Obliquid is a PHP/XML framework for building groupware Web portals. It provides Lego bricks that may be composed to build an Internet application. It has multilingual support and themes. Modules include user management, calendar, news, cms and messaging.

Ok, this is only the standard project description, but why somebody should bother to evaluate Obliquid when there are many similar open source groupware applications? If you install a groupware application and it already works exactly the way you need, then you are a lucky guy. But if you have to make modifications, even small ones, then you will understand the big difference between Obliquid and similar projects. Keep on reading to know more.

click on the image to view it in full size	Calendar module (month view) As an example we examine the month view of the calendar module: supported events are availabilities (a person gives his/her availabilities for meetings), phone calls (to keep a record of phone calls we made and to whom), recalls (to remember to phone again, since the first call was not enough), meetings (with the possibility to send confirmations emails), accounting entries and work sessions.
click on the image to view it in full size	Editing month view of the calendar By clicking the rightmost icon of the top bar, anybody with an appropriate permission can see the skeleton of a page. For example this is the structure of the previous calendar page. A page is not a monolith script, but it's composed by slots. In this example core/nav is the navigation bar, cal/monthsmall is the mini-calendar, and cal/month is the month view. Slots are placed on a 3x6 grid and they can be moved around, they can be deleted, they can be edited, they can be replaced with yours modified ones and new slots can be added. Slots have a PHP source and a Smarty template, to keep source code separated from HTML. In a famous open source groupware application, the calendar homepage did use Smarty templates, but was a monolith of over 1300 lines. In our example cal/monthsmall is 103 lines and cal/month is 210 lines. This is not just numbers, it can save you headaches.