Howdy all,
I've just rolled out our new AJAX-enabled theme for Virtualmin to the Red Hat-based OS repositories (I'm building the dependencies now for Debian/Ubuntu, and it'll be in place tomorrow sometime). You can get it with:
yum install wbt-thejax-themeIt depends on the perl-JSON-DWIW package, which is currently only available in our repositories for CentOS/RHEL 3, 4 and 5, as well as Fedora Core 6. Other platforms will follow. The module is a binary build, and so much be custom-built for every OS and version.
Once installed, you can use the Webmin:Webmin Configuration:Webmin Themes page to select it.
It is a quite JavaScript intensive application, so is probably not going to work on older browsers. It is known to work, however, on recent versions of Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer (holy crap, IE sucks...took me days to get everything working in IE).
This is a preview release. It is not production quality. It has the following known issues:
It's a bit slow. This is due to the loading of about 300k of JavaScript every time the content frame updates. It will be resolved by moving to a wholly AJAX update model, wherein all pages only load once and then they simply refresh portions of the page as needed. The left-hand menu already does this and is working very nicely.
It's a bit funky looking in places. Not all of Webmin is making use of the ui-lib functions, and so there are some tables that have hard-coded table borders that look stupid and no amount of styling makes it go away. This will be resolved over the next few weeks as Jamie and I clean up these old bits of code..
It works in Usermin, but it has a lot more funky looking spots in Usermin, as I haven't even begun to work those out.
The good news is that it looks really good (really, really, really good), and over the next few weeks I will be merging down several innovations introduced in this theme that make it easier for non-programmers to build themes for Webmin/Usermin/Virtualmin.
Feedback welcome, but keep the bug reports to a minimum--only report serious functionality issues, and nothing cosmetic. I know about the cosmetic issues, they will just take a while to correct. But the theme should be usable today--e.g. you could get by with only this theme if you had to (I don't recommend you give it to customers yet, though...let's just keep it between you and I for the next week or so).
Looks very nice --Great Job. Now where do you find the time to do all these amazing things you guys are doing.<br><br>Post edited by: ConRadical, at: 2007/10/10 07:32
Unfortunately, "It's a bit slow" is an understatement, at least on my system. The "Loading..." widget just spins forever in my sidebar. Eventually, the list of domains does get populated, but once I select a domain to manage, it never gives me the options above "Server Configuration". In other words, I don't have any menu options for "Edit Virtual Server", "Edit Mail and FTP Users", "Edit Mail Aliases", etc., which basically makes this theme unusable for me at the moment.
I saw that problem during development--but I'm not sure why it would strike on your system (it hits me because I have Webmin devel code that has mismatched shebang lines).
You can make this problem go away by adding this to your miniserve.conf and then restarting Webmin:
internalcgis=1
This will make Webmin use a bit more memory and a bit slower, but it will allow the function that's hanging to complete. As far as I know, this isn't supposed to occur on systems that don't have modules with different shebangs. But maybe there's something else broken. (But this is something that needs to be fixed, regardless...I fought with it for a few hours, and eventually gave up.)
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Thanks, that did fix the problem on my system.
Nice theme on Firefox, but it's a disaster under IE7...
<img src='http://vacantserver.com/images/jax-1.jpg' style='border:0px'>
<img src='http://vacantserver.com/images/jax-2.jpg' style='border:0px'>
<img src='http://vacantserver.com/images/jax-3.jpg' style='border:0px'>
<img src='http://vacantserver.com/images/jax-4.jpg' style='border:0px'>
<img src='http://vacantserver.com/images/jax-5.jpg' style='border:0px'>
so, you can eventually get it to run, but it opens links in a new window, not the right frame... see also the weirdness whereby the left window does not show certificate error, but the right one does.
Hmm...Runs fine for me here. Try forcing a reload...Webmin's theme handling confuses browsers (we'll get that resolved eventually...it's a historic aspect of the theming architecture that used to work fine, but now that JavaScript and CSS are core to everything, it leads to really weird issues).
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Oh, and certificate errors are merely because it is a self-signed cert. If you installed the certificate into IE, setup a local CA, or used a real certificate from a cert provider, the errors would go away--the opening new windows thing is I guess triggering multiple displays of the same cert warning. Maybe. I dunno exactly, as I'm seeing good behavior from my IE7 and IE6 (by some definition of "good", there are still many cosmetic issues on both IE and Firefox).
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I'll try again later today after I get the cert installed. I need to demo the VM control panel for my webmasters... after I trim down their menus.
Not to rain on the parade, but I would appreciate a search function and simple dropdown menus like the Stress Free theme. It's nice to be able to be able to quickly search for a function, or use the dropdowns instead of clicking [+] to expand all of the options, then using browser search to find the function.
<b>ConRadical wrote:</b>
<div class='quote'>Looks very nice --Great Job. Now where do you find the time to do all these amazing things you guys are doing.<br><br>Post edited by: ConRadical, at: 2007/10/10 07:32</div>Well to continue the saga... I logged out and logged back in and everything is back..
Hmmm somehow quoted the wrong post.... sorry for theconfusion.
Is it possible to add a new virtual server through theJAX theme? I can browse existing ones...
and under Add Servers I have create from batch, import, migrate. But can't find the option to just add a new one like was available in the framed theme.
I must be missing something....
FYI, I initially got a few Perl execution failure errors after enabling this theme on CentOS 5. After completely reloading the site (both frames), it appears to be working much better now. Very nice UI effects!
Thanks,
Alan
Hey Joe,
I did try it today. Seems be good but the only thing I found there is that the site list ( drop down menu ) can't load properly in Linux Ubuntu Firefox. I didn't check it in IE or Firefox in Windows. Here in Ubuntu linux it stalled on loading...
_Hamid
Quick question - is this theme still available somewhere? I am looking into possible themes usable from within Virtualmin...
Yes, of course. It's in the Virtualmin Professional repositories--it will be the default Virtualmin theme soon. I'm releasing a new version with <i>major</i> changes in the next couple of days. As I mentioned the theme is still a preview release--it is not intended for production use. I'm hoping to finish it up and get it production ready in the next few days.
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It also has some issue on Macintosh, under Safarin 3.0, on OS X 10.5, Leopard.
I really like this theme as it makes excellent use of screen real estate, however it just sits there trying to load the domain names into the drop down select box for me. So I cannot select a virtual server.
Earlier Joe mentioned the size of the ajax script and I wondered if Joe has looked at the MooTools Javascript Framework? Its about 40-45k compressed depending on features. Awesome framework....Joomla is using it in their new version 1.5. You could easily spice up the themes with the library with animated drawers etc. All cross browser compat too. It has ajax as well. (mootools.net)
-Steve
Hey Steve,
I'm pretty well committed to ExtJS. The widget selection is astonishingly good--it has its flaws, but the end results is wonderful. I'm within a day or so of another release of this theme, and it's got a lot of improvements...performance is no longer an issue. The JavaScript is only loaded once in the new version...that was actually a really easy problem to solve, I just didn't know how at the time I rolled up the preview version.
I have looked at all of the other frameworks, and I think some astonishingly good work is being done in several of them. My favorite of the other options out there is jQuery. I've met John Resig a few times at Y Combinator events, and he's just such an incredibly smart guy. The good news is that if we find we want to make use of jQuery for selectors and such, ExtJS widgets can back up to jQuery seamlessly. It's a really nice compromise.
Anyway, it was just a preview release. ;-)
As for the bug you're seeing, it might be the same one Alan saw earlier--edit the miniserv.conf and turn off internalcgis (or whatever it was I said do in that earlier discussion). It's bug-like, but I haven't figured out how to fix it yet.
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Any way to get a copy that doesn't require YUM? FreeBSD and all.
(Translation: I'm a troublemaker.)
UNpossible. ;-)
I don't have that version handy anywhere any more to package it up. I'm nearly there on a working new version, so you'll have to wait a couple more days for a .wbm version. (As I mentioned, the previous release was not ready for prime-time anyway--it's just something fun to play with, and see where things are going.)
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I like the look and feel. When making the change I did get the perl errors. Reloaded and they went away. But, most of my options are gone now. Most of the Server links are gone, the only link under Webmin is Change Language and Theme... What can I do to recover?
will the new ajax theme be available for virtualmin gpl?
<div class='quote'>will the new ajax theme be available for virtualmin gpl?</div>
Not immediately. But it is in the plans for a few months down the road.
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Tried to install this and got a error.
# urpmi wbt-thejax-theme
http://82842:xxxx@software.virtualmin.com/universal/./wbt-thejax-theme-0...
installing wbt-thejax-theme-0.1-1.noarch.rpm from /var/cache/urpmi/rpms
Installation failed:
perl(JSON::DWIW) is needed by wbt-thejax-theme-0.1-1.noarch
FWIW, this may not be the "right" way to fix this...you've been warned:
perl -MCPAN -e shell;
install JSON::DWIW
exit
Of course it isn't -- never the less Joe/Jamie needs to add this package to the mandriva repo because Mandriva does no supply this perl package in any distro release and thus will cause urpmi to fail everytime.
Hey Scott,
As mentioned, this was a preview release. Not for production use...just for playing with. Not all platforms were supported (only a few of the Red Hat/Fedora platforms, actually).
The next revision converts to using JSON::XS, because it is more widely available. Any platform that doesn't have it, I will provide a package for. But only when the theme is an official part of Virtualmin. Right now, it's just a funny looking toy. ;-)
You're not missing anything--you wouldn't want to use it full-time anyway. I'd just had a few people asking to see what it was all about, and so I dropped it into the repository. The new version, which will work on all supported platforms, is coming in a few days.
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4 years later ...
I can still see the default webmin theme and also virtualmin are not touched !
Virtualmin is bloody brilliant and highly flexible , configurable, It just need an easy to use theme like cPanel, Directadmin , Websitepanel, plesk, ...
Believe me.
I can still see the default webmin theme and also virtualmin are not touched !
That's not strictly accurate. There have been a number of incremental changes in that time. Nothing as dramatic as this project was attempting to achieve, but there have definitely been changes.
But, I am still tinkering with AJAX libraries. It just turned out to be impossible to use ExtJS without overhauling all of Webmin to fit its conventions (which is not feasible with a three man team, even in four years). jQueryUI looks pretty promising, as does Kendo UI.
Also, we're not web designers, and we always welcome contributions. ;-)
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I myself consider to design a none-framed highly user friendly like theme for virtualmin someday in future. But first Ineed some perl skills I think, also a non-java based file manager is needed for webmin.
Yes, This'll be done in future because is needed , maybe by me or another person.
http://www.cpskins.com/
Since I currently have nothing running that this theme runs on, can you share a couple screen shots? Or someone?
This was an old topic, the theme seems to be discountinued !