New OWA themes for Exchange Server 2007 SP1

Isn't the Zune theme supposed to have a background on the reading pane??

Dear Microsoft,

Stop wasting time developing themes for Exchange 2007 SP1 and just get the product released.  I have a feeling that we are more concerned with getting functionality back that was stripped out rather than gay ass themes.

Thank you,

Concerned Admin

I think they should have made an option to set OWA premium available only to particular users such as managers. All other users should be getting light version. may be my lack of knowledge, is there a setting like that? and please, please try to make OWA premium available for other browsers as well. for the next version, please please do something with the database architecture and memory management, it's killing my system and time. another suggestion would be to have mailbox, hub & client (on the same server) support for CCR

Thank you

Yes, I agree with Mark.  I'm part of a big university environment.  We would like to use Exchange to do universtiy-wide calendaring.  But it is very difficult to recommend to the powers that be when OWA 'light is the theme of the day for non-IE web browsers.   Only a day view?  Not able to subscribe to other people's calendars?  Very non-intuitive free-busy scheduling assistant? People like using Google & Zimbra calendaring better.  We have a large Windows community but the lack of support  in your product for mainstream browsers like Firefox and Opera has us looking elsewhere.   I remember reading that you would have a more fully featured web interface for Firefox users.  Is this ever going to happen?  We have a hard time selling use of your product to a wide and diverse community without it.

Themes are nice, but... From what I've read, Exchange 2007 was supposed to provide a 'better experience' than Exchange 2003 for non-Windows access, using non-Microsoft browsers. Unfortunately, 'pretty' seems to have been given much higher priority than functionality. The OWA 'Light' client, for example, can't print. What good is an email and calendar client that can't print? There was functionality in the OWA2003 product that is now gone: the weekly calendar view, for example. Apparently the idea was to make a pretty, static, page that doesn't use frames so it can look nice on browsers more than 5 years old from niche browser vendors. A company that was really interested in cross-platform support would have noticed that the major cross-platform web browsers (e.g., Firefox, Opera) all use frames, all are more web-standards compliant than IE6, all support subsidiary windows and tabs. Judging by behavior instead or talk, I have to conclude that Microsoft wants  to sell Exchange 2007 only into all-Microsoft shops, because they sure as h*** don't want to work with other desktops.

Why don't you just make OWA work right?  Right now I have an OWA site that has been down since the Rollup 4 update.  Trying to uninstall or reinstall the RU4 locks up the installer and has to be forcefully ended after hours of waiting.  MAKE OWA work, there is currently no fix for the described error and my customer is VERY unhappy with Exchange 2007's availability of OWA!

I agree with Mstrider, a little customization didnt hurt anyone!

Wow, you sure seem to be getting slammed about these themes. Personally I like them. Its a breath of fresh air to see something a little different than the "corporate" style themes everyone seems to want. I am sure alot of the "development" time used on these themes was personal and unpaid. I would like to say Thanks for the time and work you guys put in. These little projects always show me that you enjoy your work and don't just show up for a paycheck. All of you guys complaining, get a life, what do you gain by being rude to these guys on the blogs?
Thanks again!!

We are currently resisting a corporate upgrade to Exchange 2007 because of the uselessness (frankly) of Exchange OWA 07, which must be used a great deal by our employees. The development of frivolous themes does nothing to restore confidence.

I have to agree that there are a bunch of features/bugs that are still in Exchange 2007 Console and OWA that should get top priority. I also think that these themes would probably be used by a few of my students within my college, as opposed to the custom theme that we've designed using our college's color theme. If any of you have ever worked on a development team and created your own custom theme in exchange, then you'd know that at some point in the development process 1 or 2 developers would be left with nothing to do until someone else completes something and instead of having that developer sitting around with his thumb up his arse... have him do something semi-constructive...

PS> Designing our own custom login and minor customization to the basic OWA Theme to include our schools colors only took me a couple hours... And I'm sure some of you have sat around for a few hours screwing with something that didn't really mean much to anyone else but you... so how about cutting a little break for these people... Still would like an office release date for SP1 so I can stop searching all the time for it!