Developing a new Dolibarr theme - Feedback Welcomed

Developing for Dolibarr
1

We currently have a background project running where a couple of my team are trying to develop a new theme for Dolibarr ERP

The standard Dolibarr ERP UI looks very dated and we are trying to create something more modern/fresher.

All of the themes in Dolistore appear to change the home page and menu block only, but once you click into other pages it’s back to the delivered standard Dolibarr ERP UI so they are a bit of a mix.

I have attached some screenshots of what we have done so far, I would genuinely appreciate any/all feedback positive or negative (be as blunt as you want) and any other suggestions anyone might have.

We are still working on this and are already aware that there are some minor formatting issues in these screenshots which we will address, but just thought I would ask for feedback as soon as possible.

Home Page.pdf (2.2 MB)

Leaves.pdf (404.6 KB)

Opportunities.pdf (1.3 MB)

Customer Invoices.pdf (1.2 MB)

New Third Party.pdf (958.6 KB)

Third Parties.pdf (603.0 KB)

2

I concur, it does look old.

My wish is that Dolibarr switches to using non table based layout, and perhaps even using HTMX technology to easily update the data shown.

3

Hi @mark.hutchinson

I also completely agree with you regarding the Dolibarr UI. I actually posted about this topic on the Dolibarr forum some years ago as well:

At that time, some people mocked me for the idea, which was fine. Looking back, I probably didn’t explain the idea in the best way, so I can’t really blame them. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

But after working for almost 10 years as a full-time Dolibarr developer, I can honestly say that I now have the confidence and experience to say that something like this is absolutely possible. In fact, with modern CSS/JS and a good understanding of Dolibarr’s architecture, creating a consistent modern UI across Dolibarr is not really a huge technical challenge anymore. The bigger challenge is probably doing it in a way that remains maintainable and compatible with Dolibarr’s existing functionality.

One relatively simple thing you or your developers could try, if you haven’t already, is a CSS stylesheet that is available online which can be added to the standard Eldy theme. It doesn’t completely transform Dolibarr, of course, but it does make the interface look noticeably more modern and cleaner. I experimented with it myself once just to see how far CSS alone could take it.

I’ve attached a screenshot showing what Dolibarr looked like after applying that CSS.

At the moment I’m working on a few fairly complex projects of my own (mostly for learning and experimenting, although they are becoming quite serious projects too :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:), so unfortunately I don’t have the time to contribute directly to your theme development. Otherwise, this is definitely something I would enjoy working on.

I really like the direction you’re taking, especially the idea of having the modern design continue throughout the actual Dolibarr pages rather than just changing the homepage/menu.

Best of luck to you and your development team — I’ll definitely be interested to see where this goes!

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image1913×1013 81.3 KB

Thanks & Regards
Saikat Koley
Software Developer(Dolibarr)
Call/WhatsApp : +919903256573
Email : saikatkoley@hotmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/saikatkoley/

4

I agree with the idea that the core functions and display can be modernized. A lot of the tools and modules I’ve built for our team are simple UI/UX improvements based upon adding JS/AJAX and other changes that save on page reloads.

Being able to filter and sort products in a catalog for example was a huge boost in productivity for our salesperson and parts manager. The table view just wasn’t great for them, and the search tool is near useless if you’re uninitiated or don’t know what a product is called specifically.

Above is an example of my attempt at redesigning a core component of Dolibarr.

Isn’t a core limiting factor in building a better theme related to the module mechanism? I would assume a theme would require integration with each module as well as some rebuild of the mechanisms in order to overhaul the user experience like my work has aimed to do.

thank you for sharing your work - I think it’s time I look into how this functions.