[solved] No menus available from dashboard

phil.davis · Oct 2, 2015, 3:35 AM

The NTP (and many other widgets) were not shown on the dashboard on 2.2.* but after upgrade to 2.3-ALPHA they are all shown. Those that were open prior to upgrade are shown open - correct. The others should not be there at all - I was expecting to see them in the Available Widgets. That is:
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/5222

I click the "x" or the "+" on any widget, including the NTP widget, and nothing happens. So I cannot directly get the NTP widget off the dashboard using the GUI. Might have to edit config.xml in some way to get rid of it.

firefox · Oct 2, 2015, 12:50 PM

off topic

this will be the new GUI ?
Or there is a choice to go back to normal colors

it is very very bright
Very uncomfortable to look at

Steve_B · Oct 2, 2015, 1:42 PM

The NTP widget has been repaired by providing the two missing PHP functions. Thanks for trouble-shooting this.

Steve_B · Oct 2, 2015, 2:01 PM

In testing this I find that code to add a new widget from the "Available Widgets" pane seems to be MIA. I have added Redmine #5236 and will look at it later today.

Steve_B · Oct 2, 2015, 5:23 PM

Add widget functionality has been provided.

Currently it is added in "closed" state. That can easily be changed to "open" and there is a debate in progress now on the merits of each :)

phil.davis · Oct 3, 2015, 12:58 PM

2.3-ALPHA (amd64)
built on Sat Oct 03 00:06:10 CDT 2015
FreeBSD 10.2-STABLE

Dashboard is much happier now. Menus are all available, I can add and remove widgets from the dashboard - thanks.

Available Widgets Box - I would prefer that to be able to be closed/minimized to reduce wasted space at the top of the screen. Once the dashboard has been set up then IMHO there is no need to be forced to see the full list of available widgets.

robi · Oct 4, 2015, 6:54 AM

@firefox:

off topic

this will be the new GUI ?
Or there is a choice to go back to normal colors

it is very very bright
Very uncomfortable to look at

100% agree. This bootstrap-thing is disgusting, imho. Those huge buttons and incredibly large spaces everywhere makes it all… too big, and looking dull.
The old interface was way, way more nice and useful.

But this is all just a subjective opinion.
(there are many other similar projects running bootstrap and I hate those GUIs aswell)

phil.davis · Oct 4, 2015, 7:40 AM

@robi:

@firefox:

off topic

this will be the new GUI ?
Or there is a choice to go back to normal colors

it is very very bright
Very uncomfortable to look at

100% agree. This bootstrap-thing is disgusting, imho. Those huge buttons and incredibly large spaces everywhere makes it all… too big, and looking dull.
The old interface was way, way more nice and useful.

But this is all just a subjective opinion.
(there are many other similar projects running bootstrap and I hate those GUIs aswell)

Bootstrap or no bootstrap, I do not like this whole modern faded-out "metro" whatever GUI thing. Somebody got this revolution started across the world and somehow made it catch on. Presumably someone did a study about useability of UIs and… but I wonder who were the test audiences for the study?
Or else I am just too old and need to be pensioned off - then I can be just an old person who is always complaining about change :)

jimp · Oct 4, 2015, 2:12 PM

At the moment most of the focus is on usability and functionality and then we can turn to making it prettier.

Seems like the main issue is trying to please all platforms at once being responsive. Mobile platforms and small screens benefit more from the large buttons and extra whitespace, but there is probably a better balance to be struck.

jdillard · Oct 6, 2015, 9:26 PM

@phil.davis:

I click the "x" or the "+" on any widget, including the NTP widget, and nothing happens. So I cannot directly get the NTP widget off the dashboard using the GUI. Might have to edit config.xml in some way to get rid of it.

I fixed this (as well as made the widget headers darker for better separation): https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/40c55526a02d17930281a4f83b5926127fcc40a8

Was there a ticket open for this specific issue?

phil.davis · Oct 7, 2015, 5:03 PM

@jdillard:

@phil.davis:

I click the "x" or the "+" on any widget, including the NTP widget, and nothing happens. So I cannot directly get the NTP widget off the dashboard using the GUI. Might have to edit config.xml in some way to get rid of it.

I fixed this (as well as made the widget headers darker for better separation): https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/40c55526a02d17930281a4f83b5926127fcc40a8

Was there a ticket open for this specific issue?

No, I don't think there was any specific Redmine for that.
After all the recent fixes, and making the Available Widgets box collapsible the dashboard widget management seems to be working much better all round.

jdillard · Oct 7, 2015, 5:52 PM

Ok cool.

And as JimP said, it's easiest to save a lot of the big styling (finalizing colors, etc) for towards the end. We'll obviously be working towards cleaning things up, but it will be fairly easy with this new code structure to make big sweeping style changes with the css once it's done.