Roll-back and feedback on the new UX

Lens 2024 Early Access
#21

Hi thanks for your response!

In the meantime, please double-check that you’re using the Apple Silicon version of Lens Desktop on your M1 Mac. We’ve seen cases where users accidentally install the Intel version, which can definitely impact performance.

So this is interesting. I think I had the right version installed, but I couldn’t be sure from the Lens > About Lens menu. However, I noticed that my version still showed -beta in it. So I decided to uninstall what I have and reinstall. After a reinstall the version installed was much newer than what I had before. But I did validate that my Update Channel was set to Stable and checking for updates showed no updates available.

Here’s the before and after versions - before:

  • Lens: 2024.9.200926-beta
  • Electron: 31.0.2
  • Chrome: 126.0.6478.61
  • Node: 20.14.0

And after:

  • Lens: 2024.10.171859-latest
  • Electron: 31.6.0
  • Chrome: 126.0.6478.234
  • Node: 20.17.0

Once this is installed and I re-sync my kubeconfig folders, I can see an immediate improvement in performance. I’ll continue to use it this week and if performance goes down, I’ll update here.

Out of curiosity, did you rely on the hotbar in the past to handle your most frequently accessed clusters?

I did, but only for a few core clusters (Rancher Admin clusters and Google Anthos admin clusters for example). Personally, I was never a fan of that sidebar icon system due to the numbers of clusters we deal with. I think with just a few clusters it might be great. Additionally, any time I was working with a specific cluster for a longer period of time (troubleshooting, testing new features, etc) I would pin that cluster so I could easily jump between it and an admin cluster.

Some form of “favorites” would certainly be welcome at both the cluster level and deeper as well. For example, being able to favorite the areas I go to most. Like workloads, services, ingress, etc. But even more so, we work with a lot of CRD’s (like clusters.cluster.x-k8s.io for example).

Again, thanks for the response - I’ll have my team check their versions and see if any ended up like I did.

#22

We have been thinking this quite a bit in the past weeks :sweat_smile: How do you feel about the following idea where we only show tabs that are related to the “drilled-down” scope of the Navigator:

The new UI is terrible
#23

Hi There,

Updating is not always good if the functions are removed without a trace.
My comments about the missing functionalities:
I’m dealing with many clusters - hundreds - missing there:

  • easy cluster adding with hovering on the + sign - in the new version I had trouble adding a new cluster
  • the “Hotbar” menu is gone, so no way to have a few selected and easy-to-access clusters
  • searching the clusters is not existing at all - I have hundreds, so need to have a way to quickly select and connect
  • Adding a cluster became a nightmare - On a legacy, it was a + sign and once you hover over it, you can easily paste the config - And you are in seconds connected, now I need 10 minutes to add and search for clusters, sometimes not sure if it is added or not, trying to remember a full cluster name so I can find it by looking on a huge list without an option to search.
  • as others mentioned the connectivity is a bit slower

I rolled back, but I’m looking forward to all functionalities being returned for good.
Thanks.

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#24
  • searching the clusters is not existing at all - I have hundreds, so need to have a way to quickly select and connect

Hi, if you download the latest version we now have a cluster search feature. Just open the command palette and select “Kubernetes Cluster: Reveal in Navigator”. We will later add direct shortcut for this.

#25

Hi,
that’s definetly a huge improvement. I will test it in the next days. Right now, I’m still working with the 2024-8 version.

#26

New interface is awful, not comfortable.
Hotbar is gone, and now i can’t quickly switch between clusters, and at the same time be focused on one cluster.
Tabs - the worst thing. I can’t quickly understand with which cluster which tab is connected, if i switch namespace in one tab on one cluster, it doesn’t switch it in another tab of the same cluster.
Tabs is the most ugly thing in new UI.
Tree-view of clusters is olso uncomfortable, because when you expand CRDs in 2 clusters, you must scroll a lot whole pannel.

#27

In addition to my previous comment…
In old UI, panels were like vertical tabs with transparent hierarchy. Hotbar - tabs of clusters, left pannel - tab of resources, central - tab of objects of this resources. It was very simple, understandable, and cool. Now - it’s chaos.
Staying the 2024-8 version.

#28

Good news! We have been evaluating more icons in the Navigator (somewhat similar to the old UI) and we are considering bringing them back (maybe with an option to disable them):

Would love to hear any feedback on this!

1 Like