The difference between Zimbra AJAX and Citadel AJAX is that Zimbra is
designed from the ground up to have a "never reload the whole page"
approach, while Citadel (WebCit, actually) uses the AJAX model for a
performance boost in places where we think it makes sense.
Both are valid approaches. I'm not inclined to make any radical changes
right now, though, for the very simple reason that I just don't have the
time available to spend on it. If that means that Citadel will continue
to be a niche player then there's not much I can do about it. We'll just
keep doing the kind of things we're good at.
As for changing the HTML ... we did templatize a few things, and you
actually can change quite a bit of the look and feel right now just by
making modifications to the stylesheet. If someone would be willing to
show me how to link to a site-local stylesheet that overrides anything
found in the main stylesheet, I'll go ahead and put that in too, so site
operators can just make customizations where they want to.
My general feeling about "skinnable" interfaces, however, is that all
skins are butt ugly except for the one the app uses by default, so why
bother. I realize that I am probably alone in this opinion though.
