Re: monit display/servlet question

[Martin Pala]

Jan-Henrik Haukeland wrote:
> On 30. nov. 2006, at 00.24, Ashley Graham wrote:
>
> > http://smarterfish.com/etc/mockups/monit.htm
>
>
> Interesting. What do others think?
>
> My thoughts
>
> a) Yes I'm not a designer, but isn't this a rather bleak design? I  miss 
> colors and eye candy :) I also miss visual cues such as pajamas  strips 
> to make it easier to read e.g. lists.
>
> b) I also miss status color codes in the overview list so users with  
> glance can see services that have problems such as in http:// 
> www.tildeslash.com/monit/doc/shoots/monit_httpd.gif
>
> c) What is the rationale for putting everything on one page? It is an  
> interesting idea and I like it, not only because we can compete with  
> the http://worlds-highest-website.com/ but because it is simpler to  
> implement and may be faster to browse.

I think it is good to keep the simple overview on the first page and 
expand the details when needed (on demand).

When we will put everything on the one page, the user will need to watch 
many uninteresting details and scroll to find the problems. When there 
are just few services then it could work, but there are also users which 
watch tens or hundreds of services in one monit instance, and single 
page design may make their life harder.

There is also example in the case of monit CLI ... formerly monit has 
just 'monit status', which looks similar to the mockup. Lot of users 
were also calling for simple CLI overview which lead to the 
implementation of 'monit summary'.

Another problem could be to view such page via mobile phone ... it is 
good to see as few informations as possible to find the target of 
interest quickly.

I think it is also useful to group the services according to the service 
type like current GUI does.

Martin