New UI feedback

[Insprill]

Here is some initial feedback on the new UI after seeing the changes and poking around a bit, in a rough order from actually annoying to nitpicky. Seems a little nicer overall, more "modern", but definitely has some usability regressions in my opinion.

Everything is way too big

Everything in the new UI is much larger than before on desktop, making the data density much lower. On mobile it looks a little better than before (except for transaction lists overflowing), but on desktop it feels like you're using a mobile UI on a giant screen. Reducing the page zoom to 80% gets it back to about where it was and is far more comfortable to use, except for graph tooltips, checkboxes, and maybe some other elements which are then too small.

Low contrast/high "clutter" in lists

Transaction lists (and other lists around the UI) are a little difficult on the eyes now because of the low contrast between the description/other text elements and their background. The separator lines also add a lot of visual clutter. I don't remember exactly how this was before, but I think it used to be better. I think the text should be a little brighter, and the lines should either be closer to the background or be replaced with alternating background colors per element, but not combined like the currencies list.

A small nitpick adding onto that, but this button looks a little awkward and adds to the line clutter since there's no background until you hover over it.

Low contrast between account colors

I have four asset accounts. In the old UI, they were green, blue, yellow, and light red, making it easy to distinguish them on the "Your accounts" graph. In the new UI, the green one is now light red, the blue one is still blue, but the other two are now very similar shades of yellow, making them almost impossible to tell apart. I'm not sure where their colors come from, but it'd be nice if they either stayed the same or were customizable in the account settings, and maybe also used in the graph when viewing a specific account.

Navigation categories

This is a nitpick, but still something I wanted to mention. When expanding navigation categories on the left, the list is no longer indented. I find this makes it a little more difficult to tell which options you just expanded.
Any category headers you click on also stay highlighted, so you can't use that to tell which page you're on without knowing which are headers and which are the actual pages. This is compounded by the fact that there's no indentation.

Homepage banner colors

Even more of a nitpick, and I can't pinpoint what changed with these other than them maybe being less "pastel", but I don't like the colors of them. It seems a little too strong, and I find it a little odd that two are the same darker color with white text, while the others are brighter with dark text that's a little difficult to read at a glance.

[JC5]

Hey, thanks for starting this discussion.

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it. Most of what you see is standard AdminLTE, and I hope to improve it over the coming weeks.

Cheers,
James

[Insprill]

A couple more things I noticed when adding a withdrawal. Let me know if you'd like me to make bug reports/feature requests out of any of these or the ones I listed previously. This is with v6.7.1.

Hidden "add transactions" button

Most of the time, when I go to one of the transaction pages, It's because I'm adding a transaction. Having that button be hidden behind an inconspicuous drop-down is quite frankly terrible.

Autocomplete

Clicking input fields doesn't show results until you start typing

Most of my transactions will have one of the same few accounts/categories. Previously, clicking in the text field would immediately show the autocomplete suggestions list, which would have my most frequently used options right at the top (not sure if it was designed that way, but it ended up working like that for me). Now those suggestions are only shown when you start typing, which makes it a little more cumbersome to enter common data.

Slow results

Autocomplete results used to show and update instantly as you typed. Now there's a solid half second of latency.

Bad sorting

The sorting of autocomplete seems like it's backward. For example, typing the letter "S" into the category field shows several items with an "s" at the end or middle of the word before showing categories that start with "S".

Source account filtering

Previously, "source account" was filtered by asset accounts until you started typing the name of another account. That's no longer the case, with all accounts being shown. For expenses, I'm never creating a withdrawal from an account that isn't an asset account, so paired with autocomplete no longer showing when clicking, it's a lot more annoying to enter that data.

Creating a transaction no longer takes you back to the transactions page

After clicking "submit" on a new withdrawal, the only indication it got created is buttons becoming disabled. I sat and waited for a while for it to complete, but it seemingly never did. While gathering some info for a bug report I realized it was creating the transactions, it just wasn't giving any feedback that it was doing so.

[JC5]

Thanks, I concur. I'm not sure what to do with the "new transaction" button though, I always found it ungainly and in-your-face. I'll find a good place for it though.

[d-leb]

Not sure where it should go either, but my biggest issue with it is having to go through multiple button presses any time I want to add a transaction.

[JC5]

Easy buttons will be back soon. I am working on the drop down.

[JC5]

Dropdown and threshold should be improved now as well. You can try it on the demo site already. The order of the items in the dropdown is a little more tricky but not impossible.

[drJeckyll]

I don't like new layout. It's too ... wide, big, unordered, unreadable and plain ugly. Sorry ...

It here a way to revert to old theme?

[JC5]

There is not. It will improve over time.

[fear025]

I also am enjoying the new modern UI and the effort you've put in. It's looking really good!

I do have a couple of minor suggestions that I don't think were addressed above, and I hope this is the right place to put them.

Missing Category Column
I do miss seeing the Category column in the transactions. It's nice to be able to see which of my imported transaction's didn't populate that correctly. I realize that it doesn't fit will with the larger font, but it still might be nice to have some sort of option to bring it back. I am also aware that I can click on "Without a Category" to see a report of these items, but it's an extra step that I'm always going to forget to do without the missing data being front and center.

Custom Date Range Selection
When choosing the date range on the top of the screen, it would be a nice to be able to simply type in a date range in some sort of input fields (the way we can when doing account reconciliation), without having to click a bunch of times to get back a few years and then click a bunch more times to get back to today.

[JC5]

Thanks for your excellent suggestions. I'm currently working on getting more information on the screen, to make things a little more dense. Baby steps. It should make room for extra columns, or configurable columns.

[Insprill]

It would be nice if hovering over the "Your account" graph on the dashboard showed the amounts of all accounts on the date of your cursor again, instead of having to hover over a specific line to see the amount of that account only. That gets very hard with accounts of similar balances and makes it harder to see the balances of multiple or all accounts on a specific date.

The UI size is much better in v6.7.2, but I think it's still far behind the old UI. The new font looks really thin, to the point of looking like it isn't being rendered correctly, and there's still a lot of wasted space between list elements. In the old UI, I could see many more transactions on my screen at once compared to now.

[Robubble]

In my opinion, the bar graphs for the budget make less sense now. The overspend amount color is almost the same as the left color now.
Also, orange doesn't seem to be the right color for the amount that's left as it doesn't really fit the context and seems like a warning now, not a safe area.

[JC5]

Yes, I agree. It's on my list to improve this.

[MoonieGZ]

Came here to second this, the inversion is very confusing.

Thanks for looking into it!

[JC5]

I have an improved version up on the demo site already, but the color scheme is not yet consistent over all charts.

[MoonieGZ]

Just poking my head in again with my suggestion.
I absolutely love the UI updates, except the budgeting colors.

Before:

Suggested:

Yes, it's very similar to what is the case on the previous versions - just with new colors - but I truly believe it's the way to get the message across. If what you mean by "color scheme is not yet consistent" includes this, I apologize in advance.

Love your product, keep it up 💙

[Robubble]

It seems like the split no longer auto fills the destination account. I'm not sure how to feel about the split tabs either as now, the information is hidden away and requires more clicking instead of being right there all at once.

[Robubble]

Before the update, the destination account of the split was automatically populated with the same as the base transaction that was splittet.
That was a nice EoL feature as I often split transaction for categorization.
Even if someone else would use the split for the purpose of entering different accounts, it wouldn't mean more work if that auto fill was still there. For my purpose it adds a step without the destination account left empty.

[JC5]

Yes, I mean specifically, for withdrawals in this case, right?

[Robubble]

Oh, yeah. I only used splitting in withdrawals so far.

[JC5]

Yes exactly. I ask, because the source is also "filled in" but fixed in place and I believe the field registers as empty now. Just like the destination coincidentally, but different. I wanted to be sure. It's on my list to improve, thank you for your suggestion!

[Robubble]

Cool, thanks :)

About the space, I completely understand it. The most important thing is still there: the total.
There was a request once about locking the total amount or certain splits and calculate the remaining splits but I guess, that would require more logic and require more work than the UI changes.
Anyway I'm looking forward to every update. Thank you for your work!

[simphide]

Is there an option to go back to the old design (besides of a rollback)?

[JC5]

There is not.

[werdck]

A few more things:

Dates under the graph in "Home" are clutter-y for me

These should be thinned out, maybe show only every 4th - 5th to reduce the visual "block" feeling.

Spread-out transaction layout

When creating a transaction, the new "cards" style moves "Submission options" all the way to the right, while it was at the bottom left before, where my cursor naturally lands.

Break in style in reports

Where everything else uses dropdowns (and the old layout did too), there is now a gray-on-white scrollable list of accounts when choosing what to include in a report. That list is also way too small, fitting barely four items for me (two of which are headings). This leads to a lot of careful scrolling, especially with the standard scroll setting in most OSes / browsers of three lines per scroll-tick.

Weird budget graph

Aside from the already-mentioned colors, I now have a new "(outside of pre-set budget amounts)" bar for every budget. My first instinct was that I must have somehow forgotten to budget for some interval, but everything in the time range on my home dashboard is budgeted correctly.

Coloring of text in light theme

On the Subscriptions overview, if a subscription was expected some time ago, the "Expected X weeks ago" text is a bright yellow on white background. That is painful to read.

In Classification -> Tags, the text is black on dark green pills. That's also almost unreadable.

Translation consistency

The old layout would honor my selected language, everywhere. Now I get a lot of mix-in from... I don't even know where. My Browser is set to en-GB, my settings in firefly-iii reflect that. Still, there is a lot of German text everywhere (Buttons labeled "Nächste", Strings like "Expected vor 4 Wochen", a random pill labeled "Heute" in the graph on "Home", ...). Maybe it's from the currency / time format?

Some of this might be changes I will get used to over time, but I have tried to be as objective as possible here. "People dislike change just because it's change".

[JC5]

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for listing these issues, some were on my list but not as high up perhaps.

I know about the locale/language issue, it's a mix and match at the moment. If you set your "locale" to German (to get properly formatted amounts for example) some translations are also wrong. I'm working on it.

[dreautall]

Was it a specific choice to not have a "save as new" checkbox anymore on an existing transaction? I know the "duplicate (and edit)" button exists, but I use "save as new" to modify existing transactions easily to new dates/accounts without saving them first (and not triggering any rules/webhooks before I make the changes).

[JC5]

I have disabled the button until I have fixed it: #12747

[dreautall]

Oh sorry, I searched the issue list but only for "save", not "store". Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

[JC5]

Of course, thanks for the feedback! 😁

[a1ex4]

Piggy banks

Piggy banks cannot be set when creating a new deposit

With the new transaction form, when creating a new deposit the "Piggy bank" input select disappears after the destination asset account (that contains existing piggy banks) is selected. This feature was available as is up to v6.6.

[JC5]

Yes, this will be returned in the next release.

[Insprill]

v6.7.4 is looking much better :)

Some new things I've found with it:

Subscriptions box is too small when none are left to be paid

"Create a new transaction" button is duplicated (normal + dropdown menu)

Selecting multiple transactions shifts the whole list a few pixels

Doesn't come across well in photos, but when the "Actions" button appears at the top of the list after selecting any transaction, it shifts the whole list down a few pixels. On my instance, the list also shifts slightly to the left at the same time, but on the demo site it only goes down.

"Select all" checkbox at the bottom is offset

The line at the bottom and the checkbox are quite far from the end of the row, so it doesn't line up with the others.

Split actions button is offset

Actions button is left compared to all others, and the line at the bottom doesn't go all the way across.

[JC5]

Hey, thanks again! Glad to hear you like it better!

Subscriptions box is too small when none are left to be paid

Won't be changed. Forcing the height makes them all very ugly.

"Create a new transaction" button is duplicated (normal + dropdown menu)

Won't be changed. The menu sometimes holds other options as well.

Selecting multiple transactions shifts the whole list a few pixels

"Select all" checkbox at the bottom is offset

Split actions button is offset

Yes, thank you. Some hidden/shown table cells are making the browser recalculate the table. I'll play around with it.

[Insprill]

Subscriptions box is too small when none are left to be paid

Won't be changed. Forcing the height makes them all very ugly.

Surely there's a way to make the height match the others without it messing things up. As it stands now, it looks quite broken, especially with the calendar icon extending past the background.

"Create a new transaction" button is duplicated (normal + dropdown menu)

Won't be changed. The menu sometimes holds other options as well.

Is the green button ever hidden? I don't think it's good to have it duplicated. I'd expect the dropdown to be hidden if there are no other options, like the actions button, and only contain those other options, not another add transaction button. I can't see anything pressing that button when they can do the same thing without entering a dropdown first.

[JC5]

I didn't even notice the calendar lol. I'll check it out! And for the menu too, it's a good point. I also want it to look consistent.

[JC5]

I take back my words! Your suggestion about the menu is a good one and it's only my stubbornness that stopped me, hah. The box can be raised as well like you said. Getting them to all fall in line is tricky (I just cannot get it to look good), but there should be a minimum height at least.

[fib1985]

@JC5 Hi, I can confirm that the user interface has improved significantly. We look forward to further improvements! Thank you.

[ThibaultNocchi]

Hello!

I've updated to 6.7.4, and the issue #12776 you previously fixed in 6.7.2 reappeared. Do you want me to open another one?

Thanks!

[JC5]

Somebody else already did, I got it!

[ThibaultNocchi]

Sorry, didn't catch it! Thank you!

[Kage1]

To chime in... I miss being able to collapse the rule categories. I have 20ish categories and almost 160 rules. It would be nice to have a button to collapse/uncollapse all so I can then open just the category I need to work on.

The new reorder drag/drop is nice.

[JC5]

Thanks, that is probably broken JS, a holdover from the old layout. The rule pages need make-over anyway. I'll check out the missing features before I really start working on it.

[jcasanchez]

Hi.
I use FF hosted on pikapods.com

Last week I was using 6.6.6 then they upgraded to 6.7.3. Everything went fine but I find annoying the behavior of the enter key.

I tend to use the beyboard more than the mouse, so when I'm creating a transaction I type some text, TAB, type more text, TAB TAB TAB TAB, text, Enter and it is saved.

But now a single ENTER saves automatically, even when I am using the autocomplete function.

Old behavior: I type BAN in the Asset Account field and all my accounts starting with BAN appears, I select using the arrow key, Enter to autocomplete, the TAB to go to the next field.

Now: I type BAN, I use the arrow key to select, then ENTER selects it and saves the transaction before I finish, so I have to go backwards and edit the unfinished transaction. So now the default option is to use the mouse to select the input on any field?

It was nice to use to the enter key as a shortcut but now it is broken for me.

Pikapods upgraded it to 6.7.4 this morning but this behavior presists.

[JC5]

Thanks for telling me! I am aware, you are not the first. It is on my list.

[werdck]

Not a regression, but a feature request:
When writing notes for a transaction, it is possible to have line breaks in them.
All line breaks are then (outside of edit mode) shown as spaces instead.
When editing the transaction, they are line breaks again.

Is it possible to make then consistently line breaks, so lists in there make sense?

My use case might be rare: I enter the positions of an invoice in there in CSV format, so I can later copy them over to an actual CSV file easily.

[JC5]

In markdown, you need to give to enters to do a new paragraph.

To force a new line, end your sentence with two spaces.