>Our primary focus for the UI design for 3.0 was ease of use, since that >was a major problem in the 2.0.x UI. In particular, we didn't want to >overload/overwhelm a new user with a ton of options when they load the UI.
As mentioned on the UIX document on confluence, since the goal is to make it something that can be managed from a tablet the sliding panels are fine. The general complaint isn't that the sliding panels aren't good but that to get to the information we use on a day-to-day basis it takes too many clicks. Maybe a better approach is to collect from the complaints in this thread the common operations and make _those operations_ more easily accessible and in fewer clicks. For example, I understand why virtual routers are buried 8 levels deep, but in v2 they were listed under system VMs. Perhaps a link from within system VMs that takes you directly to them? >We've thought of adding more toolbar 'quick links' or possibly keyboard >shortcuts for frequent users to access their commonly-used functionality. >Ideally these could be customizable and stored in user preferences. Any >other ideas? I think this is probably a good universal problem-solver for the number of clicks. Some kind of a 'quick links' or 'favorites' section where you can simply add the page you're looking at to the favorites section to make it easier to navigate. Not related to the previous points, having the ability to sort on a column would be great too. It was a suggestion from one of our users that I didn't even think about but when the instances are listed on the page they're in no particular order that they can see and the ability to sort by name, zone, state, etc would be nice. I know there's a filter, but maybe I want to see all and just sort them differently. Onto the UIX specifics... Sliding Nav: I think it's fine as long as it was extended out when you first login or do something to bring attention to the small "+" in the upper-left corner (it took me a bit before I noticed it and users aren't always as kind/patient). Filterable search: I'm afraid I just don't understand the point of this. So it would create this collapsed list after I search/filter for some value. And clicking on the "show more" would show all records again? What's wrong with the current way of filtering with the drop-down picklist? Flip dashboard: In terms of functionality it's nice, and the ability to add/remove widgets from the page will make it a very good red light/green light way of viewing things. And the flip looks cool :). And assuming that each widget can be clicked on to drill down into that specific item, this would be particularly good for tablet users.
