I think one of the things that will really help in complex data flow from UI perspective is “colored icons” on each processor. Not sure if this already part of 1.0, but from my experience, icons definitely help a lot in quickly understanding complex flows. Those icons can be fixed (embedded within the nar) or may be dynamic (user defined icon file for different processors) – just a suggestion.
Regards, Manish From: Andrew Grande [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2016 10:40 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: UI: feedback on the processor 'color' in NiFi 1.0 No need to go wild, changing processor colors should be enough, IMO. PG and RPG are possible candidates, but they are different enough already, I guess. What I heard quite often was to differentiate between regular processors, incoming sources of data and out only (data producers?). Maybe even with a shape? Andrew On Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 12:35 PM Rob Moran <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Good points. I was thinking a label would be tied to the group of components to which it was applied, but that could also introduce problems as things move and are added to a flow. So would you all expect to be able to change the color of every component type, or just processors? Andrew - your comment about coloring terminators red is interesting as well. What are some other parts of a flow you might use color to identify? Along with backpressure, we could explore other ways to call these things out so users do not come up with their own methods. Perhaps there are layer options, like on a map (e.g., "show terrain" or "show traffic"). Rob On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Andrew Grande <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I agree. Labels are great for grouping, beyond PGs. Processor colors individually add value. E.g. flow terminator colored in red was a very common pattern I used. Besides, labels are not grouped with components, so moving things and re-arranging is a pain. Andrew On Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 11:21 AM Joe Skora <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Rob, The labelling functionality you described sounds very useful in general. But, I miss the processor color too. I think labels are really useful for identifying groups of components and areas in the flow, but I worry that needing to use them in volume for processor coloring will increase the API and browser canvas load for elements that don't actually affect the flow. On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 10:40 AM, Rob Moran <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: What if we promote the use of Labels as a way to highlight things. We could add functionality to expand their usefulness as a way to highlight things on the canvas. I believe that is their intended use. Today you can create a label and change its color to highlight single or multiple components. Even better you can do it for any component (not just processors). To expand on functionality, I'm imagining a context menu and palette action to "Label" a selected component or components. This would prompt a user to pick a background and add text which would place a label around everything once it's applied. Rob On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 6:42 PM, Jeff <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I was thinking, in addition to changing the color of the icon on the processor, that the color of the drop shadow could be changed as well. That would provide more contrast, but preserve readability, in my opinion. On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 6:39 PM Andrew Grande <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi All, Rolling with UI feedback threads. This time I'd like to discuss how NiFi 'lost' its ability to change processor boxes color. I.e. as you can see from a screenshot attached, it does change color for the processor in the flow overview panel, but the processor itself only changes the icon in the top-left of the box. I came across a few users who definitely miss the old way. I personally think changing the icon color for the processor doesn't go far enough, especially when one is dealing with a flow of several dozen processors, zooms in and out often. The overview helps, but it's not the same. Proposal - can we restore how color selection for the processor changed the actual background of the processor box on the canvas? Let the user go wild with colors and deal with readability, but at least it's easy to spot 'important' things this way. And with multi-tenant authorization it becomes a poor-man's doc between teams, to an extent. Thanks for any feedback, Andrew
