New cloud.linode.com control panel
Regarding the domain list, here the addition of a lot of whitespace is again not helpful. If you aren't going to provide sorting on the domain column (as in the current version), then please at least sort the domains alphabetically. Can you also include the last updated timestamp? There's plenty of space and I find this to occasionally be useful. Ditto with the ability to view the zone file and the "check" option. Finally, the ability to clone an existing zone is pretty much essential for us, and is almost always the starting point for adding a new domain in our case.
Perhaps you're planning to return the features I mentioned in the final version. I don't mean to bitch but a lot of whitespace in a tech interface and/or a lot of extra clicks to get stuff done is rarely going to be desirable to me. I hope you understand where I'm coming from.
We appreciate the ongoing efforts that Linode is making to improve the service and we continue to direct more of our hosting business to your platform.
31 Replies
@bgbarcus:
Please do not use low contrast pages. The trend to difficult to read low contrast web sites is not one to follow.
The current Linode theme colors are nice. It's too bad that the vocal few who like low contrast themes are getting their way and the rest of us have to suffer.
I too prefer the current colours, I'm not a fan of the high contrast/negative theme.
I like the account dropdown, will save me a few clicks upon each visit to Linode, definitely keep that.
As for domains, please… why not order them alphanumerically ?!? I have 30+ domaines, I don't want to CTRL-F when you previous page was perfectly fine. Also, the last modified is kinda neat, especially for us that use your API to create/modify zones, so we have an at-a-glance instead of .. well, you don't even provide the @last-modified anymore
Going into a Linode itself is an experience in "bare necessities", ouch.
In the end, it's not so much the UX I dislike, as to the loss of valuable data points which the current interface displays in plain sight, easy to get to.
@jfarsen:
As for domains, please… why not order them alphanumerically ?!? I have 30+ domaines, I don't want to CTRL-F when you previous page was perfectly fine. Also, the last modified is kinda neat, especially for us that use your API to create/modify zones, so we have an at-a-glance instead of .. well, you don't even provide the @last-modified anymore
:(
The domains page should now sort your domains.
@fede:
+1 for clone an existing zone, we have +100 domains, we really need this!
It's on the radar
@ingber:
I see that the new control panel is not available to (legacy?) yearly subscribers. Will the new control panel be available when it is out of beta?
We do not have any plans to allow prepaid accounts to access the new manager after the beta ends, but we're working on solutions to help transition to a metered account.
@sohsoh5:
@ingber:I see that the new control panel is not available to (legacy?) yearly subscribers. Will the new control panel be available when it is out of beta?
We do not have any plans to allow prepaid accounts to access the new manager after the beta ends, but we're working on solutions to help transition to a metered account.
Do these plans include prepayment?
@ingber:
@sohsoh5:
@ingber:I see that the new control panel is not available to (legacy?) yearly subscribers. Will the new control panel be available when it is out of beta?
We do not have any plans to allow prepaid accounts to access the new manager after the beta ends, but we're working on solutions to help transition to a metered account.
Do these plans include prepayment?
We can't comment on what the plans will be as we don't have anything concrete yet, but if you would like to prepay on metered billing you can do so by manually inputting the amount needed
Uggghhh… which is a generic comment I reserve for use when UI design focuses on being "mobile device friendly" at the expense of becoming less friendly to the humans trying to get their work done efficiently!
The "old" UI is perfect for my uses and preferences which include:
Good information density - my widescreen monitor is not a wasteland of whitespace
Not too much reliance on client side scripting - light weight, truly responsive, even useful with js disabled!
Not overloaded with fancy squirming widgets - simple HTML/CSS elements = consistent, basic device independent use
If you must implement a new cloud/clone UI, please continue to support the legacy UI and offer the choice to us old dinosaurs who prefer it. Or at least provide for the new UI to fall-back gracefully when js is disabled and high density displays are in use.
Thanks!
Since the new API is basically what the new control panel is accessing, and will support everything the cloud.linode.com control panel has available, it should be possible to create a back end script to access the API and print results only as pure HTML, so no java script would be necessary. This would take more memory and CPU on the side of the web server, which would be its disadvantage, but should still load quickly enough for the end user.
I imagine that other control panels may be written by users in the future, with the API supporting everything the control panel will support. I'm in agreement, though, that the API shouldn't so heavily rely on java script to do its job. Some would be acceptable, and a fallback if it was unavailable would be nice to have. As it is now, the control panel isn't usable at all unless you allow java script to run in your web browser, such as if you have noscript installed in Firefox.
Blake
However, is there going to be a link to longview, or are you going to discontinue that service?
I'm very sorry that Linode is going down the path adopting a new "mobile friendly" interface, sacrificing usability and efficiency. Many other web-based services have already done this. For example, namecheap.com (domain registrar) used to have a very usable, efficient control panel. They replaced it last year with a "modern" new design loaded with unnecessary white space. It now takes many more clicks (page loads) and much scrolling to do the same tasks that were easy in the previous namecheap control panel.
Linode, If you really must continue down this erroneous "upgrade" path , please keep the "legacy" control panel available for those of us who prefer it.
This is what I see in the control panel (37.6GB total):
~~https://i.imgur.com/U7903X3.png
And this is what the beta cp shows (13GB used):
~~https://i.imgur.com/xbqfRiw.png
Is this the intended behavior or just a bug?~~~~
I like the buttons for copying the IP addresses, but I only use that information before I add a DNS entry, so it really doesn't need to be in the list for me.
The Backups status column is much more useful, since I never want to forget to do that.
The Display Group is also very important for me to group linodes by client.
I don't see the NodeBoost CDN in the console. If I could turn on the CDN with auto-generated SSL certificates by just clicking a checkbox like it is possible for WPEngine.com, I would use it for many more servers. If it would serve expired cached pages when the server is rebooting like CloudFlare supports (except without the annoying notification that CloudFlare shows), it would be very valuable even for low traffic websites. The AWS CDN is almost as easy to set up with SSL as WPEngine, but it requires a DNS service that supports Alias (AName) records for the vertex record, since you can't use a CNAME on the vertex.
I realize this is a work in progress but I will have to say I'm firmly in the camp of preferring the classic interface. for the reasons listed above. I don't foresee using my phone as the primary way to interact with linode, ever.
I love being able to see all the verbose information in simple non-fancy HTML without a lot of elements that I need to interact with to expose information.
I also live out in the boonies on a satellite internet connection so I don't really want to be pulling down lots of javascript if I don't need to.
While none of this stuff is absolutely critical I have considered the nice, clean fast responsive interface to be a big plus in my experience with Linode services so far.
I know it's likely going to be the new interface eventually (as is the way for things like this generally) but if we were offered a way to fall back to the old interface much like with gmail I think that would be absolutely fantastic.
BTW I love the service so far overall and would gladly recommend it to anyone.
Agreed, the classic interface, while maybe not as nice looking, is much more functional and fast. The new interface is a classic "upgrade to upgrade" move where the product gets worse because of the perceived need for "new"; what is the new interface solving?
Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old guy. Sometimes I wonder.
I really admire all of the hard work that you guys at Linode have put into the new manager interface.
I don't admire the design choices you guys made. My chief complaint is that the web interface is now the barest amount of HTML with a thick dollop of JavaScript smeared on top. This choice doesn't make any sense to me. The current interface is implemented as mostly HTML, with some JavaScript-enhanced features. It works fine. I don't see any benefit to creating the UI with JavaScript, especially when the JavaScript one is slower than the plain HTML one. One of the things about modern web design trends that infuriates me is when the page isn't done loading when my browser says its done loading. That sort of thing makes me feel dumb—I have to suppress my impulse to begin interacting with the page until after an AJAX request finishes for content that should have been served in the HTML to start with.
In addition, the new interface is a vast wasteland of useless negative space on my desktop monitor. The density of information has been vastly reduced, but for what? The only thing I can think of is responsive design. Although using Linode's manager console on my phone is nice, I do it so infrequently that mobile optimization is hardly something I'm wanting for. Plus, you can make responsively designed web pages that don't require everything to happen with JavaScript, and don't leave the desktop interface huge and empty.
Finally, the animations in the new interface are mostly just annoying. When I go to a tab with a feature I haven't enabled (Backups, for example), I get an animation of a logo on a disc flipping over. What for? This animation doesn't help me better understand what's going on in the interface, it's just a frill. For comparison, the Material Design-style expanding circle animation when you click on the sidebar navigation buttons is a bit overkill, but it does make it clear that the button is interactive, and it also darkens the background of the tab to be somewhat similar to the background of its content, indicating that they're related. (It would be better if this animation was less showy and made the background color match, but I'll take what I can get.)
The new interface is a cool tech demo that looks great in marketing videos, but it's not great for practical usage.
I really admire the great work with the new manager, but some features have disappeared such as enable and disable domains… For me, this was very useful for planning and migrating domains.
About the rest, it seems pretty, although I would like to stop announcing the Linode Backup Service and Linode Docs on the right sidebar. For me it does not contribute anything new and this space would be interesting for something related to the selected option (domains, linodes, billing, etc…)
I hope you will continue the legacy control panel as it has
many technical details not available on your new cloud manager.
I have been with linode almost 10 years and really appreciate
what you do and your new features and the progress you continue
to make.
Is there a way to view the Host Job Queue in the new cloud control panel? I just upgraded a linode, but I can't seem to follow it's progress in the upgrade queue.
do i see it right that i can't install my own linux distro via the new Linode cloud control panel ? or no distro at all ? do i really have to chose one from the list and then delete it to come with my own distro ? i usually go with Slackware but from scratch and from the first second on, using my own installation media, which is easily done in the classic manager. do i miss something here ?
Another thing with the new panel…
In the DNS editor, Check Zone and Zone File commands are perpetually grayed out, perhaps not implemented yet?
I think those are very good for troubleshooting.
Also not clear if any errors would be flagged - in the old manager, a domain zone will have "ACTIVE" next to it, which changes to "ERROR" when there is one.
In the new editor, there is no "ACTIVE", so I suspect there is simply no room for "DNS zone status" in the new design, which is unfortunate.
This forced move to the cloud is not in the best interest of the customers. No one asked for it so why force it? Responsive web interface is of no use to anyone when it comes to servers. We all are sitting at a desktop when we are working on our websites. Give up the idea of responsive web interface. Wasted time and money.
Follow the leader? Not a good corporate strategy IMHO.
rdaniels
Linode Staff
@pixelpadre Thank you for your feedback. We are continuing to improve our Cloud interface, and I'd love to add any specific feedback you have to our internal tracker. Would you be able to let us know what the specific concerns you have are?