Updated - first impressions

[tbt39]

That's fair. I'm not a designer, however, so apologies if I can't be more specific..


Using the opnsense theme for the sake of this, which I assume to be the default, and which I'd assume to be updated alongside changes like this (although it's not really any different in advance, rebellion and the mentioned cicada).

I'd think it's immediately obvious, but the widget is an entirely different style.
Every other widget has more spacing between elements in a very consistent logical fashion. Even widgets that do contain colors, the spacing and the shape help relax it.

The new service widget is just one big boxy block of color that looks out of place among the more elegant design of everything else (minus maybe the interfaced widget, but I fixed it in the dashboard editor just now by increasing the size once and then reducing it again, which hides the port information on narrower sizes correctly - EDIT: well, maybe not, a reload breaks it again).

The design and ease of use in the dashboard was something I always appreciated with opnsense (I have to deal with a large checkmk installation for work, I know bad dashboard design ;)).

[franco]

Thanks for your feedback... the people nagging there's excessive padding everywhere are awfully quiet at the moment. To some degree it's funny trying to cater to this part of the user base and seeing a bit of backlash for it.

We can add padding, make it bigger, or we can leave it to acclimate. I'm unsure yet with the mixed signals.

But there's one fact of life here that the dashboard needs to be reorganized by people using widgets that are changed in design and people may just not like that about it. I'm keeping mental notes on the situation.


Cheers,
Franco

[passeri]

Count me in the apparent minority who think the new services widget is an improvement. I like it. For context I use Opnsense's dark theme.

[dseven]

I like that it's compact - I actually had removed the (old) widget from my dashboard because it just took up too much space.... but as others have noted, the new one just doesn't match the style of the rest of the dashboard, so it "sticks out like a sore thumb". As I commented in one several other threads about this (one that got hijacked for a Hyper-V discussion), a more in-keeping style would be to have a "LED" to the left of each item, with color indicating the status, rather than using the background of the whole "button"... but at the expense of a bit of "compactness"...

[wbond]

Count me in the apparent minority who think the new services widget is an improvement. I like it. For context I use Opnsense's dark theme.

I have to agree, I felt the old one took up too much space.

Also, would like to add the update to 26.7 went fine for me, aside from the minor issue with the nut configuration page which was fixed by the patch. 

Congrats to the team.  With other firewall software I used to feel the need to install updates to a new drive so I could keep the previous install intact in case something went wrong.  With OPNsense I no longer feel the need to do this, just take a snapshot and proceed with the update.

[nero355]

Thanks for your feedback... the people nagging there's excessive padding everywhere are awfully quiet at the moment.
To some degree it's funny trying to cater to this part of the user base and seeing a bit of backlash for it.

We can add padding, make it bigger, or we can leave it to acclimate. I'm unsure yet with the mixed signals.

You could say I am one of those people in general, but the thing is : I am not much of a widget guy...

One possible explanation of that is because I have a bad image of it in my mind since Windows Vista and Android started using those damn things and I was always like : Why the hell would you use those things ?!

I know they have a totally different purpose for OPNsense and they are basically not widgets and something much more useful instead, but still I somehow can't really be bothered by them... Sorry! :)


So to make a long story short :

This =>

That's fair. I'm not a designer, however, so apologies if I can't be more specific..

Is very nice and compact without wasting unnecessary screenspace so I like it and perhaps will consider Enabling it again in 26.7.x after upgrading ;)

The only possible improvement that I can think of is perhaps experimenting with a black line around the green (the button ?) and perhaps using white text with a small black edge around the same way it's used commonly for subtitles, but maybe it's not even needed in this case... dunno...

Ohh and I like this idea too by the way :

a more in-keeping style would be to have a "LED" to the left of each item, with color indicating the status, rather than using the background of the whole "button"... but at the expense of a bit of "compactness"...

Seen that many times in other software (both round and square "LEDs" ) and can look very good!