, spacing, etc. ā€¦ in a future release, what would be really nice is having the ability to store those sets of customized settings in theme ā€œconfigurationā€ or ā€œstyleā€ files (which are named, set up and maintained by System Administrators).

The desired style would then be selected when a user logs in to SuiteCRM, from whatever device they are using ā€¦ e.g.

  Username:  paullm
  Password:  ********

Theme Style: iphone

  Username:  paullm
  Password:  ********

Theme Style: Nantucket

The style selection would be a drop-down list of available styles, optimized for the type of device or simply the ā€œlookā€. e.g. iphone, mypad, desktop, style1, style 2, blue, gray, black and white, Nantucket, Summer, Autumn, wide-space, narrow-space, ā€¦ whatever!

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@samus-aran thanks for the info.

Just beware, tweaking paddings and spacings is not as easy at tweaking colors and fonts.

I think you will face difficulties in getting this right. Sure, all thatā€™s needed is a bunch of easy fixes to the layout, but so many of them, in so many places, that it adds up. Basically, the past 6 months of getting SuiteP just right, will have to happen all over again, and with the additional difficulty of making it adjustable.

I can think of a hundred web apps with themes that change backgrounds, colors, and fonts; but only a few that have compact/normal/large modes, which are tougher to get right.

I hope that by ā€œbug-fixingā€ you mean ā€œPR-mergingā€. There are so many bugs that have been fixed for a looong time that are still waiting to be merged. Anyway, Iā€™m happy with the news you give us about the time scheduled for this. : - )

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Hi Everyone,

Just a quick update - weā€™ll make a fuller announcement very soon.
We are still going ahead with deprecating the SuiteR and Suite7 themes from SuiteCRM 7.9 onwards, However we will continue to support all three themes for a while yet. This means that we would continue to provide fixes for critical visual aspects of the three themes via Github.

Regards to the SuiteP editor, as I briefly mentioned in our Suggestion Box that current development has already started for SuiteCRM 7.9 and the possibility of having an editor would be more likely in a minor release of 7.9.x or 7.10 just to give you an idea of our time scales.

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Hi,
first I thank you all Teams and CEO of SaleAgilityā€¦ because without youā€¦

Yes you have roadmap, you work hardā€¦you develop theme, but for me (and i think I am not alone)ā€¦ theme must be in second plan because a CRM must be fully functional.

Camping is buggy
Email is obsolete and buggy (I know, itā€™s on your roadmap)
Last Theme is buggy with on Mac platform (and not only on mac)

Api is on roadmap and will changeā€¦ but no information is given
yahoo js must be changedā€¦
tpl must be changedā€¦

Witch technology you have decided to useā€¦ nobody say about thatā€¦ and one day, you will say : this is ā€¦ but we have to be prepared to this changement.

Please, first, fix all ā€œbugā€ā€¦ and a better ā€œhelp/sample/howtoā€ā€¦ as I know, all info we help me, I find it in sugarcrm wiki.

Regards

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I appreciated everything that you all do. I would prefer to have the flexibility to choose colors. Personally the blue in suite R looks much better and is easier on the eyes than suite P. Your help in allowing us to choose colors on the theme would be awesome!

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My 2 cents: one theme without bugs > 3 themes with bugs.

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I am really upset right now. Honestly.

First off, When I installed SuiteCRM a couple years back, the first thing I did was ditch the Suite P. its too large, loud, and ugly. I didnt like Suite 7 either. But I fell in love with SuiteR, its just right, just perfect.

Time went on, never thought anything of it. I try to keep SuiteCRM up to date, not only for the bugs, but for exploit fixes as time goes by.

Downloaded 7.9, and I got FORCED back to Suite P, and itā€¦ Still, is ugly, loud, and too big!

But now GONE are my options! WTF? Really Microsoft? Oops I mean Sales-corporate-conglomeration?

And its not intuitive on how to get them back.

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@mbates14 ā€¦ you still have options:

  1. Go back to 7.8.x, which has the Suite R theme, along with long-term support.

  2. Stay with 7.9.x, but check out the Suite P ā€œimprovedā€ or ā€œcompactā€ modified theme, mentioned and downloadable elsewhere on this forum.

SA are addressing the Suite P spacing issue, but the above will tide you over, until 7.10.

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Paullm -your summary is very helpful - so many people care about themes?

Iā€™m wondering how to help the maximum number of people?

Maybe you could ask the Admins here to create a Sticky topic - which you can start with a suitably clear title, eg
ā€˜Themes - the summary for 7.9, 7.8 and future 7.10ā€™

and maybe in there, put direct URL links.

And (gold-plating !) maybe the forum could use some extra ā€˜powerā€™ - that when a user starts a new topic under Themes - it warns them ā€™ have you already read the sticky Top XYZ ? Do not ask questions that are already answered there!

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Themes are more than just the ā€œlookā€ of something. The user interface/user experience is very important as itā€™s obviously the first thing a user sees when accessing a web site or using a piece of software.

The UI/UX can make or break user acceptance of a project ā€¦ and if you get it wrong, can make things an uphill battle!

With colours alone, I learned that they are very significant in some parts of the world, just from working out in Hong Kong, years ago. There, red is a ā€œluckyā€ colour, but blue is associated with funerals. (Thatā€™s why you tend to see a lot of red in Chinese restaurants!) Itā€™s all part of ā€œfeng shuiā€.

In the case of SuiteCRM, the way to "help the maximum number of peopleā€ is to empower the users (or more accurately, the System Admins) to configure something that works best for them.

You are on here, so YOU can ask the Admins anything, as well as I can. :whistle: That is the purpose of this forum ā€¦ to ask questions, exchange ideas and offer solutions to problems.

What you are suggesting re: detection of duplicate topics is impractical, as this forum uses a standard piece of blogging software.

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Hi paullm

I have created a new topic to summarise the Theme choices and the tweaks to SuiteP in 7.9 - and I have as you suggested requested the forum Admins to create the Sticky topic for it: so that the maximum number of people can find it easily and quickly.

In that post, I took the time to collect from the scattered places in the forums a summary listing of the situation and the various cool ways to fix the Suite-P problems that many find a pain.

Secondly an apology to you - in my previous message I mistakenly left a ? where I had intended a !

so many people care about themes?

Which probably left you thinking I did not think this theme stuff important, and was pouring cold water on your and others good work here.

On the contrary - I think it is highly important - for the reasons you gave: and hence put in the time to collate and create the summary post as above.

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A concise summary, DJuser.

As indicated by Sales Agility ā€¦ I think it is important to appreciate that whilst release 7.8.x is available with LTS, it MAY not be your best option if you are going to need the latest features (such as the new email client) or future enhancements. To reduce the support burden, these will only be available in 7.9.x and beyond.

That is why those Suite P modifications came into being, following the release of 7.9 ā€¦ to provide a more compact screen format, while still enjoying the benefits of the latest SuiteCRM.

To be realistic, even with LTS, at some future point in time 7.8.x IS going to disappear.

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My main problem with SuiteP is the lack of colour contrast, eg the username box on the login page is barely readable, pale grey on white! Colour contrast is an accessibility requirement, any company operating in the EU is legally obliged to make their website accessible. As it stands SuiteP simply canā€™t be used in any organisation where clear compliance with accessibility legislation is essential. Iā€™ve managed to turn SuiteR back on in 7.9 by following the instructions here:

https://suitecrm.com/community/forum/suite-themes/15309-how-to-change-theme#51590

which will do for now.

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