I just pushed out some changes to the Linode Manager Beta, that I believe address most of the concerns we've had, as well as the feedback we've received.

• Overall font sizes have been reduced.
• Padding reduced in lists to get more on a screenfull
• Helvetica is now used almost everywhere (some Arial, too)
• Header color toned down a bit
• Dashboard Config drop-down grouped by kernel setting
• Host Job Queue more compact
• Dashboard is now way more informative. Now shows:
  
  • Linode Status, and uptime in days
  • Linode Resource (RAM, Disk, XFER)
  • Network In/Out for the current month
  • Backups (enabled/disabled), and when the last successful back up occurred
  • Host server hostname, and Host Load
  • Graphs are no longer giant
• DisplayGroup in breadcrumb (if one defined)
• New "stats" style used for Storage Stats on the bottom of the Advanced tab. I may use this to replace the bandwidth pool in the Linode index, too (but still want to tweak on it more)...

https://manager.linode.com/

-Chris

It looks 10 times better, great job!

I'll preface this by saying that I've been with Linode since about 2006 and I'm satisfied the current Dashboard. That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement though. I'm all for innovation, but not when sacrificing functionality. Remember your market. You're clients are running servers not moving music to their iPod. It needs to be functional and easy to understand/navigate before you even consider appearance.

The Good:

• The Settings page
• The Remote Access page
• The Resize page
• The Graphs page (see improvements section)

The Bad:

• Dashboard Transfer - Should have an indicator bar
• Dashboard Resources - I feel these should have indicators too (see improvements section)
• Dashboard Host Job Queue - Successful/Failed should be the same size
• Rebuild - Should have a confirmation when you click Rebuild (didn't risk checking)
• Bandwidth Pool Bar - Dotted lines as stated in the previous thread.
• The Washed-Out Green - I personally liked the deep neon green of the current homepage more than the washed-out easter-egg green of the beta

Improvements:

• Graphs - Possible to generate a custom graph? You might want to see your average CPU/Network/IO usage over a custom time range
• Host CPU/Network/IO Graphs? - I'm unsure about possible security risks of a feature like this, but it might be useful if someone wants to see what the best time of day is for backups.
• Dashboard - Possible to view used resources INSIDE the Linode? For example, in the current Dashboard you can see how much disk space you've allocated. I'm sure most people have allocated all their disk space. It might be more useful to have a separate progress-bar style indicator for each disk image. Can the same be done for RAM?
• Dashboard "Advanced options" - Should be renamed to "Profile Configuration"

Uglier... but way more comfortable

* jobs queue still not expandable
* The layout is narrow, feeling a bit weird on widescreens
* you still have Helvetica Neue in many places in CSS, which (if installed at all) causes really ugly rendering in all four major browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Chrome), at least on Windows XP. (And apparently, I'm not the only one with problems, tho I admit that every single one of these posts has a different rendering issue, which makes me think this font is really dependent on local background radiation levels or something.

Thanks a lot for the progress!

The fonts are still huge, esp on the login screen.
And is there a reason that you use a different green than on e.g. linode.com ?

Yeah, I think that would be useful..... I have two linodes, in different data centers, and I dump my website (mysqldump/tar/scp) off to the backup site.

I'd like to automate the import on the backup server, and since it tends to suck cpu and disk, if I knew when the light times were, I'd schedule for then.

Although, having run through a thread earlier about trying to figure out load, the response I was getting here seemed to lean towards "just do whatever you want, whenever you want, and let the Xen scheduler sort out the details".