A Catch From the Codeshare - Web UI Tweaks

On the side of the road in northern Missouri just north of Mark Twain’s stomping grounds, there is a slice of hillside removed just to the side of the highway. In Arkansas, there’s a nondescript field tucked away in a state park. Short of word of mouth and this thing they call the internet, you wouldn’t be any the wiser that buried or surfaced in these two locations are an amazing variety of geodes and diamonds, respectively. In this article series I will explore recent and well-aged gems from the codeshare, highlighting inventive solutions contributed by you, the community. Please join me on this great adventure as we oscillate on the Mohs’ scale of codeshare geekery.

Web UI Tweaks

The BIG-IP graphical user interface has gone through major changes over the years, with minor tweaks along the way as well. With one interface and millions(?) of end-users interacting with it, there are bound to be differences of opinion on the stylistic preferences applied to the interface. Personally, I always hoped for a new interface for the iRules editor every time a new version came out instead of a plain text box that didn’t resize well. That change came in version 12.0, with a more robust editor complete with syntax highlighting and line numbers.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. - Thomas Jefferson

For other changes, however, you just might not want to swim with the current any longer. You want to take a stand. Well stand up and be heard, community! Actually, you don’t need to wait to be heard any longer. Thanks to MVP Patrik Jonsson’s codeshare entry on Web UI Tweaks, you can use a jquery script running in the Tampermonkey chrome extension to tweak the BIG-IP UI in ways that styles it to your liking. The code as is enlarges some of the fields where lists have to be scrolled through so you can see the entire lists, such as applying a health monitor in a pool as seen below in the before and after shots. Also, in the iRule editor you can use the tab key to indent instead of the tab moving you to the next field on the page.

Before

After

Another great feature is the generation of links to the iRules from the virtual server listing, which are normally just text references:

Patrik has several other features and a couple screenshots detailed, so head over there and see how you might be able to contribute to extending this catch from the codeshare!