New GUI improvements

[lopr]

no, they should not stop developing the new GUI.
and no I wont vote if I like the new GUI because it is not ready yet.

 

[ddimick]

I used FN9 a long time before migrating to 10/Corral, and am pretty familiar with both interfaces. Although it took me a little time to adapt, I found the Corral UI to be superior from a usability perspective. I realize that's subjective but suspect those favoring FN9 are mostly just used to it. Change is hard.

But, Corral is abandonware, so eventually I'll need to get off of it and onto something that's supported.

Having some free time this weekend, I just cranked up FN11 today to start the manual migration process. I looked at the old UI, looked at the new/demo UI, and decided I basically just don't have the mental energy to deal with either the clunky old interface or the lipstick-on-a-pig new interface. It reminds me of MySpace.

Maybe next year.

 

[m0nkey_]

Why is this thread still a thing?

I find the whole concept ridiculous. You're all pandering over the UI. There is something wrong if you're looking at the UI every day.

Yes, the FreeNAS 11 UI is under development. Give it time.
No, the new UI is not ready.
Yes, things in the new UI will be fixed.
No, the Corral UI is not coming back.
Yes, I will rant about this.
No, you can't stop me.

 

[ddimick]

It's still a thing because the UX in 11 is still bad.

Rant away, but aren't you the person who submitted multiple requests for Comic Sans and asked for them to be taken seriously?

 

[m0nkey_]

It's still a thing because the UX in 11 is still bad.

Rant away, but aren't you the person who submitted multiple requests for Comic Sans and asked for them to be taken seriously?

Sir, indeed I was. While I agree the UI needs an update, complaining that things are broken on the forum isn't going to get the attention of the developers. That's why I opened a feature request.

The point of that ticket was to be able to adjust the font and it's size, aiding the visually impaired.

 

[ddimick]

I don't know that it would be all that productive to open a bug that just states "stop screwing around and hire a UX designer already". We both know the devs do read the forums.

 

[Magnus33]

My previous quote wasn't intentional typing on a phone is sometimes a major pain. (whoops)

A few weird concepts have popped in here like a mod mentioning the ui framework in corral for lord knows what reason.
People are talking about the basic ui concept in corral and not the actually code so i have no idea where that came from.

What i would suggest is bug reporting should have a grace period where only certain persons and the creator can edit it.
This would allow dev to review things before it runs the risk of becoming a long convoluted mess.
A perfect example of this happening was the long name issue with corral and plex where things got copied and pasted from other bug reports and then it all got combined into one long mess.
The actually issues in regards to the naming be the likely cause got edited out and the problem went on far longer then it should have before getting fixed.

When it was a much smaller base the current method of filing bug reports was fine but now with a much larger user base it a giant messy free for all with no real controls in place.
It wouldn't take much to improve things and would speed up issues getting resolved will also avoiding duplication of the same issue.
The system hasn't evolved at all to meet the much larger demands put in place due to growth.

Unfortunately it very likely none of this is going to change no matter how many bug reports are filed because we are dealing with ego's
Its no secret that the people supporting the legacy code butted heads with the ones working on corral.
This has lead to the dropping of good concepts and idea from corral in favor of something purely their own regardless of the fact its quite inferior.
There no one in-charge going will this worked, this was very popular lets take these dump what didn't.
You see next to none of this with the except of a few things that couldn't be abandoned like dockers without causing a riot.

As for there being argument either way about these threads that's utter nonsense.
These are the people that make freenas popular and in turn fuel the development of truenas.
As long as those people are being polite and not attacking each other they have as much right as anyone to posts , discuss and even argue as long as it remains civil.
Out of this often comes better ideas or improved ways of doing things.

When people start blocking discussion, or enforcing their own personal opinion by calling something inappropriate behavior it becomes draconian.

The state of freenas and truenas got to the point where it is now by this very method.
Peoples tested, discussed, bounced ideas off each other and influenced the development of things.

In development and discussions the ideas of the guy making the coffee and no less equal then the ceo of the company.
You never no where a great idea going to come from or how another persons experience is going to give them a different view point that fixes a problem others couldn't.

Hell one of are interns came up with a great idea for fixing a issue we were having simply because his view point on things was different from others.
We would have never gotten the idea and saved loads of cash if he had been afraid to say anything or that he wouldn't get credit.

By saying you can't discuss things civilly to the people who helped make this in the first place you are doing far more harm then good.
Because in the end the only way this works is through the people who use or buy the product and if you exclude them or otherwise piss them off you fail.

Boxee box ignored user , closed threads ,blocked discussion and betrayed its user base not once but twice and where are they now?

On a final note the new ui to anyone with forms of red green color blindness that new ui is a even bigger disaster then it is for people with normal vision.
One of or editors looked at it and couldn't stop laughing when he couldn't read half the stuff in the ui.

 

[joeschmuck]

Amazing, yet another thread on the UI for FreeNAS 11.

I should jump in and just say this...

Let the devs finish the new GUI and then complain about it using the bug reporter/feature request. If you want to help now, start using the nightlies and test it out and provide feedback, realizing of course that it's not finished.

I personally am fine with the original UI but I must keep an open mind and see what is delivered when the product is ready for use.

Many folks earlier in the thread said something like "how many times will the average user need to use the GUI?, you set up FreeNAS and you leave it alone" and that is basically true except for a few people. Who are those people, it's the folks who help out on the forums. I need to use the UI/GUI/SSH etc... to ensure I'm seeing what the other user will see. I don't see these people poking the eyes out of the developers for an unfinished GUI.

Wow, I had to crawl down off that soap box (for anyone who understands that reference). Sorry for all that, I just think the developers need to be given a chance and if you don't like the outcome, protest then.

 

[gpsguy]

And how much did they pay for the FreeNAS software?

... and if you don't like it, protest then.

 

[Jailer]

And how much did they pay for the FreeNAS software?

Perzactly!

 

[Ericloewe]

A few weird concepts have popped in here like a mod mentioning the ui framework in corral for lord knows what reason.
People are talking about the basic ui concept in corral and not the actually code so i have no idea where that came from.

They are not different things. There's a reason traditional win32 applications tend to look alike, and significantly different from Qt applications or Java applications.

Yes, you can work around it (Office 2007 was extremely different when compared to traditional win32 applications), but that's a lot of work that increases as you deviate from the assumptions of the framework.

What i would suggest is bug reporting should have a grace period where only certain persons and the creator can edit it.
This would allow dev to review things before it runs the risk of becoming a long convoluted mess.
A perfect example of this happening was the long name issue with corral and plex where things got copied and pasted from other bug reports and then it all got combined into one long mess.
The actually issues in regards to the naming be the likely cause got edited out and the problem went on far longer then it should have before getting fixed.

Since the general community can't edit bug reports, only add comments to them, the problem you describe does not exist in a meaningful fashion.

When it was a much smaller base the current method of filing bug reports was fine but now with a much larger user base it a giant messy free for all with no real controls in place.
It wouldn't take much to improve things and would speed up issues getting resolved will also avoiding duplication of the same issue.
The system hasn't evolved at all to meet the much larger demands put in place due to growth.

Repeating this does not make it true.

This has lead to the dropping of good concepts and idea from corral in favor of something purely their own regardless of the fact its quite inferior.

Instead of mindlessly repeating lines like this, name one feature from Corral that has been dropped with no plans to implement it - other than the GUI, which was going to be replaced anyway, and p9fs, which turned out to be unstable.

As for there being argument either way about these threads that's utter nonsense.

Are you seriously claiming that the Corral GUI was universally liked? It was most certainly not and many of its design choices were dubious. The new Angular GUI seems to make some dubious choices of its own, but I'll reserve judgement until it's closer to being fully-functional.

As long as those people are being polite and not attacking each other they have as much right as anyone to posts , discuss and even argue as long as it remains civil.

There's one point you're missing. The mod team has not been instructed to allow people to spread false facts. Now, we all naturally give everyone a wide benefit of the doubt when it comes to that, normally opting to just answer explaining why the person is wrong.

However, you have been pushing a certain narrative that only seems to exist to paint the current FreeNAS dev team in a less-than-good light, cherry-picking details here and there to assemble this narrative of incompetence.

You also heavily imply that discussions on the mess surrounding Corral have been silenced. That is simply not true and I must point this out to any oblivious readers who stumble upon this thread. The original announcement thread saw a grand total of two people reply banned from that thread for overt trolling and some duplicate threads got locked to keep discussions in one place. Nobody has been banned for anything related to Corral.

At this point, I'm warning you to cease spreading FUD. You have made your (inaccurate) thoughts clear in several threads now. Repeat them, and you will be banned from replying to this thread. Naturally, you're still more than welcome to provide constructive criticism of the new GUI, as long as you drop the FUD.

 

[Ericloewe]

Now, let us all try to salvage this thread into something useful.

Please suggest improvements to the GUI or your thoughts on it, keeping in mind the relatively early stage of development.
Please do not post just to say that there should be no new GUI, as that is:

1. Not going to happen
2. Extremely misinformed

I'm going to do some cleanup of this thread, but I imagine the discussion may need to move to a new thread if this one keeps getting derailed by non-constructive replies.

 

[Joey DiJulio]

I just wanted to say thanks to @Ericloewe for being open to continuing this discussion.

I seem to recall not all that long ago trying to start a new thread on the pfSense Forums regarding a change in direction for v2.5 that would bring a requirement for CPUs to support AES-NI going forward (putting myself and a reasonable amount of other people in a bit of a pickle down the road).

To my surprise, my post (authored in the middle of the night, one evening I happened to be up late) was unceremoniously DELETED.

At first I thought perhaps I somehow screwed it up / didn't publish properly, so I re-wrote it and found that thread was immediately deleted as well; this time complete with a nasty-gram PM from a mod, who basically told me to drop it, there would be no more discussion about it.

I responded, was very diplomatic, but the mod didn't seem to care: There would be no further discussion, full stop, case closed.

As a pfSense user for over a decade, I was more than a little taken aback. It may or may not be a coincidence, but haven't been active on their forums since.

So I applaud you, Eric, for trying to keep the piece without resorting to outright silencing of dissenting opinions. Hopefully things at the pfSense forum will improve over time as well, because right now it's feeling a little too authoritarian for my taste.

Anyway, back on topic, I'm interested where this discussion goes but don't have a major dog in the fight.

I will admit that I liked the idea of the "ease of use" of the Coral UI. As a relative n00b (only have built a few FreeNAS boes, many 5 or more years ago, and only one or two in the last few years based on 9.10, mostly in anticipation of upgrading to Corral at the time) I was really looking forward to the "ease of entrance" I saw with Corral. FreeNAS has always felt a bit dated to me, and overly technical on the surface.

What I mean by overly technical is that I, personally, tend to like a GUI where the major functions are highly visible and presented in a non-cluttered way and advanced features are there, but are tucked away in collapsible boxes, etc. I tends to give me confidence when I am first learning a system when I have a window with one or two actionable items, with all the nitty gritty tucked away than a window with 12-14 options, many of which are rarely used or edge-case-y.

So, I find I agree with both of the major schools of thought I'm seeing here, actually:

- That once it's setup you won't spend much time with it (that's true). An interface that is super dumbed down isn't functional, and function is more important than looks. But, I also agree that pure function isn't a great reason to have a dated GUI (personally).

- In order to attract new users, which in turn makes the project more popular, potentially drives more people to buy TrueNAS, you need something that lowers the bar of entry for new people. FreeNAS when you first install it, can be somewhat intimidating. On the other hand, again, you don't want to totally dumb it down and you also don't want to turn of people who have used it and gotten use to it (i.e., people inherently don't like to change, it's just a fact of human life).

It seems to me that, on balance, more "new" users like the feel of the Corral UI where as more "old hands" do not. Not exclusively, of course, but in general terms.

You've got to strike that balance of keeping the old timers happy while also freshening things up for the "Synology Folks" who expect a super clean, super intuitive design (I'm sure that got just as many cheers and it did gags).

No easy task, will be interested to see where it goes!

 

[Ericloewe]

I don't think it's been mentioned in this thread yet, so I'll do it now:

The new GUI is going to use a menu structure similar to the old one, at first, to simplify the development process (first get something that works, then work with that to improve it). Expect major changes to that structure to happen after the GUI is feature-complete.
At least this was the plan a few weeks ago.

 

[mow4cash]

Although it took me a little time to adapt, I found the Corral UI to be superior from a usability perspective. I realize that's subjective but suspect those favoring FN9 are mostly just used to it. Change is hard.

I really think this is what it comes down to along with the ease of development. After years on the old UI and months on Corral, now trying to migrate back to the FreeNas UI frustrates me. The unfinished UI is even worse. I'm not a developer so what I think is purely a user opinon.

 

[Stux]

I'm disappointed by the lack of bug/feature requests links with regards to the new UI ;)

I submitted a couple...

 

[R wkgs]

Having used FreeNAS 8/9/corral/11 my main view has always been that whilst there is nothing too wrong with the old GUI, some elements look well plain OLD. Not a issue for me i care if FreeNAS is stable (witch it is) for ISCSI for VMware. But try showing the reports tab in a meeting when asking for more hard drives or justifying why a branch site is struggling with a high load average. It always reminds me of MS office 97 for some reason.

What I am saying is corral had to go, cant stay stable on a abandoned base framework, but a modern GUI is needed even if its a difficult MS office ribbon like divisive transition. One that has a customizable dashboard so i can see IO load/ network throughput straight away.

My only real criticism of the upcoming UI is don't use RED. Red is for when something is wrong like highlighting a failed hard drive / colour the tips of a load chart if say system load is over 90% / warn me im about to restart the server not how its currently used on the pie charts.

FreeNAS 9:

FreeNAS Corral

FreeNAS 11:

 

[def con]

Having used FreeNAS 8/9/corral/11 my main view has always been that whilst there is nothing too wrong with the old GUI, some elements look well plain OLD. Not a issue for me i care if FreeNAS is stable (witch it is) for ISCSI for VMware. But try showing the reports tab in a meeting when asking for more hard drives or justifying why a branch site is struggling with a high load average. It always reminds me of MS office 97 for some reason.

What I am saying is corral had to go, cant stay stable on a abandoned base framework, but a modern GUI is needed even if its a difficult MS office ribbon like divisive transition. One that has a customizable dashboard so i can see IO load/ network throughput straight away.

My only real criticism of the upcoming UI is don't use RED. Red is for when something is wrong like highlighting a failed hard drive / colour the tips of a load chart if say system load is over 90% / warn me im about to restart the server not how its currently used on the pie charts.

FreeNAS 9:

FreeNAS Corral

FreeNAS 11:

Corral is just sexier.

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[Jailer]

Corral is just sexier.

And still dead.

 

[def con]

And still dead.

Dead, older, and still sexier.

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