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cPanel Glass Theme

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73 comments

  • andrewmoras
    Yep, I totally agree. I always find it useful when guiding a customer to look for the "File Cabinet" icon when talking about the File Manager or "Open envelope" when talking about Email accounts. See @cPRex it's not just me :-) Thanks, Andrew
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    Oh it's totally not just you :D @USA_Webmaster - I've passed this along to our User Experience team so they'll see this feedback.
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  • sp3ctre69
    I must say I am in agreement... when I heard there was a minimalist theme out I was quite happy... then I saw it... Sounds like management told their UI guy "make it minimalist" and the UI guy said "I'll show you minimalist!".
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    I think that's pretty much the point at this time - it's a minimal theme for Paper Lantern. Whatever comes after Paper Lantern will end up being very different, most likely.
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  • sp3ctre69
    I think that's pretty much the point at this time - it's a minimal theme for Paper Lantern. Whatever comes after Paper Lantern will end up being very different, most likely.

    I guess I just don't see the point of it... maybe they are appealing to those viewing with the classic Lynx (text based browser), or a nokia 3210?
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    I don't think frequent forums posters are the target market, as users new to the product (and hosting control panels in general) liked it. I still think an option in Feature Showcase would have been good.
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  • Steve Kemp
    have to agree its not good... it might be fine for a mobile or low bandwidth connection, but from an end user point of view its not very easy to follow or use... image if the icons got removed from Windows!
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  • jhawkins003
    What is so strange to me is that in the release notes there is not one screenshot that I can find of the new theme update. In what software production scenario do you typically see a group release a UI update and then have zero conversation about what the update actually looks like - the UX differences, etc. Its all very odd haha.
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  • herzla
    i'm using cPanel since a year, WHM since 4 days and glass style was the first shock on my new server as I needet to read instead of just clicking the image may without "default" it would be okay
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  • orudge
    Removing the icons and presenting users with a wall of text doesn't seem very appealing to me. I don't particularly care for the trend of making icons monochrome and reducing their distinctiveness, but at least there are still icons - removing them entirely strikes me as making the interface harder to navigate for users. Perhaps I'm just stuck in the 1990s or the early 2000s though...
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  • DennisMidjord
    I agree with most others in this thread. Removing the icons is a bad idea.
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  • backhousemedia
    I'm posting just in case cPanel devs actually read this thread. The new theme is terrible and what it did was force me to make Paper Lantern the default (because it randomly changed to Glass for new accounts) and then edit the feature package so that users can't change their theme. We have Paper all styled up with our logo, etc and it looks great. I don't want users accidentally seeing Glass by default one day and thinking their hosting company is some low budget outfit -- that's what I get from Glass.
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  • Damian
    What can be entered on the command line to turn this theme off - including the check it out prompt when you access cPanel? This is a terrible theme from a UX (and even UI) perspective. There is minimalist and then useless - this is 8.5/10 useless.
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    We freely admit that Glass isn't for everyone. As I mentioned earlier, it tested well with users that are new to cPanel and control panels in general, but it's always good to have choices. Don't worry, the standard theme isn't going away :D You can change the default from WHM >> Customization and from the "Customize Style" tab and that will ensure new accounts get the old style.
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  • DennisMidjord
    @cPRex I can see why some users might like the Glass theme. It's very clean... But it's too clean. Had it had a type of font icons, it would likely have been a different story. I don't mind offering users a new theme, but it's a big mistake forcing this theme as default. I tried switching to it on our internal server, and it took me ages to find what I was searching for if I didn't use the search function. Our users don't think it's very user friendly, at least.
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  • Hedloff
    You can change the default from WHM >> Customization and from the "Customize Style" tab and that will ensure new accounts get the old style.

    Do you have a API/cli we can run instead of messing around in GUI to turn this off?
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    We do have an API to handle this: whmapi1 set_default type='default' name='base'
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  • antonyjsmith
    We freely admit that Glass isn't for everyone. As I mentioned earlier, it tested well with users that are new to cPanel and control panels in general, but it's always good to have choices. Don't worry, the standard theme isn't going away :D You can change the default from WHM >> Customization and from the "Customize Style" tab and that will ensure new accounts get the old style.

    I'm always curious when it comes to comments like 'tested well with new users'. Was an alternative offered? If it was in comparison to Direct Admin or most of the other control panels out there that doesn't count ;) Except SiteGround, who's take on the admin interface is leagues ahead of WHM/cPanel and a fine example of minimal yet functional design. [coincidentally siteground dumped WHM for their own software due to the price increased but that's a whole other story]. Minimal design shouldn't mean taking stuff away for the sake of it, if you're sacrificing usability you're doing it for the wrong reason. I cannot see a single thing that is enhanced in glass compared to paper lantern other than looking 'clean'. If that's an improvement then it's going to be purely down to personal taste.
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  • Damian
    We freely admit that Glass isn't for everyone. As I mentioned earlier, it tested well with users that are new to cPanel and control panels in general, but it's always good to have choices. Don't worry, the standard theme isn't going away :D You can change the default from WHM >> Customization and from the "Customize Style" tab and that will ensure new accounts get the old style.

    I want to hide the 'Switch to Glass' option for existing customers.
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  • visiba
    I want to hide the 'Switch to Glass' option for existing customers.

    You can disable "Change Style" in WHM > Feature Manager for your feature list(s). That's the only way I see now unfortunately to disable this unfinished theme.
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  • Damian
    Thanks Visiba, that achieved the result I wanted for now. My clients never change the theme generally, but this prompt raised questions and some tried it. This is actually a good to option to leave permanently. Will make support easier too as we don't have to cater for alternate displays in the theme. Thanks!
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    @Hedloff - oh, nice catch! I've sent the docs update request now :D
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  • stormy
    This is appalling. At first I thought it was broken, but no. You removed all the icons that help navigate the functions and are user friendly. Just to get a list of links? It feels like we're back in 1999! I don't get it. Why do you make changes to our defaults? Why do you insist on advertising this so-called theme to our customers? This is very weird.
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  • Metro2
    I really wish we could get rid of the " Introducing our new style, Glass. A clean, elegant take on our classic design. Try it out. Let us know what you think. " notice in user cPanels globally without disabling the "Change Style" feature. Could cPanel please provide a way to dismiss the message on all accounts without having to log into each one?
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    At this time I don't have a global method available. I've reached out to the User Experience team to see if they have any other options that I'm not aware of, or if this is something they plan to add. I'll reply back once I know for sure.
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  • stormy
    I need to remove that even if it means hacking the cPanel files to delete it, and do it again on every update. Plus, my customers don't speak English so it doesn't make any sense... EDIT: the file that needs to be modified is: /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/paper_lantern/home/index.tt A simple style="display:none;"
    in the right place will cure the problem until the next cPanel update...
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    I spoke with the user experience team and this one-line will work to remove that for existing accounts: echo '{"personalization":{"xmainNewStyleBannerDismissed":"1"}}' | uapi --user=username --input=json --output=json Personalization set
    For new domains created in the future, you can do the following to permanently set this up: mkdir -pv /root/cpanel3-skel/.cpanel/nvdata/ echo -n "1" > /root/cpanel3-skel/.cpanel/nvdata/xmainNewStyleBannerDismissed
    and that will keep that banner from being present in new accounts.
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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    I've created the following article here if you'd like to have this information all in one place for reference:
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  • Matt.R
    HATE this new style (emphasis on hate there... did you notice..) :mad: Not quite sure how it can be called a "style" as it has no style. Sorry but it's just awful. IMPORTANTLY: 'Retro' style is being removed during this change over. Why? It might be a little "old fashioned" but an enormous number of our clients use that style and deliberatly switch to it. Think it should stay.
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