Honestly, in general it feels way less "professional" and more "bloggy" to me... partially because of annoyingly large fonts and lack of borders, mostly because of removal of details (linode ID, job ID, host start/end date of job, the host load meter, modification dates in DNS manager)...

The fact that you have so many options hidden in sub-screens now is quite annoying too, but it's not a killer. I'm also feeling kind of uneasy about having "Rebuild" so easily accessible in the main tabs, especially as "Deploy Distro" is still available in the disk image administration section (i.e. the new "Advanced Configuration" screen).

Things that I feel really, really should be back is displaying the physical host ID in list of nodes and the dashboard (generally, what was in the Host Summary widget in old manager).
And while you're at it, keeping the transfer usage bar in the dashboard would make it easier to keep eye on, with no need to return back to list of linodes. On the other hand, it seems that we finally can open a control panel for more than one linode in parallel.


Upon opening the DNS manager there's a tiny cosmetic annoyance, that is it sorts the domains by database ID or creation time, not by name. Of course ot can be easily fixed by clicking the column name... but why did you hide the modification dates?! They're quite essential to me so I can notice when one of other users edited something... Having the reports from Check and Zonefile inside the UI instead of as plaintext are a mixed gain... but I guess that you prefer people to use API for any kind of (semi-)automatic processing.

TL;DR: Old one provides quite a lot of details the new one doesn't, and in my personal opinion has a better look&feel too.

Sorry for not being all happy over the new one, but that's what I honestly think of the beta as of today.

PS. I know there are "workarounds", like linode ID in the RRDtool graphs and host ID in the Lish login tab... but that's not really the point here.

EDIT: Some of the typos.

I second most of rsk's findings.

Here are my suggestions:
- reduce default font size or give a +/- control - this is way too large ATM.
- Please please make domain view table columns sortable as well (A/AAAA records, CNAME records would be a huge addition to people like me)
- 'This Month's Network Transfer Pool' meter looks ridiculously ugly. Don't waste your time for in-house development, let an UI developer do the job

Additionally, although 'Trebuchet MS' is installed on my computer, it really makes me sick. I suggest going for simple 'sans-serif' definitions in css. But this is only me, others might just love this font.

Seconded... now if I only could convince the webdesigner I work for about it...

Also, as far as I know Helvetica Neue is available only with Adobe's packages, and when it is available, it hits weird conflicts (being OpenType?) causing huge, fat, aliased letters to be drawn. That's not limited to Linode Manager, mind, I have this problem with a ton of sites, in both Firefox and Opera.

Getting details back is more important than having it look good... but both should be important from the business perspective, I think. After all, the manager panel is a new user's first impression of the service.

Absolutely. Although having it look 'good' should mean that the interface looks pleasant to the eye but still being usable and unobtrusive.

I agree with many of the comments. I'd add that for my site I specify fonts like this to favor Linux users but fall back for others:

font: normal normal 94%/ 1.0 FreeSans, Sans, Arial, Helvetica, sans-srif;

Our household has run Ubuntu Desktop for 3 years so yeah, no doze only fonts please.

The BW meter is ugly. There is a lack of supporting borders, everywhere, my eyes keep wondering around the pages looking for structure.

PS FreeSans, BitStream or DejaVu fonts look better than the Arial package that's available for Linux.

I use Liberation Sans. Looks cleaner than FreeSans to me. If you want to save some screen real estate (e.g. on a netbook), Droid Sans is also good.

I got the same feel from the interface, it felt as if it was trying too hard to look new, and it felt on the whole, less useful, with the interface sporting seemly less information.

On my screen the interface seems ridiculously narrow, and with the soft edge it just feels incomplete. I also seem to find myself scrolling far too much.

I'd suggest abusing the min-width property and going for a percentage width, possibly with some components willing to float themselves alongside if there is room horizontally.

I also support most of the points made above. Here's my version of things:

- Get rid of the gravatar thing, it's unprofessional and looks extremely bloggy.
- BW meter is hideous. Please get rid of that dashed borders in it.
- The whole block with "div id=page" needs a border. Currently it seems like it's floating around with the drop shadow. Really disturbing to the eyes.
- The old Linode Manager included a lot more info (IDs etc.), please make them available again.
- Blue links on gray background (second level of navigation from top) sucks. It looks like a geocities site.

I'm gonna be the odd one out and say I like the new look!

The old interface, although functional, was a bit 'dated'...

Oh well

I have to agree with Mr Nod. I really like it and much prefer it to the old version. I don't mind gravatar either, BW meter is ugly though.

I'm sure there are a lot of web developers/designers here so a lot of strong opinions.

Good work Linode.

It doesn't disgust me, but it's a bit less functional.
I would like "Deploy distribution" on frontpage like old manager.

You still are the best

Thank you very much for mod date in DNS manager!
(Still hoping for return of other details in the future...)

N00b alert....

I've searched the forums, and can't find a link to where to try this Beta.

Was it invite only?

Right side of the login page.

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Disclaimer: I am no longer employed by Linode; opinions are my own alone.