cPanel 96 and Glass Style default for new accounts

[andrewmoras]

Hey,

I just got our dev box upgraded to cPanel 96 and noticed that "Glass" Style is enabled by default and the interface for newly created accounts looks like in the attached image:


Any idea why this happens and WHY are we being forced into this new and counter intuitive interface?

I know, we can change it back to Basic or Dark by selecting it in WHM > Home > cPanel > Customization > Customization Style > Basic > Click on "Set as Default" for Basic.

Why is cPanel forcing (again, just like the "Welcome screen") a new feature instead of introducing it as "optional" and not enabled by default for new accounts?

Thanks,

Andrew

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! I don't know if I'd go straight to counterintuitive, as it's mostly just Paper Lantern without the icons. All the details I have about that would be here:

Introducing Glass: A New Style For Paper Lantern | cPanel Blog

Learn all about the new cPanel theme, Glass - a new look for Paper Lantern.

blog.cpanel.com

I'm happy to pass along any feedback to our developers though :D

 

[andrewmoras]

Hey there! I don't know if I'd go straight to counterintuitive, as it's mostly just Paper Lantern without the icons. All the details I have about that would be here:

Introducing Glass: A New Style For Paper Lantern | cPanel Blog

Learn all about the new cPanel theme, Glass - a new look for Paper Lantern.

blog.cpanel.com

I'm happy to pass along any feedback to our developers though :D

Hey @cPRex ! You're right, the information was out there, however what's annoying is that it's being pushed as default without being asked just like lots of "new features" (see WP Toolkit, the Welcome screen) lately. Imagine that as a hoster you would create videos and tutorials to instruct your customers on how to do certain things and now you'd have to redo everything because cPanel decided it's better for our customers I know, it can be changed back (which I've already did) but this stuff needs to be planned a bit better and not just pushed as default. Why not do it like all the other new features that were presented in the WHM Feature Showcase - Enable it Y/N so that people take a decision on their own.

 

[cPRex]

Thanks for that writeup :D I've passed this along to our User Experience team.

 

[ffeingol]

I'll second that the theme is very counter-intuitive. We spend way too much time on the phone/support tickets saying 'look for the blah icon' because no one reads the words. I "think" our clients are going to hate a theme with no icons, but we'll certainly test and provide feedback where we can.

I totally agree that all new "features" should be in the feature showcase and let us decide.

 

[DesFire]

How can we switch back to the old theme by default on WHM for new accounts and revert for existings? Who really thought this theme was a good idea? It takes AGES to find something WITHOUT icons. You have to read everything instead of just looking for the desired icon.

 

[cPRex]

@DesFire - sure! You can do that from WHM >> Customization and from the "Customize Style" tab you can choose the default for your server.

 

[123Host]

I'll add my voice to the opinion that Glass is couter intuitive.

There have been UI studies over the years (e.g. Icon Usability) that show icons are easily recognisable at a glance but each text-only item has to be read.

 

[PatrickVeenstra]

The filter doesn't work. That's way worse than not having icons.

 

[cPRex]

@PatrickVeenstra - can you let me know specifically what filter you're seeing not working?

 

[perplex]

The new cPanel Glass style which is to be forced upon existing users of the classic Retro theme is simply awful. Let's firstly imagine the cockpit of an plane, its instrumentation and navigation is laid out in a way that's visually identifiable at a glance allowing swift location, operation and control over the aircraft. If for one moment switching dial and screen instrumentation to be replaced with pure dialog representation and the replacement of colour with a monochrome pallet allowed a pilot a more secure and responsive way of controlling the aircraft, well.. I implore the cPanel team to reconsider the imposition of the Glass theme and to retain the far superior Retro legacy one. As far as I can tell Retro is the most popular cPanel theme used across the web. Just my two cents!

 

[sahostking]

My customers hate it. I decided to search our ticket database for customers complaining and so far found a few on a server we just upgraded this weekend. So defintely seems like it somehow switched.

 

[sahostking]

ran this and it fixed it all up on all our servers:

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/modify_accounts --theme=paper_lantern --all-users --style=basic

 

[zoannon]

I don't like posting negative comments however as this is causing a lot of grief for my clients and therefore me- I have to say I agree with them that the Glass theme is awful - it looks like the page hasn't loaded fully.

 

[Fabio Esparza]

This new feature without the icons is indeed extremely hard to read and find anything. We know the UX design is heading towards minimalist, but this took it way too far. Visual enhancements to quickly find things in a panel will always need icons.

 

[clopezi]

One more user here who thinks that the template without icons it's ugly and difficult to use. Would be more easy to use (please, don't do it) without text than without icons. In first place, I thought that the page was not fully loaded.

I like the global aesthetic, but please make and option to have icons with this style.

Thanks!

 

[cPJustinD]

Hello! I am sorry to hear about the issues users have been reporting with the Glass theme, although we greatly appreciate your feedback. If you have any ideas or suggestions for improving the Glass theme, please submit a feature request using the "Submit a Feature Request" link in my signature below.

In. the meantime, you should be able to change the theme for users using the following command:

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/modify_accounts --theme=paper_lantern --all-users --style=basic

 

[4u123]

I totally agree with the comments here. Another brain dead decision by cpanel to cause grief to our customers. It should be obvious to anyone attempting to use cpanel with the new style having previously used the "basic" style that everything is now much more difficult to find. That would be ok if it was a choice to use this style but for some ridiculous reason cpanel have decided to mess with the continuity of our systems, forcing some users to effectively "lose their icons", causing complaints from our customers - yet again.

Will you ever learn?

Its also a huge annoyance to be forced to login to each server individually, run the above mentioned command and then also set the default back again in WHM! Thats half an hour I won't get back. Cheers!