lots of empty space in new firewall ui, yet I must scroll

[randell]

Seconded. A browser has scroll bars. Just use all of the bloody space. And place all "action" buttons - new, select, delete, ... as well as apply - at the top of the page. Render a web page. It's a web UI, not an application.

Created an account just to +1 this.

I have a smallish laptop, 14" screen running 1080p resolution and that doesn't give much vertical space. It works much better with scrolling the entire window than the little grid.

[franco]

I'll be blunt:

> https://github.com/opnsense/core/commit/0e999cc5ab

this is real, works and addresses a specific concern.

> "browser must scroll"

this is vague, oversimplified and unrealistic.

I asked Stephan to look into this based on the topic and that's the end of it. PRs welcome.


Cheers,
Franco

[tessus]

I'll be euqally blunt. Who are you talking to? You asked a question. I answered. I would have expected a proper reply, not some annoyed comment that has nothing to do with what I brought up.

Get your attitude in order. This is no way to deal with people. At least not when they are as friendly as I am.

Fix your release notes, unless you want to come across as a liar. Or was this on purpose? Telling people that the issue was A, then tell people that A was fixed and react like someone killed your dog, because people tell you that it didn't fix A.

[franco]

> I'll be euqally blunt. Who are you talking to?

I haven't seen your screenshot yet. You illustrate the problem of flushing pagination, action buttons, apply bad out of the browser view.

> Fix your release notes, unless you want to come across as a liar.

You really need to take a break and cool off.  Your screenshot shows that the grid uses the full height of the screen and this refers to "lots of empty space" by OP being fixed.


Cheers,
Franco

[Seimus]

Lets make it official and discuss in an official technical matter, what is and what is not possible.

https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/10130

Regards,
S.

[nero355]

Created an account just to +1 this.

COOL! :)

I have a smallish laptop, 14" screen running 1080p resolution and that doesn't give much vertical space.

I have no issue with not having "a perfect view" on my cheapass old laptop with 1366x768 resolution, but not seeing much more on a monitor with 1920x1200 resolution is just weird and should be fixed...

In general the webGUI could use some kind of "Compact Theme" option to avoid having to Zoom Out in my browser to take these screenshots for example : https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=9245.msg259581#msg259581

It works much better with scrolling the entire window than the little grid.

For sure! :)

[ahro_john]

Created an account just to +1 this.

COOL! :)

I have a smallish laptop, 14" screen running 1080p resolution and that doesn't give much vertical space.

I have no issue with not having "a perfect view" on my cheapass old laptop with 1366x768 resolution, but not seeing much more on a monitor with 1920x1200 resolution is just weird and should be fixed...

In general the webGUI could use some kind of "Compact Theme" option to avoid having to Zoom Out in my browser to take these screenshots for example : https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=9245.msg259581#msg259581 This kind of UI flexibility is becoming more common lately, especially with faster prototyping approaches — I recently saw a good example of how layouts can be optimized and iterated quicker here
 

It works much better with scrolling the entire window than the little grid.

For sure! :)

Totally agree. The current WebGUI feels a bit too spaced out, especially on higher resolutions

[randell]

Sorry, my post about creating an account to +1 might have come across a little "complainy". That wasn't what I intended.

I did play around with a tampermonkey script to set the UIBootgrid.options.disableScroll. Setting this to true and also setting the table height to auto gave me the results I wanted, but unfortunately trying to monkeypatch that was not very dependable. (There are issues with tampermonkey and @run-at document-start when a page executes too fast, when most things was cached)

If someone with more knowledge of developing for opnSense wants to implement it, an option to set that to true and to change or stop setting the calculated height might be the best of both worlds.

Just a thought. It isn't a show stopper or anything.

This was one of the variations of my not always working but sort of working script I was playing around to better explain what I was doing:

Code Select Expand

// ==UserScript==
// @name         OPNSense Scroll
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      2026-04-11
// @description  Disables tabulator scrolling
// @author       Me
// @match        https://xxxxxxx:444/*
// @grant        none
// @run-at       document-start
// ==/UserScript==

(function()
 {
    'use strict';

    const callback = function(mutationsList, observer) {
        const $ = window.jQuery;
        for (const mutation of mutationsList) {
            if (mutation.type === 'childList') {
                const target = mutation.target;
                if (target.nodeType === 1 && target.tagName === 'DIV' && target.classList.contains('tabulator')) {
                    const $table = $(target);
                    const bgInstance = $table.data('UIBootgrid');
                    if (bgInstance && bgInstance.options.disableScroll !== true) {
                        bgInstance.options.disableScroll = true;
                        target.style.height = 'auto';
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    const observer = new MutationObserver(callback);
    const patch = () => {
        if (window.jQuery && window.jQuery.fn && window.jQuery.fn.UIBootgrid) {
            const content = document.body;
            if (content) {
                observer.observe(content, { childList: true, subtree: true });
                return;
            }
        }
        setTimeout(patch, 50);
    };

    patch();

})();


[bimbar]

Can we, perhaps, all acknowledge that the complaints of especially the long time users and/or contributors are reasonable and deserve to be heard and discussed in good faith?

Coming back to the general issue of modern UIs - there is a general trend to waste space. I don't think that is something one should accept as normal and reasonable.
The reason that I attach so much importance to this is that this is the central problem of managing firewalls - keeping track of a potentially large
amount of rules.

The answers to that I read in the linked issue do not convince me - like "you should use categories heavily and select only one at a time".
The situation on the ground is that I come into setups I have not built myself and need the be able to work with them. Literally everything is possible, it's like the wild west, and I have never yet taken over a well configured firewall.

That means it is absolutely crucial to be able to get a good overview over a considerable amount of rules just by looking at that firewall rule table.

So those perhaps 20% of wasted vertical space do matter.

[franco]

Can we, perhaps, all acknowledge that the complaints of especially the long time users and/or contributors are reasonable and deserve to be heard and discussed in good faith?

Yes we are if we accept a "here's a complaint now you acknowledge the patch" approach to this. Because I find myself pointing to a fact and people going on tangents again.

> Or at least scale the frame to the full height that is available?

https://github.com/opnsense/changelog/blob/055b8d6a4c17b81826283e97f6771917014ad1d0/community/26.1/26.1.6#L48

Isn't that what you asked for? If not, why not comment on that?

Coming back to the general issue of modern UIs - there is a general trend to waste space. I don't think that is something one should accept as normal and reasonable.
The reason that I attach so much importance to this is that this is the central problem of managing firewalls - keeping track of a potentially large
amount of rules.

No. No. No. Coming back to the "general" issue is the worst possible outcome to go step by step here. You ask for something. We do something. We see if that works. Now we move on to something similarly specific.

The answers to that I read in the linked issue do not convince me - like "you should use categories heavily and select only one at a time".
The situation on the ground is that I come into setups I have not built myself and need the be able to work with them. Literally everything is possible, it's like the wild west, and I have never yet taken over a well configured firewall.

Why not participate? I don't expect it's half as bad as it could be, because otherwise a lot more tickets would be open by now.

That means it is absolutely crucial to be able to get a good overview over a considerable amount of rules just by looking at that firewall rule table.

I don't disagree to this at all.

So those perhaps 20% of wasted vertical space do matter.

Now we're back to scope creep and not commenting on the patch at hand.

Look, if you ask for something not even add a GitHub ticket and then don't follow up on actual patches how can this process of developing something for you work (at all)?


Cheers,
Franco

[bimbar]

I'm not sure what you want exactly. If something as clear as "there is too much empty space, please use it more efficiently" from the perspective of an end user is not good enough, you should probably document it somewhere.

[franco]

I'm giving up on this thread after having asked for feedback a number of times now.


Cheers,
Franco

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Sorry, I thought it was clear.

The scroll bar I marked in red should not exist. The box around the rules should not exist. The rules table should be rendered on the page extending downward as far as necessary and the browser scroll bar should be used to get at the lower ones.

Duplicating a function the browser already brings inside the page is bad, IMHO.

Also it does not automatically use all the width I have available ...

Kind regards,
Patrick

[franco]

I know you're helping Patrick but it doesn't make things easier here. This is the first post:

Maybe we can get rid of the scrolling subframe? Or at least scale the frame to the full height that is available?

On my screen the firewall rules window uses about half of the available height, but I can scroll way down

This is the commit in 26.1.6:

https://github.com/opnsense/core/commit/0e999cc5a

OP asked for it but did not acknowledge its existence.

One of the reasons we ask for actionable tickets is so the requester can confirm that is what they wanted (or not).

Everybody else adding related context in this forum thread doesn't help progress the initial request anymore.


Cheers,
Franco

[nero355]

The scroll bar I marked in red should not exist. The box around the rules should not exist. The rules table should be rendered on the page extending downward as far as necessary and the browser scroll bar should be used to get at the lower ones.

Duplicating a function the browser already brings inside the page is bad, IMHO.

Also it does not automatically use all the width I have available ...

I think you have uploaded the wrong screenshot ?!

I see SNMP stuff and not Firewall Rules ?

Coming back to the general issue of modern UIs - there is a general trend to waste space.

I don't think that is something one should accept as normal and reasonable.

You have no idea how much I agree with you on that one... It's driving me mad sometimes !!! :(