Hello Dear,

On the next move, is it possible to redesign WinBox interface to UI/UX for customer experience? As we can see nowadays all network will be just a software (SDN) Software-defined networking technology.

What does SDN have to do with Winbox UI?

I strongly disagree with redesigning the Winbox UI.

Hello Dear,
This has to be a troll...

Or totally confused marketing person pushing their deadly ideas, trying to destroy yet another software that just works...

I strongly disagree with redesigning the Winbox UI.

+1 comrade.

Or totally confused marketing person pushing their deadly ideas, trying to destroy yet another software that just works...

Be polite and knowledgeable to write and express your text and thought out from your brain. Thanks

First, I just propose an idea only.
Second, if it deadly idea or m trying to destroy as your less brain you talked why MikroTik need to be and mobile platform and try to improve mobile UI for what?
Third, UI/UX dose not harm WinBox, it only interface to make more comfortable look and feel to use network as simple configuration.

Final, I suggest you don't use your less brain and less knowledge to post to other forum it scared by other people than COVID-19 they just express idea to be modern and digital life of IT.

think we're done here

Third, UI/UX dose not harm WinBox, it only interface to make more comfortable look and feel to use network as simple configuration.

By definition changing the UI you change the interface. It's the "I" in UI.

Winbox is more than comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable with the current UI, then Winbox is not for you.
You can look into TP-Link or Netgear. I hear their devices are VERY comfortable to use. They can also be great paper weights after a year or two.

My vote for cli and rest api

Winbox is more than comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable with the current UI, then Winbox is not for you.
You can look into TP-Link or Netgear. I hear their devices are VERY comfortable to use.

Hey bro, I think you are too proud with wrong direction, I just suggest to Mikrotik for better user experience only but as you wrote seem to be less knwoledagable? My company branch use all MKT router and I pay money to Mikrotik too why I can't suggest?

And why I have to follow your lower level TP-Link or Netgear? Unifi AP Controller is not my choice over WinBox? I thought! U can learn more bro: https://www.ui.com/

Winbox is the king of all UI/UX.
Nothing even in the high end market (Cisco Juniper etc) have a such a wonderful tool to manage routers/switches.
I wish all the high end routers followed the winbox approach and learnt a few things from it.

Winbox is more than comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable with the current UI, then Winbox is not for you.
You can look into TP-Link or Netgear. I hear their devices are VERY comfortable to use.

Hey bro, I think you are too proud with wrong direction, I just suggest to Mikrotik for better user experience only but as you wrote seem to be less knwoledagable? My company branch use all MKT router and I pay money to Mikrotik too why I can't suggest?

And why I have to follow your lower level TP-Link or Netgear? Unifi AP Controller is not my choice over WinBox? I thought! U can learn more bro: https://www.ui.com/

Bruh,

You can make your bad suggestions and I can counter them with common sense.
This is a community forum after all.
So yes, you can suggest, and we can disagree with your suggestion. And so far, you got 0 supporters and 5 opposed.
You got it backwards. Because we are knowledgable we don't want to change Winbox.
Usually those who ask to change winbox are people who just started using MikroTik and because they are not familiar with it, instead of busting their rears to learn it, they ask to change it.
You should start asking Cisco for fancy UIs too. I am sure they will be delighted to send you to /dev/null and in the end be forced to learn their CLI.

Also, dude, learn how to read English. My reference to TP-Link was sarcastic. :facepalm:

Bad ideas are bad regardless of how big of a customer you feel you are.

You can request whatever you want, and I almost never bash any suggestions, unless those suggestions have the potential to ruin my workflow.
Some of us use MikroTik to make a living.
So when it comes to Winbox, I will always be negative about changes to the UI. Especially when it's done in the name of supposed "user experience" and other wankwords.

If you want fancy material design UIs and all that other BS that all other vendors copy from the likes of Googles, then by all means, change vendor and go use those crappy devices.

Don't bring that crappiness to Winbox. MikroTik has already got a ton of problems. Winbox is one of the things that they got RIGHT. Changing the UI is stupid, unnecessary and a total waste of resources. Period.

Winbox may not be the best looking program written in some heavy framework like Electron with fancy animations and so on but gets the job done, other vendors have nicer web GUIs but they're so slow, buggy and requires you to reboot the router after each change.

Cha0s, this is pointless...
There will always be someone trying to advocate for looks over functionality. But where things go really bad is when company prioritizes looks and doesn't listen to users at all. Just look at what's Microsoft doing, they completely wiped out all proper GUI design from the past that had any sense (GUI controls groups, differentiated by 3D edges) and went full speed ahead for "modern" and "fluent" garbage, where entire window is just flat white sheet with text scattered over it, where you don't even know what's static text and what's clickable button. All completely wrong design decisions that are spreading like cancer to other products to be "cool", killing productivity in the name of UX/UI "improvements"... enough is enough, please stop, we have to USE this garbage, not just look at it and admire how pretty the UI is!

But most importantly, Winbox is key software that helps you to get things done. As quickly as possible, in simple and efficient manner. With no animations or other design decisions taking your time. No "..." buttons you have to click to show "advanced" options, that you have to click all the time. No dumbing down, like Apple does, hiding or completely removing any advanced features. Winbox is software made by professionals for other professionals, to get the job done. Looks are secondary, no one cares about color theme or square buttons.

And for suloveoun: Bro, how many Mikrotik routers do you manage? 1000? 100? or more like 1?
If you want dumbed down interface, feel free to download TikApp and use that. Just don't go into advanced mode, that might be way too much for you to handle... or just buy Ubiquity and enjoy brilliantly designed web interface with superb save-apply-wait feature everyone loves so much...

r00t, you are spot on!

(too bad there isn't a 'hear hear' or 'clapping' emoticon available)

But most importantly, Winbox is key software that helps you to get things done. As quickly as possible, in simple and efficient manner. With no animations or other design decisions taking your time. No "..." buttons you have to click to show "advanced" options, that you have to click all the time. No dumbing down, like Apple does, hiding or completely removing any advanced features. Winbox is software made by professionals for other professionals, to get the job done. Looks are secondary, no one cares about color theme or square buttons..

Yep, Love winbox -- the very best Router Admin Tool bar none.

It's not just looks vs. functionality, it's also what exactly you want to have.

Before I discovered RouterOS and WinBox, I liked iptables because of the power, but command line interface wasn't pleasant at all, and all existing attempts for creating GUI were far from good. WinBox was dream come true for me. I'm still the biggest fan of it, but it's also true that it's what it is, relatively rough frontend for internals, not much abstraction or anything like that.

I have no doubt that for many things you can come up with better, more efficient interface. The problem is how to do that without sacrificing flexibility. I'm affraid that it's not possible, any optimized high-level interface will have some assumptions and requirements that can't be combined with other stuff, if that can be anything crazy you can imagine.

It's not just looks vs. functionality, it's also what exactly you want to have.

I would not want to give up Winbox by any means - however:

I think there is the possibility for wireless configuration that there may be something in between Winbox (individual advanced settings for everything) and QuickSet (very limited basic settings). If you look at Ubiquiti's interface, it is somewhere between the two. You have more configuration options than in QuickSet, but fewer than in Winbox.

This is not the case for routers, but for wireless devices I think it might make sense to have an "intermediate" interface.

Funny thing - the major reason why I started using ROS was because of the very intuitive UI. Most of the time I complain that something "doesn't work in ROS" is because I actually didn't know how to configure it... and it's not because of the UI. Also, in the same token if MT completely overhauled the UI making it more "fancy" or pretty I will probably start swinging away from MT.
The power of ROS comes partially from UI paralleling the CLI and actually being ascetic.

If you say the MT could use a simple UI with limited set of options, where it assumes some safe-ish defaults, geared more towards prosummers then I will totally agree. MT has a very steep learning curve - that's a fact. However it doesn't sacrifice ultimate flexibility for ease-of-use. The WinBox UI/UX is brilliant imho (and not just mine). It's well organized, it's consistent across the platform, it follows simple patterns which let you predict where something could potentially be without knowing* ASSUMING that you know networking pretty well. If you don't then indeed, it feels like a bad UI.


Ultimately I believe an open-source project attempting to provide an easy UI for ROS could be made. However, is there a need for this? I doubt many people even use skins with limited functionality in WebFig...



*maybe except list of tasks using your CPU... I will never remember where it is...

It's sad that people think they need visual stimulation so they can configure a router. Next they will request a "Good Job!" or "Your Doing Great" messages to pop up after they make a change in the config. Your special only in your needs and not in your abilities.

There is one big Feature with MikroTik that’s winbox.
I have great experience with ui.com and deployed many sites with it. Some features are great but if it goes to detailed or different configurations it gets complicated.

What I suggest to add at MikroTik is:

-) nativ winbox for .Mac and Linux
-) AR feature to MikroTik app to see ports and details of a switch or router like the UI dreammashine- It would help a lot if u on datacenter site seeing things quicker

Br
Mark

-) nativ winbox for .Mac and Linux

What's wrong with Winbox via Wine? MikroTik officially supports that scenario and running Winbox on Wine is the first class citizen in the ecosystem. If you look in credits you will see that MT even imports libraries from Wine project
There's no point in rewriting the same application 3 times, especially if on none of the systems it uses any of the standard UI elements.

Hello Dear,
This has to be a troll...

No troll, this type of word selection is typical for a country which I cannot name (for sake of political correctness). I hear/read this overly-friendly type almost everytime I contact an off-sourced call center or customer support. Thats simply how some people are trained to behave towards people of western culture.

By all means Mikrotik, make a more beginner-friendly UI if you want, but do it to the web interface and leave Winbox well alone!

I do services for car service company.
They have two walls full of fancy "must have" series professional tools bought from the Corpo. Some of them look like torture machines from the Middle Ages. No discussion about buying as the Corpo knows better. Always.

Servicemen use circa 10% of them. Most repairs is done with classic screwdrivers, hammers and wrenches with proper sizes and durability.
No need for "good customer look and feel" experience. Just usablity.