An example of how not to do a user interface

This example comes to you courtesy of Grafana, which regards itself as "Trusted and loved by the community".

Well, there's one particular part that this member of community thinks is absolutely awful.

  1. Install Grafana (in my case, on Debian stable, "Stretch")
  2. Start to configure a data source (in my case, InfluxDB - nothing exotic)
  3. Note that the URL field is already filled in with http://localhost:8086 (as that's the most likely setting for InfluxDB)
  4. Add the name of your database (in my case "telegraf" - again, nothing exotic)
  5. Click on "Save & Test" to make sure everything's working
  6. Get the obscure error message "Network Error: Bad Gateway(502)"
    • What do you mean, Network error: Bad Gateway? I'm talking to localhost here - there is no gateway (and yes, localhost is listening on port 8086)
  7. What does it turn out to mean? The default entry in the URL field is an example, not a default setting!
  8. You see http://localhost:8086 in the field, and you think "yes, that's correct", but no, that is not what the field contains - it is empty
    • You have to actually type the same thing into the field yourself, and then click on "Save & Test" before Grafana will tell you "yep, thanks, that works".

Nowhere does it tell you that the entry is just an example, and is not the default value which will be used unless you change it.

An awful user interface example, in my opinion.

Go up
Return to main index.