how 'bout some ajax!

[bbittman]

using the php frontend for zabbix occasionally leaves a bad taste in my mouth - lots of clicking and scrolling...

i think that applying some ajax techniques (asychronous javascripting interfaces) would really smooth out the experience

for example, here's some place where it would really help out:
- the triggers and items lists could allow you to edit their values in place. right now you have to do the "click change - modify value(s) and hit update" loop (with 2+ page reloads involved) for each value you want to change. instead you could edit values in the table, and update each item you want to change very quickly and simply, while the interface asynchronously updates the database as you change things (or whenever you hit the "update" button for that row, which would replace the "change" link that is currently there)
- sometimes the "modify" box (which if using ajax properly we could actually get rid of!) you make a change to a drop-down box and the page reloads, if instead of a reload it javascriptly changed the interface to correspond to the new value, that would be much nicer - this shouldn't involve any DB or server interaction and should be done anyway, this is almost not even an ajax technique but a basic use of JS/DHTML to improve the user experience (for example, on the items page, you change the "type" from "zabbix agent" to "snmpv1 agent" and all the fields change - this should NOT require a page reload, but should happen "in place")
- graph reloading on the graph or screen pages could be done ajax style, with each graph updating itself based on the update interval of the values it's reporting on (lowest common denominator if there are several values on a graph, of course) - no page reloads, just image reloads.

...i'm sure there's more, you get the idea

i have a lot of experience with javascript and may even do some of this to our set of php pages if we decide to go full out with zabbix, right now i'm just trying zabbix out with a few hosts, but if i go for it and you want to see the result i'm happy to share it with the rest of the community - anybody else feeling this way?

[Wolfgang]

I think the discussion of using any client-side apps/scripts like java happens to any web based application.
From my experience there are typically the following pro/cons:

Pro:
-Improved User Interface.

Con:
-Compatibility with Webbrowser
-Compatibilty to changes that effect the application itself.

Using Java:
-requires java to be installed on the client.
-maybe requires a particular version of java, where another app requires a different version (this happens quite often when managing for examples switches that uses a java applet)

Using Javascript:
-does not require Java to be installed.
-requires Javascript to be enabled in the web-browser, at least for the particular website (zabbix monitor station)
-Is not always compatible, requires browser specific code.
-requires a definition of supported web-browsers and their version


Also, a lot of GUI logic hast to be ported to the Frontend, where the backend would have to verify the data again. That adds complexcity, especially where the current version of zabbix is still work in progress and therefore datastructures and communication beween clientapp/serverapp might change.

So yes, in some way i would like to have a nice/fast frontend, but on the other side i would not like to have to deal with java/javascript/browser issues, as well as with frontend/backend issues.


These are my 2cents.