Paper Lantern Feedback

[Neso]

Can anybody tell me what is this with latest paper lantern, for me this is big mess:

- On almost any screen you have big blank space on right !!!
- Sidebar is for me really stupid, you now need to just click more to see same information like before
- Same for notifications, why news are hidden, users again need to click more and in most cases large amount will not even click to see it, basically providers can not advertise now etc.

This look like doing all in wrong way after really nice style of paper lantern in 11.52+, at least you could keep 11.52 style (similar like for RETRO style) as I can tell large amount of people will not like this.

It look like bomb exploded and messed all, I really do not write much but this mess with theme is forced me

 

[Infopro]

Not sure if you've seen this thread so linking you:
It's time to say goodbye to X3

I think Paper Lantern on my mobile device looks great! I do see a few issues but I'm sure they'll be ironed out.

Comments like:
"It look like a bomb exploded and messed all"

...are not very useful to those who want to hear your feedback I don't think.

Here are a few from me:

- Notification icons in header, jump off header in mobile device (iPhone 5S) portrait mode.
- Opening side menu does not resize main sections on cPanel Home, so side menu overlaps.
- Red message notification, alerting me to a News item I have posted does not go away after reading that News item.

 

[Neso]

Yes, I did see that, also forcing this UI just becuse of mobile/tablets is not OK, cPanel is not facebook ...

What was wrong with older paper lantern, it was really nice, cleare, easy etc.

Also regarding "bomb" part comment I think I have right to add some personal fealing in same way like cPanel done this not useful change.

 

[Infopro]

You can add it, but it's of no value to your feelings on the new changes.

cPanel isn't facebook, I agree. Still, cPanel is being used by a whole lot of people:
cPanel Year-End Recap

I've modified this thread's title in the hopes that others will post some feedback as well.

 

[razrdj]

I've installed cPanel 54 and i really like the new features. The only thing i don't like is the position of the feature container in the new Paper Latern.

In the previous version of Paper Latern the container was positioned to the center of the screen.

Now the features are more positioned to the left next to the buttons "Home, Dashboard, ..." which is awfull for the eyes (in my opinion). Especially when you have a wide screen.

I really like it when its centered. I uploaded 2 files as attachment (cpanel_orig = original state and cpanel_center is what i mean)

What do you guys think?

 

[cPanelAdamF]

We've had a couple of people bring up similar concerns. During development, we didn't allow the content area to run the full width of the interface due to concerns about readability of text (line length being too long). I've had a couple of people suggest that the area to the right should be used for 'quick glance' stats.

Over time, the 'sea of icons' interface that we're talking about will become the 'Advanced' view and we'll be focusing our development on the dashboard.

 

[Legin76]

I've got a few issues with the new version of Paper Lantern.

Firstly a couple of bugs

1. If you look at the screen shot below taken on my iPhone 5s.
   The account, notification and log out buttons have wrapped below the header. For obvious reasons this needs sorting.
   
   
   
   
2. Database space.. If you look at the bottom of the below screen shot you will see the database usage. There is no limit set on the account for the database usage, I'm not sure you can set a space limit for it, but there appears to be a limit of 381.5TB. I'm pretty sure that my server only has about 150gb of empty space on it. It appears that it's showing the space left on the account that could be used by the database but is showing MB as TB.
   
   

My Issues

On the previous version of Paper Lantern. It had a mini dashboard on the left similar to x3. This was very useful and you could see the relevant information in a glance.

It appears that it's been redesigned with phones and possibly tablets in mind but not on larger screens. On larger screens there is a huge amount of white space, that can be used to make it more efficient to use the site. Especially now everything is a little bigger and means more scrolling than before.

It would be much better if the mini dashboard was there for the larger screens, even if clicking on view more takes you to the dashboard page. I'd even go so far as to say having a small version of the dashboard at the top on mobiles with just the main domain, home directory, disk usage, bandwidth and email accounts used would be very useful.

I realise that some of the changes will be to reduce scrolling now that more scrolling is needed, but it's better for users to see this information when they first log in at a glance. A quick flick of the thumb is far easier than to get to the content below than to have to make multiple clicks.

To improve the usability you could add either the quick links at the top and / or anchor links down to the various sections.

 

[Infopro]

1) Agreed.
2) Agreed. Looking at one of my servers it shows I have 0/32.72 PB

On larger screens there is a huge amount of white space, that can be used to make it more efficient to use the site.

Agreed, and mentioned here a few times recently. I've just merged one of those threads into this one. You should see the posts above yours.

 

[Legin76]

32.72 PB is very impressive.

I'm not sure that database space bit is needed as it might give the impression that there is additional space for databases on top of website space. Unless this is the case it would be better just to list the number of databases used as previously.

 

[bottswana]

Just created an account just to provide feedback on this new theme update. I an not a great fan of it as it has taken away some of the things I liked about paper lantern.

I did prefer the restricted width and dont see what full width adds to the theme, but this is more personal than functional, so I can live with that one.
All the statistic information is now hidden on another tab, this is no good. I liked being able to see at a glance all the statistics on login, this needs to make its way back on to the main screen. There is no need for a tab on desktop.

Personally, I would be completely happy with the changes if the sidebar from the original paper lantern made its way back in the blank space on the right in the next update. I really think that critical information should be back on the main screen, since that's its purpose, overview.

 

[cPanelAdamF]

regarding the file-size being reported in peta-bytes, we've got an internal case for it: CPANEL-3884.

 

[cPanelAdamF]

I understand the concerns about the move of account statistics to a separate page from the main interface. This is indeed important information and I knew that the move was going to cause consternation.

The overarching vision behind the changes in v54 extend beyond what we were able to deliver in v54, so I apologize if things feel a bit work-in-progress about this version. I do owe everyone an explanation for where everything is going with these major changes to the interface.

Home -
Commonly called 'the sea of icons' internally, this page lists ALL features of the cPanel interface grouped semantically. There's a search filter box at the top so that end-users can refine the list. They can also re-arrange each group of icons to their liking.

We are envisioning this interface being relegated to the 'Advanced' view. It will always list every available feature of the end-user's cPanel account, however we hear from a large swath of end-users that this interface does nothing to assist them in identifying what is actually required to publish something.


Statistics - This interface shows quota usage and general account and server information. The information here was previously found in a sidebar in older versions of cPanel. I would see this page growing and changing over time all heading in the direction of analytics about how the end-user's content is doing. Unique Visitors, page views, impressions, anything else the end-user would find useful to know that their work is performing well out in the real world.

I foresee the quota information moving out onto the Dashboard.

Dashboard - This is the newest addition to the cPanel interface. It consists of groups of arbitrary content as well as the new home for the Quick Links previously found at the top of the Paper Lantern interface. This page will continue to grow and become more and more useful the more things are added to it. Additionally we are going to be releasing updates to our SDK so that you can inject your own widgets here as well.

This interface will eventually become the main interface of the cPanel account...not the Home 'sea of icons' page. Currently the Dashboard isn't quite good enough for us to up and make this change in v54 so we hesitated to do that. This is decision was likely the source of the complaints we're hearing about the quota information NOT being on the main page of cPanel.

User Manager - A tool which provides the means to delegate access to your cPanel account to other people. The team working on this new feature envisions an easy way for teams of people to work on the same account. Another product owner can speak better to the vision for this particular feature.

 

[delia]

As I am a desktop user (I run a real business with offices and everything and yes I own an iPhone as well) but guys if I"m doing business I'm looking at my large monitor with the dang icons spread across too much space, I can no longer see at a glance the kind of things I"m logging into look at - the stats have to be brought back into view. Trying to read the stats panel at 100% means I have an incredibly hard time finding what I'm looking for. Of course all my branding is gone and I either start all over again with a much more difficult way to brand and I don't have hours to devote to this. I understand the desire for responsive but when it is not a client facing site and is only something I or site owners will ever see, responsive is simply not necessary. As always I prefer two looks - one if you want mobile or responsive and one if you want to actually be able to see the site. This is not just your problem but internet wide as the rush to responsive has overtaken all common sense. Google does not drive users/visitors needs and a responsive site can be made to benefit both desktop and mobile - it just takes some thought and NO RELIANCE on the foundation and such like generators.

I need something I can use and paper lantern absolutely does not fill that need. Even though x3 is not totally deprecated once I upgraded to 54, most of the time it doesn't look right any longer. I'm stuck with crappy looking (and yes, I do not like the dark, gloomy look of paper lantern) interface that I can't do anything about without relearning a much more difficult wheel. With the kind of control I'm used to looking at in cPanel branding, this is not just an irritation but a problem for a business owner who does her darnedest to provide usable interfaces for her clients who are not just hosting but web design and development clients as well.

You need to rethink this.

 

[>M<]

agreed the new theme is not as appealing and seems very unfriendly for users, unsure why it was altered or changed, just seems silly.

just doesn't look professional for me at all =-/



Clients have also been slightly "moaning" about it =-/

 

[IndicHosts.net]

Client want lighter color variants for desktops

 

[kualo]

I think that such a drastic change should absolutely have been introduced as a theme 'option' so that you could solicit feedback from your customers, or at least allow a way for people to disable it.

I understand that there is a desire to move away from the sea of icons, and I agree that this is necessary. But introduce this change when you have the final solution, the dashboard view is nowhere near useful at this stage and it shouldn't have made the final cut.

Designing for 100% widths so that it looks good on large format devices is not an easy task. It lends itself best to sites with large images/photos, and not very well to a control panel where usability is key.

On a large screen, what was a nice compact view of your cPanel icons is now either a curious left alignment with tons of wasted white space. If you adjust the icon area to be 100% width, you end up with very spread out icons that are much harder to navigate than when they were more compact. There is no added benefit here and many features that were once available at a glance, such as the notifications and stats, are no longer visible without an additional click. Keep those features on the desktop, hide them on tablets and mobiles. This modification feels like a mobile device implementation that shouldn't exist on desktop.

We were extremely happy with the fact that cPanel moved to Bootstrap, as I imagine many hosts were. The look and feel allowed us to essentially match the look and feel of cPanel almost exactly to the look and feel of our own web site. Most bootstrap designs do not use 100% width (as stated, its a hard thing to design "well" for).

Please reconsider this design and/or allow us the option to return to the previous version.

Simplified dashboard with fewer icons will be great! We'd love this, but we'd love it when it's seen a few more iterations, not the state its in now.

Please, allow us a way to return to a fixed container width view, with stats and notifications displayed without additional clicks, and lets have a way of better consulting on any future drastic design changes. This modification severely affected how our customisation of paper lantern looked.

Thank you.

 

[Rootz]

I really dislike the new theme and so are my customers. Can we please have the option to roll back to the previous theme.

Switching the theme with that off a difference in layout causes a lot of problems for me.

I spend a lot of money on demo's and tutorials and i recently put the paper lanterns in for my customers. There useless now as it all looks different.

Sorry but there should be a version for the old style.

 

[3awh]

I fully agree with everyone here the new theme looks very unprofessional and I would like the old theme x3 to be restored and kept.

 

[garconcn]

I was looking forward to change all server to paper lantern, but I am hesitate with the new change in 54. I want the retro style back.

 

[kualo]

We have managed to add our own CSS modifications to tame it, stop it being full width and remove the side bar. It's a major hack though as we're overriding the fluid bootstrap containers and re-applying the regular container classes.

This is the look we would like from Paper Lantern, ideally hackless.

screenshots.kgix.net/193W0p3k0Z1z/Image%202016-02-04%20at%207.20.45%20p.m..png

I'm just concerned that future changes will potentially cause further problems.