The winbox is hard to use

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hi guys, i want to know how do you use winbox, because i think it’s really hard to use.
For example:
1.can’t move the sub window out of the main window.
2.can’t minimal the sub window.
So when opening many sub windows, it’s hard to find the window which you want.

Anyone else has good idea to operate it?

Thanks.

2

Font is to small (should be re-sizable)
Dark mode

3

Hello,

  1. it’s a proprietary GUI. So no, you can’t move a sub-window outside. Not a big thing really. Get a bigger screen :smiley:
  2. you can’t minimize a sub-window but you can resize it or at least, close it until you need it next time when you can reopen it.
  3. if you have too many sub-windows, close some. That argument is weak.

To be honest, I think your arguments are not strong.
The reply of resizable fonts is good. Scroll bars is my suggestion since on laptops, good luck selecting some parameters, like ICMP options.

If you are not comfortable with WinBox, I suggest webfig. I don’t like it, but it works.

Best regards,

Sent from my tablet with Tapatalk. Sorry for my typos.

4

Nothing better than the same easy and effective winbox

5

Thanks for your reply.
I like winbox too, but i think it can be more better. And one more thing i forgot to mention is no hot key to switch the sub window(alt+tab, etc),
Think that if one sub-window is completely behind another, how do you get that window?
Resize or close & reopen is poor efficiency， i think.

6

I have my Winbox windows pre-defined in my session preferences, so every new session opens with my preferred windows open in exactly the same place and dimensions each time.

If a window ends up behind another, I don’t go looking for it in the right-hand pane. I navigate to it through the menu again.

For example, if my interfaces window is behind the log window, I simply click the interfaces button again to bring it to the foreground.

I wouldn’t disagree with adding a minimize button, but I doubt I’d use it much because it’s just as fast to bring most windows to the foreground via the menu on the left.

7

Winbox is a classic MDI application, you can use CTRL-F6 and CTRL-SHIFT-F6 to cycle through child windows, forth and back respectively.

8

How did you go about setting that up?

9

The basics are here: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Winbox

They don’t really explain sessions though.

Connect to your most convenient router with Winbox. Select the windows you’d like to be open each time you connect to any router. I have the log and firewall windows on open. Set the size of the windows, and the columns you’d like to display in each window. Click session, then disable auto-save on close. Once you have Winbox just the way you like it, click session > save as > <preferred_session_name>.

Now open a new Winbox session. Click Tools and enable Advanced Mode. Right-click on a directory entry, select columns, and enable them all. Now you can see the session settings each device will use. Select each address entry, select the new session profile you created above, then uncheck the “autosave session” option in the top right. Do this for all of your routers.

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll realize that you can set up different sessions for different devices. So you might have a router session profile, and a switch session profile, for example.

As an added bonus, I have a symlink at the default Winbox folder location that points at my gdrive location on all my computers. This lets me keep my directory, profiles, and all other settings in sync between desktops and laptops. A Winbox change to any of my usual computers syncs up with all of my other computers automatically.

10

Overall i would not say “winbox is hard to use” (comparatively)

Winbox makes other gui’s seem like garbage. I can get things done a lot faster in winbox compared to others.

  • but there is certainly room for improvement.

Being able to minimize or some form of tabs (as an option) or a different window tracking mechanism would be interesting to see.

I suspect minimizing would be a bit ugly/clunky though (minimizing windows within MDI has been historically really fugly/annoying)

11

Thank you. This hot key is helpful.

12

Yes, i also use the pane menu to reopen window too.But think about the follow condition:
1.some window when you reopen it, it will open new window instead of bring the old one back. eg: terminal window
2.sometimes you can’t get back the window which you want by reopen it in pane menu. eg:
2.1 double click a interface item in interface list window, it will open the interface property window
2.2 this time you may be want to reference something in the other window, then you switch to that window, and the interface property window completely behind it.
2.3 now how do you get back interface property window by the pane menu? open the interface list window then double click the item again? I don’t think it’s effectively.
3. When you want to switch to a window by pane menu, first you should take a short time to think about where the menu item is(even though you may very very familiar with it),
then you click the main menu and the sub menu. Take a think about if you need to switch two window again and again or switch among many windows and they are in different menu.
If winbox has the hot key (eg: alt+tab, common in win os), you just to press the hot key and never think what window you are looking for and what the menu should open.

I also think the winbox is profession and powerful when compare to others. But there also some features to be improved, especially window switch.

13

Excellent, and thank you nescafe2002. Did not know this.