BOUNTY: Web GUI reprogramming
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There is also helium, which is much lighter than bootstrap and foundation but offers a lot of the same advantages .
In my view, a possible secondary advantage of a redesign would be that we can present information in a friendlier, more concise way.
This of course means a form of responsive design, but also an interface design that adheres to a ABC design philosophy wherein information is displayed in the order of importance, eg. A = primary information, B = secondary information and C = details.
C is usually either hidden or very discreet until C is requested. This method is employed throughout visual cueing and can be seen in film, graphic design, interior design, architecture and crossovers such as museums.When using pfsense, there seems to be little to no distinction between the three classes of information urgency. If we are able to propose a redesign for the gui, this could be taken into consideration.
This might seem somewhat contrary to what Ermal and stephenw10 said:
I completely agree with @ermal:
While it would be nice to have some improvements on usability do not over-engineer it.
Its just a webGUI for a firewall which needs to scale across different resources of system.The original intent of this bounty/thread was to improve the quality of the code, re-writing parts of the webgui to be better standards compliant rather than adding any features.
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,48107.0.htmlSteve
However, a redesign of code might present an opportunity to redesign the visual aspect of the firewall as well.
The way that we present information visually might even improve the scaling if fallback techniques are employed.What do you guys think?
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Damn nice idea! The thing is that there is a lot of switching between menus all the time.
In ISA server, when you make a rule it pops up an all inclusive box that has ALL what needs to be set to make it work. You dont have to go a little here and a little there and if you are serious then you also needs to go somewhere else…
It will make changes and daily tasks very quick and simple. One can easily see that the GUI is made by "nerds" for technical people.
In ISA you have a right side menubar that has related things to the page you are at....so you only have to click once to get there instead of going through several menus.
Its brilliant!
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A collapsible sidebar menu would be the best direction for Pfsense …. if you test drive the custom website admin side bar menu, you can get a feel of how it would improve the user experience in navigation.
If it gets reworked a full width responsive GUI is the only direction to head in. It would give the necessary screen real estate to display a ABC design philosophy as iFloris defined. The feedback from the dash board could evolve into a very productive sophisticated visual tool.
There are many admin template examples on themeforest.com this is just one I selected as a example.
http://keenthemes.com/preview/metronic/index.html
P.S.
I would be willing to contribute some of my free time to a GUI development project. But only if the team was allowed the freedom to develop and create sophisticated visual GUI tools that Steve Jobs would be proud of. -
I agree!
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As long as it doesn't end up like Watchguard's more recent web gui, constructed entirely in flash!, then I'm all for it.
Honestly I don't have a problem with the current gui though. I'm probably not the right person to ask. ;)Steve
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Its about how you present the data. Its about assembling bits and piece of a puzzle to form the best visual representation of the data.
There is obviously more data that could be displayed to the user to get a better picture of the status of whats going on. Some things would be a feature request, but the GUI would be designed to adapt to known future improvements to expand the visual representation and organization of the data.
I'm not a security expert by no means, but I'm sure you can think of many data points which would be very helpful in completing the puzzle, or at less attempting to.
A full width responsive GUI would give Pfsense the screen real estate to display more data to the user but in a creative way as a attempt to simplify the assembling of the puzzle.
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Another nice example
Login and password
adminhttp://photonui.orangehilldev.com/dashboard.php
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Best so far!
Could end up beeing very nice!
Another nice example
Login and password
adminhttp://photonui.orangehilldev.com/dashboard.php
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Should this be moved to general topics?
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Last Example
http://mosaicpro.biz/adminplus/php/
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Last Example
http://mosaicpro.biz/adminplus/php/
Im sorry, but that is just beautiful… id kill for a nice GUI like that.
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Imagine how nice it would be at a 100% width…!
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Inspired by this thread http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,48107.msg253688.html#msg253688
I will start with contributing with 50$.
This is partly aimed at Craymore….:) Now we will see if he wants to.
I would donate to this wonderful cause ;D
@ermal:
Should this be moved to general topics?
I would think so, since it would definitely get more attention. Probably removing BOUNTY from the subject line would also be appropriate.
Imagine how nice it would be at a 100% width…!
If you select fluid layout at the bottom of that page it will show a full screen layout.
Can't really complain about the pfsense webui since it's better than most I've seen. Although something like what is being suggested would be mind blowing.
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I have to say I like the last example best http://mosaicpro.biz/adminplus/php/ it's based on tweeter boot strap … and fully responsive ... if the cash would flow it could be reality.
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@jimp, cmb, ermal
Is it possible based on the way pfsense is coded/structured that GUI modifications could be distributed as a plugin?If so, I would consider looking a bit deeper into the existing GUI structure to get a better idea of what would be required.
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this is too good, would love to donate $$ to see such a interface
earlier i said $10 but increase it to $50 if this can be done
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Looking at the code structure last night for about 20 min. I'm afraid it would be to daunting of a task for just one person on the short term. There are at less a hundred files that would have to be HEAVILY modified. I'm thinking some if not all of the java/php/html code would have to be rewritten. Just a quick guess, there may be 100,000 to 150,000 lines of java/php/html code to review and rewrite.
Real world cost would be somewhere in the range of $3 to $6 per line of code…. $50 bucks for a rewrite at min would get ya 16 lines :D
Its not impossible to get this done.....There could be a model setup to help fund or a pay model to reward the programmers for there Huge contribution.I will look at the code more at a later date... :-\
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100,000 to 150,000 lines …. somewhere in the range of $3 to $6 per line
Ouch!
As pretty as those pages are I'm sure they would actually help me get anything done faster or more accurately. I am also concerned about introducing extra load to ether the client or server simply to add some animated buttons. ;)
Steve
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Its not about animation … it is formatting and presenting data in a informative efficient manner.
Take this sight for example .... this is animation :D
http://www.bombshellmanual.com/bombshell.swf
Site looks like my gf bedroom floor.... :DThis design is rather disturbing :o
http://bierzto.pl/administrator/teacup-pigs-full-grown&page=3 -
Probably best to avoid anything like that! ::)
Steve
