Services widget

[AhnHEL]

I didnt think of this, awesome recommendation, thank you.

@Franco: Thanks for the effort that went into the new design, but I have to admit that I'm not a fan of it in its current form. It feels quite different from the overall look and feel of the interface, service names are now truncated, and the descriptions are no longer visible.

Personally, I find the previous design more practical and easier to read. Hopefully, this change can either be reconsidered, refined, or at least offered as an optional alternative rather than becoming the default for all widgets.

No offense intended—this is simply my personal feedback as a user. I appreciate the work that goes into OPNsense, but for me, this particular change does not feel like an improvement.


Back to the Roots...
Couldn't find any errors, but as always, use at your own risk!
For those who don't want that, here is the good view:
1. Login SSH
2. Press 8 for Shell
3. sudo nano /usr/local/opnsense/www/js/widgets/Services.js
4. Copy Contents in Services.js
https://github.com/opnsense/core/blob/stable/26.1/src/opnsense/www/js/widgets/Services.js
5. Reboot

[fuskadoo]

1. Login SSH
2. Press 8 for Shell
3. sudo nano /usr/local/opnsense/www/js/widgets/Services.js
4. Copy Contents in Services.js
https://github.com/opnsense/core/blob/stable/26.1/src/opnsense/www/js/widgets/Services.js
5. Reboot

Thank you very much for this tip!

[OzziGoblin]

Hi Team

Just some feedback on 26.7.1, the upgrade went fine, but I'm using the vicuna theme and the services widget is pretty much unreadable.

Hope you can fix it at some stage

[Timeraider]

Tbh, not sure if anyone asked for this change and why this wasnt pushed back against during the RC versions (if it was already implemented there)
The old list was easy on the eyes and has distinct separate parts (aka.. name | controls). And depending on the dashboard space, the list is mostly to long anyway so you need to scroll meaning it has your attention regardless without needing a lot of color.

This is basically someone saying: Ow no, I cant figure out if my hardware isnt running as its only a red light blinking. Lets make it so that when my hardware doesnt work it changes the color of my entire wall. And hides the power button somewhere on that wall as well.

[franco]

Let's give the community themes a chance to fix their branding colors first, which is the core complaint here.


Cheers,
Franco

[dseven]

Let's give the community themes a chance to fix their branding colors first, which is the core complaint here.

Is it really, though? A number of us, in the various threads discussing the same issue (sigh) have commented that the style just doesn't match that of the other widgets available on the dashboard, where status is represented by an LED-like icon to the left of the entity name, and not the background colour of the whole table cell. You can fiddle with colours all day, but IMO it's still going to look completely out of place.

[franco]

Yes it all bloats the service widget back up to where it should have not been.

I find half the criticism valid and the other half misplaced (because the complaint is about the colors in the theme and people say it's "ugly" without doing the work necessary or trying to understand -- it's not a community trait I want to foster).

Also, several people said they like it which rarely happens when we do nice things and you all know that's true.  ;)

My main concern with the argument "it doesn't fit" is that it is backwards-oriented when clearly this is all simple Bootstrap theming.

Are we at the point where we don't tolerate innovation?  Just a few things I've been thinking about.


Cheers,
Franco

[dseven]

I hope I'm not coming across as belligerent about this - I'm just sharing my opinion. As I said somewhere, in one of the threads, I do like the compactness, but the style just doesn't work for me - it looks like something from a 1990's GUI that got shoved into a webUI that's otherwise fairly contemporary. The fact that it doesn't work for me personally isn't of great significance, but I got the sense that others see it this way too...

[passeri]

Some do, some don't.

[WN1X]

Maybe lose the green inverse video effect and just color the text red/green depending on the service state.

[nero355]

it looks like something from a 1990's GUI

There are many cases of poor webdesign on the internet nowadays where I wish they had used good old '90's webdesign instead of modern crap that's ugly/bloated/disfunctional to be honest :P

But however I look at it : This new Services widget is not one of those cases!

[Patrick M. Hausen]

OK, concrete points:

- the contrast of white text on light/medium green is bad
- the labels are truncated
- depending on the width of my browser window the number of columns changes - meaning "things move around"

All of this is bad UX, IMHO. It is way harder to find things compared with the old widget. Yes, the old one needed a lot of vertical space. I simply reserved an entire column just for that.

[Mabub]

Yes it all bloats the service widget back up to where it should have not been.

I find half the criticism valid and the other half misplaced (because the complaint is about the colors in the theme and people say it's "ugly" without doing the work necessary or trying to understand -- it's not a community trait I want to foster).

Also, several people said they like it which rarely happens when we do nice things and you all know that's true.  ;)

My main concern with the argument "it doesn't fit" is that it is backwards-oriented when clearly this is all simple Bootstrap theming.

Are we at the point where we don't tolerate innovation?  Just a few things I've been thinking about.


Cheers,
Franco

Hello Franco,

This is childish behavior — only wanting to accept and defend what you personally like. I mean, many people have valid reasons for saying that it does not look good, not because of the colors or the theme itself, but because of the overall design. When you look at the rest of the GUI, it feels isolated and out of place compared to everything else.

Just my two cents. Nobody is against improvements, but criticism should also be acknowledged instead of being dismissed by saying, "Well, some people like it too." That is not a valid argument.

It also appears that you are the only one bothered by the fact that it is too big—without being able to give a plausible reason for it. It is simply supposed to be smaller—but why? No one had a problem with it before; I haven't read anything about that. Has there been any feedback or discussion thread indicating that it is too large and causing issues?

A reasonable compromise would be to make it optional. Think about it. This is not meant in a hostile way, but rather as a constructive suggestion.

Best regards

[franco]

> This is childish behavior

Never mind me wanting to have a productive exchange and engaging the discussion head on.

We're done here if we're continuing ad hominem.


Cheers,
Franco

[fuskadoo]

I prioritize core function over looks, so I'm not going to die on this hill, lol. It's a widget people, let's settle down....  But my last point will be that in vicuna, the old widget was beautiful and blended right in.  Simple, clean, clear, not overbearing in-your-face colors, and the small green buttons elegantly indicated running vs the small red buttons indicating stopped were nothing short of UX genius....

With that said, (and only because of this change), that I noticed in my screenshot there does look to be some opportunity to optimize the space it took up without impacting the UI visuals.  So if anyone ever takes a vote, I'm voting for the old clean and clear look, but then just optimize the space if we want to change something. As you can see in my screenshot, there's a country mile between the text and the green buttons.  Win win! Innovation is great and I am truly glad the devs are thinking about how to optimize space.

Or, even just leave it like it was... It was the last thing I expected to change in this update, and honestly didn't even know there was a need before this update. Let's be honest, you only open the page to check the services if something isn't working, then you close the page and move on with life....  It's NOT like you really need to push those buttons all day long and need an OMG Optimized interface to operate them.  :)