Re: [webmin-l] Ramblings after reviewing the pole (poll / survey)

[Paul C. <pcu...@op...>]

John Hinton wrote:

> I've been using Webmin for about 2 years now. I for the most part love 
> it. I find Jamie's Managing Linux System with Webmin to be one of the 
> best resouce books on my shelf. His terse explanations of any particular 
> program, before going into how it interacts with the module has helped 
> me "quickly" learn about 'new to me' applications. (Jamie.. maybe you 
> should cut these sections out and create a 'Pocket Guide to Linux'! I 
> don't need no more stinkin' 1500 page Linux manuals!) :) I must contest 
> the 'Webmin' book stinks comment and this must be from someone with no 
> grasp of Linux.. and the frustration is being dumped to Webmin.
> 
> I do however feel that Webmin and Virtualmin are geek tools for only 
> geeks. Stick an end user in there and you'll have a mess to clean up. I 
> have some pretty good end users, not Linux people, and none have the 
> ability to safely deal with this interface. I'm not complaining about 
> that, I simply no longer allow access to Webmin by any of our users.
> 
> One of the things I like the most about Webmin, is the very fact that it 
> 'is' geeky. Don't force automation on me.. If I wanted automation I 
> would just put in Windows servers. 

It's the trade off between complexity and ease-of-use.  Slowly, over the 
years, designers are learning more about the issues.  Also, conventions 
are solving some of the problems.  Each domain needs its own "language', 
common idioms that evolve.  Word processors were geeky and we now use a 
language around that area and they are orders of magnitude easier to 
use.  Graphics programs are also getting there.  I recommend Jef 
Raskin's book "The Humane Interface" as one of the best reads in this area.

At OC and Curly Bracket Software, the aim is to first make sure that the 
product is doing the right job and then, to figure out the best way to 
do the job.  Good specs and design principles are the necessary part but 
not sufficient in getting a product right.  The sufficient part is 
understanding user experience and collecting feedback.  I visited 
Oracle's usability lab and learned a lot (including how to have tech 
ency :-) ).

The elephant in the room is, do we intend to "dumb down" Webmin i.e. 
make in windoze like?  I don't think so!

BTW, something upward from 500 million people are using windoze, so m$ 
is doing something right.

> I have never seen as a for instance, 
> a single GUI that I liked for dealing with bind. I personally believe 
> that if you are going to run bind and manage domains, you really need to 
> get a good grip on it. I personally use a template to create my bind 
> records in Webmin and always edit changes by hand... That's just me.. 
> but what I'm getting at here, is Webmin gives me the ability to do that 
> and in a lot of different areas. More automation, would just 'dumb it 
> down' to the average Windows GUI which rarely gives the end user the 
> ability to really understand what is going on and what is really being 
> written to the system.

Help and pull-down panels of the right choices might be an aid.  (Might 
not!)

> So, please leave Webmin and Virtualmin geeky! Yeah, perhaps more in the 
> way of help on every page of each module would be helpful, if not for 
> any other reason than to explain what this 'three word button' really 
> does. Sometimes it is just a case of guessing the meaning, testing what 
> happens to make sure what you think it means is really what it means. A 
> quick for instance is 'Custom Fields' in Virtualmin. I must have missed 
> the introduction to this on the list, I might have some good uses for 
> it, but don't really know what I could do with it based on the 
> information within Virtualmin. Please, don't take this as a request for 
> an explanation due to this email... just one of those nice pop-up help 
> files would go a long way in a lot of places.

That's why I want a usability lab of some sort.  Maybe we need a kind of 
experimental release program to try ideas like the above.

> Webmin has come a LONG ways in the last two years. At the same time, it 
> has slowly gotten more complex. Many of my requests have been added and 
> I've seen many others. I do hope that it doesn't get to the point where 
> it's trying to do too much.

Many of my suggestions (from my days as an analyst at Dataquest) ended 
up in m$ wurd.  I don't know if I should say, "I'm proud!" or "Guilty!" 
:-)  I do think that navigation and finding what's needed are real 
issues in anything that has 105 standard modules and another 225 or so 
add-in modules.

> Just as I started out... I for the most part love it! Some of the things 
> that it does have such extreme intelligence that I'm amazed! Webmin has 
> also 'taught me' how to do many things that I could have spent hours or 
> days learning and has taught me how to do some things using better 
> methods. It really is fantastic.
> 
> Not long after I started using the Webmin systems, a rather quick review 
> of Usermin left me with the feeling that this was more for an ISP and 
> less for a Hosting provider. It looked to me like Virtualmin and a few 
> of the Webmin modules left turned on for a user was sort of redundant 
> vs. Usermin. And it sort of is. However, back to the above statement, 
> Webmin is geeky and needs to stay geeky and 'my' users shouldn't be 
> allowed in there. Something sparked me to take another look at Usermin 
> the other day and what I found was rewarding... but not without concerns.
> 
> I had yet another user wanting to do an auto-reply... simple enough.. 
> And these requests get really annoying after on again - off again - 
> change my message mundane work. From Virtualmin the task is really 
> geeky, go write a file, upload it to the server, call it from 
> Virtualmin... heck, a lot of our users don't know how to FTP and rely on 
> our developers to do all updates. Usermin is far superior in this 
> ability. So, on this latest request for this feature the other day, I 
> set up Usermin on the box containing that account and turned off just 
> about everything except for most mail functions. Usermin is still just a 
> bit too geeky for the Joe Average user out there but yet has the more 
> simplified ability to do the tasks that most of us sysadmins are dealing 
> with from day to day. Yeah, I could add some modules to Squirrelmail to 
> do these things... yeah, I could find some other interface to do these 
> things.. but darn, Usermin is so close.
> 
> I think Usermin needs to be looked at from the end user's perspective.. 
> something extremely hard to do when you're so far ahead of Joe Average 
> when doing the programming. The mail forwarding module is a good 
> example. First the name on the button... 'Mail Forwarding and Replies'. 
> Well, that really doesn't mention auto-replies? I know we have a big 
> need to keep the names of these buttons as short as possible, but 
> perhaps since we are already in the Mail area, "Forwarding and 
> Auto-replies" would suffice?
> 
> After clicking on this button, Joe Average is faced with "Deliver 
> Locally?" Yes, this should be clear, but they might just think this is 
> going to send a copy via snail mail to their 'local mailbox' at the end 
> of their driveway. And no, this is not far fetched! Then "Forward to 
> other address?".. Heck, I'm not too sure what this actually does.. Does 
> is forward all mail to another address, or does it also forward to 
> another address while still delivering to your local mailbox (inbox)? 
> And darn, there's no pop-up help file to get more information on this. 
> "Send automatic reply?".. well, this part is actually pretty clear 
> although it might should say "Yes, respond to all incoming messages with 
> the following automatic reply..." "Minimum time between autoreplies". 
> Hmmmmm.... this sounds really interesting... but I wonder just exactly 
> what it does? Seems like this could be handy to perhaps prevent a mail 
> loop? If I set this to 60 minutes, I would only get 24 loops per day 
> instead of as fast as the two system can operate. But then if I set it 
> to 60 minutes, is this the total for all incoming email or just any 
> particular one? If it is for all incoming email, that would only allow 
> 24 auto-replies per day which wouldn't work for most situations... 
> Hmmmmmm... And, backing down to Joe Average... very few even know what a 
> mail loop is and that they should do things like unsubscribe to mailing 
> list before setting this up.. or heck, go back out and create another 
> email account just for mailing list.... And then there's "Complex" 
> mode.. yeah... I could use this, no problem. Joe Average??? Whew!!! God 
> knows what would be created. I haven't found a way yet to turn Complex 
> mode off, but that would be a nice feature.
> 
> Again, please don't take this as a request to have 'Usermin' and 'Mail 
> Forwarding and Replies' explained to me.... I'm trying to step back to 
> the end user's perspective or level of understanding. I do try to teach 
> our users just a little bit each time I talk with them.. Gee, I was even 
> able to teach one the difference between MSIE and Outlook the other 
> day!! Usermin will never be simple enough for him... but the interface 
> could certainly be dumbed down a bit so that it really is a 
> 'Half-Computer-Literate-User'min program instead of a 
> 'Semi-Geeky-User'min interface. And then, if POP account 
> creation/editing/deletion and email Alias creation/editing/deletion were 
> in there, three quarters of my tech requests would be covered.
> 
> I don't know.. maybe a 'Mailmin' system should be considered versus 
> trying to wrap this stuff into Usermin? Anyway, it seems that there is a 
> request for ideas or possible direction for Webmin. This is by far the 
> largest shortcoming we have on our systems at the moment.
> 

Hmmm, interesting!

> Again, please don't try to tech any of my example issues... I simply 
> grabbed some areas which were good as examples.
> 
> And as always, thanks so much for Webmin and all the hard work, as my 
> life is already so much easier... I guess I've sort of forgotten how 
> things used to be and really that three quarters of my tech work is a 
> greater percentage today than it was two years ago because 
> Webmin/Virtualmin is saving me hoards of time in the other geeky/admin 
> areas... it's just this simple stuff that users 'should' be able to do 
> themselves.
> 
> Best Regards,
> John Hinton
> 

Thanks again for the thoughtful input John!  Now (Jamie and) I have to 
figure out what to do with it!!

Paul Cubbage
Evangelist
Open Country, Inc.
http://www.opencountry.com/
http://www.opencountry.com/webmin/

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