I find the DNS Manager UI to be very inconsistent.


I will detail some examples below:


1) The owner field, in the listing view for a master zone:

In the "NS Records" section it is referred to as "Subdomain" and is in the second column, listed as absolute values.

In the "MX Records" section it is referred to as "Subdomain" and is in the third column, listed as relative values.

In the "A/AAAA Records" section it is referred to as "Hostname" and is in the first column, listed as relative values.

In the "CNAME Records" section it is referred to as "Hostname" and is in the first column, listed as relative values.

In the "TXT Records" section it is referred to as "Name" and is in the first column, listed as relative values.

In the "SRV Records" section it is split into columns one and two ("Service", containing the effectively zone-relative part of the name and "Domain").


I think it would be appropriate to use a consistent name to refer to the "owner" value (if you find that "owner" is problematic then maybe just "name" would be a good idea). Also consistently having it as the first column would not only make it consistent but also more conventional. And have it always be either absolute or zone-relative.



2) The SOA section / Editing of SOA:

The SOA record does not have a field that is used as "Default TTL" / "Defines the default Time To Live for all entries in the zone" as is shown in the DNS Manager.
However, the SOA field named "MINIMUM" (redefined to be used as Negative Cache TTL) is nowhere to be found. Is the "Default TTL" option in the manager actually "MINIMUM"? Or is it as the description says a way to set a Default TTL (redefine what the "Default" option means in the TTL dropdowns?)? Or is it both? I guess it would be easy enough for everyone to experiment to reverse engineer what the option actually does but expecting that is absurd.

If the "Default TTL" there actually refers to the the "MINIMUM" field I think it would be good if it was not only relabelled as "Negative Cache TTL" but also moved last to match the actual order of the SOA values (MNAME, RNAME, SERIAL, REFRESH, RETRY, EXPIRE, MINIMUM). If it does not refer to "MINIMUM" I think that field needs to be added. If it is used to control both, the title and description should just be clarified.



3) Adding AAAA:

There is an "A/AAAA Records" section but the link for adding records is labelled "Add a new A record". (It does however add AAAA records just fine.)

Just change the link to say "Add a new A/AAAA record" to avoid confusion?



4) Adding/editing SRV:

In the listing "service" and "domain" are listed. However, when adding/editing records there is no way to specify the "domain" and what is listed as "service" in the listing has been split into "service" (inconsistent that "service" in the listing and "service" in the editor refers to different things) and "protocol" with a dropdown with a couple of popular values. This effectively makes it impossible to add an SRV record for a subdomain.

Assuming the service + protocol split is to remain, maybe a field to specify "domain" (as in the listing) could be added? Also, it might be appropriate to allow an "other" option for protocol with a textbox to make it more flexible.

5) Adding records with wildcard owner name

You can add an A/AAAA, TXT or CNAME record for "foo.bar" and you can add one for "*" but you can't add one for "*.bar".
For MX as well as NS(??) records an owner name like "*.bar" is allowed, though.

Allowing the wildcard records for all record types (with the exception of NS?) would make sense.