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lysy1033
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user interface

Sun Mar 06, 2016 3:45 pm

hi Guys!

I think that You can challange with new network teriitories with some new today's user interface.
 
jarda
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user interface

Sun Mar 06, 2016 6:26 pm

What did you mean by that?
 
lysy1033
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Re: user interface

Mon Mar 07, 2016 8:55 pm

I mean, all vendors are going for new interfaces that are easy of use and just it looks good. For ex. ubiquiti and bigger vendors like fortinet, cisco and other - they have nice fancy GUI that is just clear. I think that new look and feel for RouterOS management will make more user-friendly usage.
 
jarda
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user interface

Tue Mar 08, 2016 12:21 am

Oh. I cannot imagine to set all the things provided by ros with the fancy interface provided by ubnt. I had to deal with nanostation recently and I can tell you: a nightmare! Never more again. Winbox is great, just plug wire in and go. Something that ubnt can only dream about. But I anyway agree, it is a question of taste and habits...
 
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Re: user interface

Tue Mar 08, 2016 1:22 am

Which user interface are we talking about? Because there are two.

WinBox, which I view as primary, is already perfect. I can imagine a little tweak here and there, but nothing major. I'm sure it's possible to invent something even better, but I haven't seen anything even coming close yet. For me, WinBox is the main reason why I like RouterOS so much. Regarding its visual appearance, I'd prefer if it respected system settings a little more (e.g. why must child window titles use hardcoded blue color?). But even this aspect is mostly fine, it could be much worse.

Then there's WebFig, which tries to bring everything that WinBox has to web interface (limited by single window layout). I'd say it's functional, but not exactly an eye catcher. A lot can be improved here appearance wise.

If we are talking about ease of use (for both), I think that for new users, things might seem confusing at first. There's really a lot of options all around. But I don't see any easy solution for that. If there's a lot of options, it will always be a little complicated. But we definitely don't want to dumb it down. Perhaps some extension or even different approach to Quick Set could be the answer. I'm not sure, nor do I care too much, to be honest.
 
jarda
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user interface

Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:00 am

There are not only two user interfaces. The Cli is the third user interface you have forgotten.

Please, consider the functionality before the look.
 
Sob
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Re: user interface

Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:36 pm

I skipped CLI intentionally. A "new look and feel" was mentioned and it does not sound as something that could apply much to CLI.
 
StefanM
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Re: user interface

Wed Mar 30, 2016 12:30 am

I don't think user interface is so much important to be changed, functions and optimization is what matters.
 
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Cha0s
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Re: user interface

Thu May 26, 2016 4:48 pm

I mean, all vendors are going for new interfaces that are easy of use and just it looks good. For ex. ubiquiti and bigger vendors like fortinet, cisco and other - they have nice fancy GUI that is just clear. I think that new look and feel for RouterOS management will make more user-friendly usage.
Besides the fact that Winbox -IS- beautiful and insanely intuitive (can't say that about any competing 'web' interface out there), RouterOS is a router. Not a website. We don't need fancy responsive themes and all of that BS. We need functionality.
Also we do not need any abstraction (=user friendly) for stuff that are straightforward when you know what you are doing. As no one expects a cisco catalyst or nexus to be user friendly (and you actually have to study to learn how to use it) I don't think that it should be any different with Mikrotik RouterOS.

Personally I wouldn't touch (change) Winbox. Apart from minor fixes/changes here and there, it's just awesome! It's the main reason I use Mikrotik.
WebFig... I don't really care. I've never used it. It's cumbersome and a bad port of Winbox's design to the web. If web based is your thing then sure, they could re-design the whole thing, but I don't think it's much useful anyway.

CLI is also awesome. I find it much more intuitive than Cisco's CLI for example.

All in all, I believe that Mikrotik's user interfaces are spot on. No need to change them to the new trends 'just because' others jumped in that band wagon.
 
pe1chl
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Re: user interface

Thu May 26, 2016 5:01 pm

Personally I wouldn't touch (change) Winbox. Apart from minor fixes/changes here and there, it's just awesome! It's the main reason I use Mikrotik.
WebFig... I don't really care. I've never used it. It's cumbersome and a bad port of Winbox's design to the web. If web based is your thing then sure, they could re-design the whole thing, but I don't think it's much useful anyway.
Ok to put some weight on the other end of the scale: I would not care if Winbox is dropped, I almost never used
it and I think WebFig is much better because it is platform-neutral.
I think WebFig works well and I see no need for changes to its look. The only thing I have ever missed is the
ability to modify the column selection in the table views.
 
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Thu May 26, 2016 5:22 pm

How do you convince your web browser to connect via mac address? Webfig is useless when you have winbox.
 
pe1chl
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Re:

Thu May 26, 2016 5:46 pm

How do you convince your web browser to connect via mac address? Webfig is useless when you have winbox.
I never feel the need to connect via MAC address. And I really often am out of reach of Windows boxes.
 
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Thu May 26, 2016 6:00 pm

Lucky you. You will need to one day.
 
pe1chl
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Re:

Thu May 26, 2016 7:53 pm

Lucky you. You will need to one day.
Why?
I have only one MikroTik router at home, all the others I manage are on remote locations.
Of course I am careful to keep IP accessability. When I do risky operations that may lock me out, I use Safe Mode.
I locked me out of my RB2011 one time shortly after I started using it and I recovered using the RS232 console...
 
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Re: Re:

Thu May 26, 2016 8:12 pm

I locked me out of my RB2011 one time shortly after I started using it and I recovered using the RS232 console...
All this trouble of physically connecting a serial cable to recover the router when you could have just connected via MAC or RoMON and fixed the problem in a matter of seconds :D

Sure, if you only have one router and it's right next to you, you may not mind the hassle to connect a serial cable (IF your RB model supports it that is)
But when you manage tens of routers that are on top of mountains, roofs, distant datacenters or whatever remote/inaccessible locations, Winbox MAC access and RoMON are simply a life saver!
Those tools have saved my butt from long hour trips on numerous occasions! They are two of the best features on RouterOS. Especially with the release of RoMON which makes mac connectivity available over multiple hops.

A way to go, could be to completely scrap WebFig and create a new 'user friendly' web interface, with wizards and whatnot, to cover the non-technical/inexperienced users that are used to TP-Links and Netgear style home routers.

This way the non-technical user can access the router via web (as they seem to find it super weird to use a .exe application :P ), and the advanced/professional users can access the router via the proper tools (winbox/cli/api) to do the stuff that RouterOS is meant to do ;)

I agree though that if Winbox was released as a native application for Linux and Mac would be very welcome by everyone.
 
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Re: Re:

Thu May 26, 2016 8:32 pm

I agree though that if Winbox was released as a native application for Linux and Mac would be very welcome by everyone.
Then everyone could stop Wine-ing. ;)


I think that for the most part, the UI is fantastic for those who understand network principles.

This makes sense to pilots:
DSCF7130a1.jpg
If the cockpit were replaced with a Siri button, (Fly me to Cancun, please) then more people could operate the plane, but they are limited to doing whatever the designers of the interface thought of - you can't directly make the machine do everything it could do. It's a trade-off.

In the end, I feel that having access to "all of the knobs and buttons" can lead to a much deeper understanding of networking, and Winbox is much more accessible than a command prompt on a router.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
 
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Cha0s
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Re: Re:

Thu May 26, 2016 8:42 pm

If the cockpit were replaced with a Siri button, (Fly me to Cancun, please) then more people could operate the plane, but they are limited to doing whatever the designers of the interface thought of - you can't directly make the machine do everything it could do. It's a trade-off.
++

I miss the karma buttons :)
 
pe1chl
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Re: Re:

Thu May 26, 2016 9:43 pm

I locked me out of my RB2011 one time shortly after I started using it and I recovered using the RS232 console...
All this trouble of physically connecting a serial cable to recover the router when you could have just connected via MAC or RoMON and fixed the problem in a matter of seconds :D
It took me only a few seconds to get a cisco blue cable out of the next room, connect it to a spare port on my
4-port RS232 card, and fire up minicom.
But when you manage tens of routers that are on top of mountains, roofs, distant datacenters or whatever remote/inaccessible locations, Winbox MAC access and RoMON are simply a life saver!
Those tools have saved my butt from long hour trips on numerous occasions! They are two of the best features on RouterOS. Especially with the release of RoMON which makes mac connectivity available over multiple hops.
Maybe I make less mistakes than you do? I have 30 years of hands-on experience with TCP/IP.
I will remember to look at those things when I might need them.
For now I think WebFig is very good.
A way to go, could be to completely scrap WebFig and create a new 'user friendly' web interface, with wizards and whatnot, to cover the non-technical/inexperienced users that are used to TP-Links and Netgear style home routers.
This is not what WebFig is, and I see no need to scrap it. It works fine.
 
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Re: Re:

Fri May 27, 2016 3:25 am

I agree though that if Winbox was released as a native application for Linux and Mac would be very welcome by everyone.
First step is done. Previously WinBox downloaded Windows dll files from router (so not much chance to work with anything else) and now since RouterOS 6.x it only downloads text (json) definitions. Although it does not necessarily mean there are plans for native Winbox for <other platform>. They might have done this simply because the solution with dll files wasn't exactly elegant.
 
tricksol
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Re: user interface

Tue Sep 20, 2016 8:10 pm

Winbox doesn't need to work on other platforms other than windows. On Linux/BSD we have wine and winbox works fine in wine and on the Mac they have there windows emulator I just can't think of it. I use Linux and FreeBSD + wine and winbox just about everyday.

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