Services widget

[franco]

There's a ticket here since a week BTW, which certainly shows how childish I am. Lucky for me nobody posted anything there. So much for community being ignored and yearning for cooperation which was ultimately denied on a ticket from 2024 that only one member ever participated on. I'm hoping the irony here is clear.

https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/10553

There's a POC now but I hate it. It's boring, bloated and much less obvious. Change my mind I guess?

This is YOUR project at the end of the day. Giving anyone a hard time for helping you is NOT the way of this community. I did not enjoy the interactions so far and I expect we can do better than that then.


Cheers,
Franco

[Patrick M. Hausen]

There's a ticket here since a week BTW,

I somehow missed the memo. Find my comments there. And thanks! That's great.

[Mabub]

Hello Franco,

This is by no means a personal attack; it simply describes the impression created by the response. I think it may have been misunderstood.

Please consider the entire post. I see a lot of suggestions for improvement here, and it would be wrong to focus only on the title. Criticism should be allowed and taken into account, because that is the only way a project can improve. That is something I feel is missing a little here.

Criticism is a natural part of any project and something that has to be accepted and dealt with constructively.

Have a nice day.

[fuskadoo]

I think it may have been misunderstood.

Please consider the entire post.

Completely agree, and please consider those of us trying to help with suggestions.

@Franco, #10553 above is brilliant! Thank you!

[franco]

> Criticism is a natural part of any project and something that has to be accepted and dealt with constructively.

It has to be a pretty big misunderstanding.

Which part of https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/10553 made it seem like I wasn't listening last week already?

Which part of https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/7887 made it seem like we didn't want feedback from the community since 2024 about the subject?


Cheers,
Franco

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Which part of https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/7887 made it seem like we didn't want feedback from the community since 2024 about the subject?

I never noticed any discussion of this on the forum and I do not follow Github unless I open an issue or a merge request. First time I saw this: today.

Also I still do not quite understand what was bad about the old widget. But then I never work from mobile devices. "Working" means I am at my desk with a real keyboard and a reasonably sized monitor and I design all my dashboards of all products I use for that environment alone. Resolution of a Macbook Pro is large enough to not notice much of a difference when e.g. traveling.

Was that the initial motivation? Smaller screens? But then the entire dashboard is not specifically mobile friendly, so I'm still a bit puzzled why this effort was made at all. It is/was a long list. So be it :-)

Kind regards,
Patrick

[franco]

Patrick, I addressed your concerns here: https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/10553#issuecomment-5062751182

> I never noticed any discussion of this on the forum and I do not follow Github unless I open an issue or a merge request. First time I saw this: today.

I keep thinking how this is similar to the prologue of Hitchhiker's Guide but I fail to see that this wasn't publicly available information anyone from Earth could have reached in time. Besides it certainly isn't the end of the world as we know it. ;)


Cheers,
Franco

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I keep thinking how this is similar to the prologue of Hitchhiker's Guide but I fail to see that this wasn't publicly available information anyone from Earth could have reached in time. ;)

Beware of the leopard! :-)

[passeri]

I prefer the new widget in part because I rarely have need to check the Dashboard, so do not have a firm mental image from which to see discrepancies immediately. I experienced that problem recently in the old columnar widget, where the fact a service was off (hence a problem) did not stand out. With the new widget it is clear at once.

I also prefer not to have to scroll merely to check states rather than when reading text. Any warning should be visible immediately so again, the new widget wins. I try not to clutter my Dashboard, and with the new widget and some other rearrangements it is single screen, organised and clear on a large display or a Macbook Air.

It may have helped in my case that my theme is opnsense-dark where it seems to fit quite well, so I was not triggered by unexpected contrast. In any case I tend to run with low screen brightness and contrast. I can see from some other people's screenshots that in other contexts the display tones may need tuning.

Adding this by way of explanation rather than merely sitting back happily.

[drosophila]

The old one wasn't consistent, either: it used the "play" and "stop" icons for its status display (instead of being actionable buttons as convention makes one expect). I've always wondered why it doesn't use the same status indicator as the ddns and the gateway widget (a colored dot, but sadly its size is not consistent: the dot in the gateway monitor is much smaller than the one in the ddns widget). So the new version is more logical / expectation-consistent than the old one, which is always a plus.
To me, the smaller height of the individual lines is welcome, and the full-line coloring could possibly be toned down into coloring only the part that contains the controls? (BTW, where did the start / stop go? I can only judge from the provided screenshots ATM though, maybe they've been moved).
Coloring the entire line will, if extended to the entire the GUI, end up coloring most parts of the screen in green, which defeats the purpose of a dark theme at least, and will probably be harder on the eyes all in all, and may end up looking cluttered / toy-like?
The ddns widget could use an overhaul as well though, to display the type and name in one line as it does ATM, but to then display the IP address and update time as full line each, instead of cutting it off at the same boundary as the type. The current way is OK for IPv4, but breaks with IPv6. Maybe this is already fixed in the new release already?
Also, the header isn't displayed for the "image" widget either, so it's not entirely unusual. Maybe the header itself could be shrunk for the all widgets, to remove the unnecessary empty space below the orange line, like it is done with the memory, disk, CPU, ddns and some other widgets?