Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
Re: RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever.
From: vbwilliams () neb rr com
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 17:36:03 -0600
My opinion... I won't use the products strictly because of their interfaces. None of them are consistent with the other. There needs to be consistency. In my opinion, the interface is one of the only differentiating things in this line of products. I would much rather use a version of PIX than mess around with Watchguard at this point in the game. With PIX, I know what I'm getting. The command line and web interfaces are the same regardless of the model of firewall. Watchguard, why is every different model/version different...and vastly different? In my opinion, if you're going to base a commercial firewall product on open/free software (which several of the Watchguards are...at least the ones I've dealt with), then you better differentiate your product with something that's definitely superior. The documentation is definitely subpar, the OS is the same as any homegrown solution, so what else is there other than interface? You could build yourself the equivalent of any of the Watchguard products for about the same price as it costs to buy one off the shelf. Seeing as their support sucks, their interface sucks, their documentation sucks, why do people keep buying the things? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul D. Robertson" <paul () compuwar net> Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2005 9:08 am Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] Opinion: Worst interface ever.
On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, Eugene Kuznetsov wrote:I am not familiar with the WatchGuard interface, but I will sayone generalthing in their defence -- this stuff is harder to do than it seems.Sure, but while the old interface was ugly, it was intuitive- and consistency is important.For every user like you, who's annoyed about the redesign,there's anotherone who demanded that the UI be reworked in the first place: tomake it moreintuitive for his preferred configuration, or to add options for newSure, when a vendor goes from "intuitive and simple" to "where the heck is this thing failing, all the things the manual says are done?" I think it's bad.features. I'll even go out on a limb and bet $5 that somewherein the first5 minutes of your ordeal, you took a wrong turn, and it all wentdownhill> from there. Had you taken a different path, it would've all been good. One of my coworkers had the same issue, so I'm guessing that it's not all that intuitive where that turn was. It's frustrating to go from "hey, this product is good" to "hey, this revision is bad!" I'm really starting to dislike the "interface can't run locally on the device" stuff when coupled with "won't log on the device."So take this as a vendor perspective: it's not easy, especiallysince> customer requirements are increasingly diverging. More features --> morecomplexity.Hey, I didn't ask for more features, someone's marketing department did! I'm mostly upset at myself for assuming that the new version would be an incramental improvement of the old, not something that two of us had serious issues with despite following the instructions in the manual. I'm also going to add a new vendor test to my criteria- if I can't get read-only access to the support site without a login, that vendor's off my list. Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Paul D. Robertson "My statements in this message are personal opinionspaul () compuwar net which may have no basis whatsoever in fact." _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
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Current thread:
- Firewall Log Analysis - Computer vs. Human, (continued)
- Firewall Log Analysis - Computer vs. Human Adrian Grigorof (Jul 06)
- Re: Firewall Log Analysis - Computer vs. Human Kevin (Jul 06)
- Re: Firewall Log Analysis - Computer vs. Human Devdas Bhagat (Jul 06)
- RE: Firewall Log Analysis - Computer vs. Human Paul Melson (Jul 19)
- RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever. Mark Teicher (Jul 06)
- RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever. Eugene Kuznetsov (Jul 06)
- RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever. Eugene Kuznetsov (Jul 07)
- RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever. Mark Teicher (Jul 06)
- RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever. Paul D. Robertson (Jul 06)
- Re: Opinion: Worst interface ever. Ian Rae (Jul 06)