Recent UI/UX Improvements in Apache NiFi (December 2017)

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Good design goes mostly unnoticed. If a user interface works well, you simply complete a task and move on to the next. That time when something doesn't work as expected, or you think why do I have to do it this way, is when the design becomes much more noticeable.

The following is a look back over recent months at some notable UI/UX improvements making their way to Apache NiFi. They vary a lot in size and complexity, but overall they contribute equally to make NiFi better by design.

This second edition is light due to a lot of contributor focus on NiFi sub-projects MiNiFi and Registry. There will be many new additions to the NiFi UI related to the NiFi Registry integration and those will be covered in separate articles. The previous (and first) edition highlighting recent NiFi UI/UX improvements from September 2017 can be found here.

Available Cores

In the UI there were several places where it stated "available processors" to indicate how many cores were available to NiFi. In these instances, "processors" was changed to "cores" to more accurately reflect the intended subject.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-4576

Primary Node-Only Processor Identification

It helps to know when processors are configured to run only on the primary node of a cluster. Now the UI calls out this fact with a 'P' icon visible on the face of the canvas component and in the Summary table.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-4481

Counters Reset Action

A confirmation message is now presented to avoid unintentional resets of counter information.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-4423

Add Processor Dialog

You can now navigate the list of processors after you have filtered it using the up and down keys of your keyboard.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-3803

Add Connection Dialog

Previously, if you were to click the Add button in the Add Connection dialog before selecting a required relationship, you'd receive an error message. Instead of allowing this and forcing the user to repeat previous steps to get back, the Add button is now disabled until a relationship is selected.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-3369