There is not enough space on the graphs to put an axis label on the side.

I can't say I've ever been confused about what the numbers on any of our graphs show. There is plenty of context for a normal person to be able to work out what is shown in the graphs, especially among our technically literate target market.

I think you are just being dumb.

adam.

p.s.

fuck cacti.

On 2013-07-29 09:42, Roland Schwingel wrote:

Hi Tom...

Thanks for your reply.

Well you have to click on the graph and have "Show legend" enabled. If you hover something and graphs are displayed in the popup you do not see any legend at all, so a vertical text is IMHO much better than no text in this case especially the graphs are scaling. You often have to simply GUESS in which unit the graphs are shown

I would prefer to see the units on all axis (even they are vertical) as eg. cacti is also doing it. At least to make it optional would be nice!

Roland

"observium" observium-bounces@observium.org wrote on 29.07.2013 09:36:57:

...

Hi Roland,

This is currently labeled under the graph (maybe not the right place indeed, but may be easier to read than vertical text).

Tom

On 29/07/2013 7:59, Roland Schwingel wrote:

Hi...

...

Maybe this is a novice question. I do have observium set up for a few days now and works quite well. Thanks to all involved. But there is one thing I do miss.

Is it possible to label the axis for graphs?

eg. the Diskusage graph. The x axis is the timeline (which is easy to detect) but the y axis is percentage of usage. But it would be way clearer if you would add label to the x and y axis to clearly know in which unit is measured here. Especially when you hop between graphs.

Thanks for this good product,

Roland Schwingel

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On 2013-07-29 18:40, Roland Schwingel wrote:

Dear Adam Armstrong,

Second: I just wanted to try to make a little suggestion on how to maybe improve observium. Nothing more. Especially when you rush a little bit with the mouse over the graphs you have to think about a little bit what is shown on the y-axis. Percentage,Thruput (Kbit/s KByte/s,MBit/s,Mbyte/s,load factors, error rates etc.). And so I thought it might be easier - especially to new users, or when you copy out images for presentation reasons - if there would be an option to also display a label alongside the y-axis - which I still feel would be better. You are getting faster what you are seeing.

We made a design decision a long, long time ago that favours more space for graphs over including legends. For the same reason we don't include graph headers and try to condense the legends as much as possible.

If we included an axis label we'd have to shrink the graphical area of the graph to fit on the 4-graph row, giving even less data to the user. Not to mention the fact that the information already exists, directly beneath where a label would go, as the first part of the first line of the legend. Did you actually read the graph before you complained?

http://alpha.memetic.org/~adama/snaps/u0by7z69dd.png

This decision was made long ago, and we will indeed get irritated at people who question basic design aspects without actually thinking about whether what they are complaining about makes any sense at all.

...

p.s.

fuck cacti.

Maybe because I have mentioned cacti you have insulted me. It did not wanted to offend you by any means. Presently I am running an old cacti and a brand new observium installation side by side and I am comparing them. One thing I noticed (where the "other" products behaves IMHO a bit better) was the label thing. You should not feel being insulted by just reading names of competing products.

I suppose you want us to put AVERAGE:, MAXIMUM: or MINIMUM: in front of every average number to, right, because otherwise how could you possibly ever know that the number is an average without guessing?

adam.

Hi ...

We made a design decision a long, long time ago that favours more space for graphs over including legends. For the same reason we don't include graph headers and try to condense the legends as much as possible.

If we included an axis label we'd have to shrink the graphical area of the graph to fit on the 4-graph row, giving even less data to the user. Not to mention the fact that the information already exists, directly beneath where a label would go, as the first part of the first line of the legend. Did you actually read the graph before you complained?

http://alpha.memetic.org/~adama/snaps/u0by7z69dd.png

This decision was made long ago, and we will indeed get irritated at people who question basic design aspects without actually thinking about

whether what they are complaining about makes any sense at all.

Here is an example where I got a little bit confused first and therefore tried to make my suggestion. It is the disk usage popup of one of my servers:

http://www.abload.de/img/observium_axishjkxm.png

Without actually clicking the affected disk and enabling legend you do not know whether the y axis shows the total available diskspace, or a portion of it, or the percentage.

In some areas it is hard to tell what the actual unit of the y axis is at all:

Look at this: http://abload.de/img/observium_processorwrrj8.png

It is the processor usage a hp procurve switch. Is the y axis showing percentage or load factor? You have to guess that it is the percentage even when you have enabled the legend.

I fully understand design decisions. I do them also daily. I don't want to ruin the design in any way. I just kindly asked to add maybe an option for these graphs to add a description for the y axis even if you would have to sacrifice some pixels or would have to enlarge the popup a little bit.

I suppose you want us to put AVERAGE:, MAXIMUM: or MINIMUM: in front of every average number to, right, because otherwise how could you possibly

ever know that the number is an average without guessing?

The min,max,avg would be nice to have in the detailed graph view (in my case when you have clicked the disk and enable legend). I would not need it in the popups. In some areas min/max/avg are already present (as you can see it from the processor snapshot I have linked in).

Roland