New Interface


supercilious

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Hi,

 

Happy sync user since before the public release... just bought a new machine, went to install sync on it only to discover that 1.4 had been released (my 1.3 installs did not prompt me to update or otherwise notify me). To my horror, I found that sync is now nearly unusable due to the new interface.

 

It has gone from being a nice simple app that quietly ran in my tray and used around 20MB of RAM to a slow hulking monstrosity that chugs along using >100MB of RAM. Its completely fine of course, as I have 32GB in my new machine, so who cares? Except that the new version is incredibly frustratingly slow to use. The entire interface lags and scrolls like a slideshow, with only 74 syncs (totaling ~3.2 TB).

 

I switched from AeroFS to Sync to avoid slow laggy bloated apps, and now I feel like I have to switch again to another sync product!

 

The interface is nearly impossible to use from a touch screen (does not scale properly), it has no accessibility (not possible to automate it with AutoIt or AutoHotkey), it has terrible performance (laggy scrolling on a brand new 6-core Haswell-E chip with a GTX 980 and 32GB RAM), and worse resource usage. Worse than before on literally every front. :(

 

Why??

 

 

EDIT: Oh, and useful features are missing too, like the ability to tell whether a peer had a direct connection or was being relayed. I only discovered my router did not white-list sync because the rate was very slow. No way to discern that from the crappy new interface.

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What is the point changing the interface anyway? There are tons of feature requests on functionality. I did not see one request like "I want an new shiny gui." I guess most btsync users are advanced with computers and prefer lean, useful and stable software. I wonder what the devs priorities are....

 

The "point" and ultimate aim of the new interface is to make Sync more easily maintainable, portable, and uniform across various operating systems.

 

From BitTorrent: "the web UI gives designers the flexibility to make superficial changes quickly and easily without having to make changes to the application code itself"

 

So, whilst you may not have seen user requests for "a new shiny gui", there are plenty of requests for support on various other operating systems not presently supported (i.e. Firefox OS, Chrome OS, etc). Having an HTML/web based UI means that should other OS's go on to be supported, the UI can be easily ported across.

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It is your right to change the gui, in order to make it more maintainable, portable, and so on, but please think about the usability. The current  Version is completly unusable. I need 5min to find the key for my Directory, and this can't be your truth...

Why don't you use the simple right-click-menu furthermore? It was so simple and very useful.
 

Would you please upload 1.3 anywhere? the new one doesn't sync anything and is complete crap...

Edited by Syncuser2014
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It is your right to change the gui, in order to make it more maintainable, portable, and so on, but please think about the usability. The current  Version is completly unusable. I need 5min to find the key for my Directory, and this can't be your truth...

Why don't you use the simple right-click-menu furthermore? It was so simple and very useful.

 

Would you please upload 1.3 anywhere? the new one doesn't sync anything and is complete crap...

 

Here you go http://syncapp.bittorrent.com/1.3.109/

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  • 3 weeks later...

if syncing still works fine, i'll stay on 1.4.x, cause yes you have to get to know the new UI, but how often do you use it once set-up?

I only use it once and awhile for checking the sync status. If a file get's stuck at least I can see now from the UI which ones and it shows a part of the latest history, so more conveniant :)

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So, whilst you may not have seen user requests for "a new shiny gui", there are plenty of requests for support on various other operating systems not presently supported (i.e. Firefox OS, Chrome OS, etc). Having an HTML/web based UI means that should other OS's go on to be supported, the UI can be easily ported across.

 

I call shenanigans.  If that is the point then why does the new UI depend on IE instead of just a browser in general.  Right now 1.4 is USELESS on the one machine I naively upgraded because the default browser on that machine is Chome.   So I open the UI and am greeted with a nice grey screen.  Given that IE kind of doesn't exist on Linux, Mac or Chrome (Firefox OS...  uh... what?) then this new UI is also useless on those as well.

 

I'd be fine if it worked in any browser.  Not ecstatic, but fine.  I've had to deal with the web interface on my many Linux boxen for quite a while now.  But to flat out tell me what is apparently ain't so just urks me off.

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