The subject says it all. I see Webmin in the upper left and a black blob with some very faint writing next to it that apparently says Virtualmin but it’s unreadable until you click on it, then Webmin becomes unreadable. I don’t much like the arcs. Progress bars are much better. On the left column, blue background with faded white letters are not real easy to read.
The fonts on pages like “Bootup and Shutdown” are very small and difficult to read. Overall the fonts sizes are just barely readable.
A function I use quite a bit “System Information” has disappeared.
It may be more attractive to some, but its usability quotient is quite low.
I know I’m supposed to say two good things followed by one bad. I can’t find anything I like about it. The old one is clear, clean and very usable.
Just my 2 cents,
Jim.
There are certainly some valid concerns about low contrast in some sections of the UI. I’ve discussed such issues with Ilia, and we’ll be upping the contrast a bit in upcoming releases. The Webmin/Virtualmin tabs definitely fall prey to that.
That said, it is possible to choose different color schemes now, which can already improve contrast. If you click on the little gears icon at the bottom of the left-hand menu, it’ll take you to a theme settings page for Authentic theme. There you can choose from a variety of color schemes in the “Navigation Menu Color” option. Admittedly most of those exhibit the same problem…which we’ll work on, as it is an accessibility issue. At the very least a new “High Contrast” color scheme will be added soon.
System Information is still there, it’s the little “i” icon in the same part of the left hand menu at the bottom.
I got your point. I will add new theme upon next release - light background and black text, it will be very contrast. I will also make possible to invert colors of the left menu, which will provide a great amount of options to choose from.
Meanwhile, could you please use you phone or other camera to take a picture of your screen? You shouldn’t take the screenshot as I will not be able to see how you see it (it’s more the way GPU sees the page)… I just would like to know how bad is this, as I never encountered such bad visibility on my monitors.
I ran into some trouble with themes a year ago. May I suggest posting some screen shots of what the various themes should look like on the virtualmin documentation page?
I don’t think that’s the case… the original framed theme has been around for a very long time and the kinks were ironed out quickly in contrast to the Authenic theme which is so complicated since it uses HTML5 that doing anything becomes a challenge as opposed to straight html code.
I personally don’t see the hype HTML5 has gotten and I certainly do not see the benefits using it. JavaScript is more reliable and faster compared to HTML5.
Then use the theme you like. Your not forced to use Authentic are you. Ilia has giving so much time to his theme. Show some kindness and respect. If it’s not perfected yet, neither is it default
Respect to where respect is due. Try one of the older themes, see how you like them, it’s all about progression.
Also feel free to donate to the Webmin / VM team for your wonderful framed theme that you like so much.
@AverageGuy Jim, alright. Version 17.50 will have quite contrast left menu theme and will look in colors more like the one you got used to have in the old theme - black fonts on the light background.
Like I mentioned before, in theme’s settings there will be additional switch to fully invert all theme’s colors for navigation menu. It will literally double the amount of colors/themes for navigation menu. Some will look good and some will look strange… but you never know… there will be someone who’s gonna like what I don’t…
About System Information link in navigation menu, well Joe already mentioned that it’s in [I] button, in the same row where the red log-out button is. But I must say, that you can get back the old way of displaying System Information link in navigation menu by going to Webmin->Webmin Configuration->Webmin Themes and there search for Show system information link as button and switch it to No. Click save at the bottom of the page and there you go, it will be displayed the old way.
You could increase the font’s size by clicking Ctrl + + in your browser - it will be saved for the current tab and work on all Webmin/Virtualmin pages.
For the best performance I’d recommend to use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser. (latest builds)
I think it’s fair to complain if AverageGuy can’t read it! We can’t all have super bright monitors or perfect eyesight.
We take accessibility seriously, even if we don’t always know there are problems until someone complains. So, we welcome complaints about usability.
But, we’re happy the vast majority of people love the new theme! We love what Ilia’s done, and hope most folks will love it, too. The old theme will remain around for a while; I doubt we will break compatibility with old themes in dramatic ways for many months to come, and we will likely be able to update the old framed theme to keep it functional until we really break things by refactoring the UI lib. But, once the UI lib has been refactored, building new themes will be a much smaller endeavor, so we’re hoping the trade off from killing a couple of decent themes will be that it allows a bunch of new themes to bloom. We’ll even fund some additional theme development if we have money in the bank for it, and I’ll pick up my old Bootstrap theme work again (most of my frustrations were things that require a new UI lib in Webmin and some widespread code changes to be reasonable to implement).
It had kinks, it’s just had a lot longer to work out the kinks.
But, Authentic is definitely more code and more complex than any theme we’ve ever shipped. I find it intimidating, too. But, it’s definitely better for most users and most use cases. We’ll keep framed theme around for a good while. The breaking change will be when we branch Webmin 2.0 (later this year), which will ship with a new ui-lib and some non-backward compatible changes. But, because theming will get easier, we’re hoping it will result in a large number of new themes to choose from. Some simple and very stripped down like framed theme, and some rich and complex like Authentic.
In the meantime, hopefully folks will keep reporting problems when they find them. Readability is important, so we’re happy to make a high contrast theme available. Bugs are also important, and I hope you’ve noted how responsive Ilia has been about bug reports. He usually fixes them and rolls a new release within a few days of reports coming in. We think that’s awesome, and it’s a big part of why we were ready to commit to it being the default theme going forward!
Version 17.50 will have new, very contrast left menu theme, I called it White. Besides, I have enrolled controls for brightness, contrast, hue and more - it will literally provide you with hundreds, if not thousand of possible left menu color variations. Just click the cog next to the select in theme settings. Content page will also have control but not that extensive (because of the current limitations)
The new update should roll out by my tomorrow night (My +0300) (USA ~ 21 Jan around the noon.). I’m doing final testing as it was so much changes/improvements…and when it’s done, I will push the update.
Check for updates… and I hope you will like it this time.
Joe, I’m looking forward for Webmin 2.0 and to provide complete support for it with Authentic Theme.
I did try the Authentic theme even though it looks visually more pleasing than the old Virtual frame theme. I went back to using the old virtual frame theme for it seems quicker. It occasionally hangs while it loads the graphical circular view of current server resource usage. And yes I have donated in support of the Authentic theme to show my appreciation to Ilia’s hard work. I also have 6 Virtualmin pro licenses.
looks nice just doesn’t work. And when I try to switch themes it doesn’t work either. I’m stuck with authentic and it’s really causing me problems.
Sorted it finally. Changing the theme didn’t work. But I clicked some other link about language and I saw a theme option in there. Changing that worked. Now I’m back on framed I can’t find the option but no worries, at least I can get back to work. Will check out authentic some time in the future.
Can you be more specific about what doesn’t work? And, which browser and browser version you are using it on?
As for switching themes…because Authentic replaces so much of the UI, after changing themes you’ll need to reload the page in your browser a couple of times in order to flush the caches and get the UI to fully switch back. This is sort of a side effect of the frames and the differences between the old theme and the new. Once we get onto a new UI-lib, switching themes will behave a little more nicely.
There are some areas where old theme is faster, particularly over slow network links and on lower capability clients. It’s just a much simpler UI with a lot less data being loaded.
Some of that will go away when we are able to switch completely to a single page app design (more can be cached and shared across pages once we don’t reload the whole page). And, there are some areas where Authentic is actually faster, or can do things in the background that require a reload on the old theme. So, it’s a fair trade for most users in most situations, but we’ll keep working on making it faster over slower networks and on slow clients.
I’ve switched theme to give it a try after the new 5 update . It seems promising but same issues as the others . For now , it’s slower on my server than framed theme . Also , in editing csf file , you see “” character everywhere showing up instead of blank . In Firefox , you see weird characters in the tab name . The most annoying issue was when loading the page command shell or the page linux firewall for example .The script unauthenticated/js/package.min.js was not responding and you have to end it to load the page . It was reproduced with both Firefox and Chrome on fedora ( 21 , 22 ) and Windows 7 pro .
So I decided to switch back to the framed theme and as with jamin it was not possible even with refreshing the page . I managed by editing in webmin the files miniserv.conf ( preroot_root=virtual-framed-theme ) and config (theme_root=virtual-framed-theme) .
I am sure this theme will have more and more success but for now I prefer to stay with the framed theme . As I have to change os on my server , I will give it a new try later . I’ve just wanted to let you know issues that comes to me with this theme .
Command Shell module and Firewall are working fine without issue for me on all installations/browsers. Provide the video-screencast with opened console please to tell more about your issue.
