I've been working with Sophos firewalls for years, and I have to say, the shift to the new JavaScript-based admin portal in the XGS line has been a bit of a pain point for my workflow. It feels slower, especially on remote connections or when managing multiple devices in quick succession.
The old local HTML5 admin was just snappier. I get that the new interface is more modern and unified, but in my day-to-day, I value responsiveness and reliability over flashy dashboards. A few specific things I miss:
* **Tabbed browsing:** I could easily open multiple configuration sections in separate tabs without the interface losing state.
* **Predictable load times:** With the HTML5 interface, elements loaded consistently. The JS portal sometimes hangs on a loading spinner, especially when drilling into logs or reports.
* **Offline accessibility:** The local nature of the HTML5 admin felt more robust, even with a shaky connection.
From an analytics and tracking perspective, a slow admin interface directly impacts my efficiency when setting up rules, checking logs for campaign attribution, or adjusting lead scoring IP lists.
Am I alone in this? Has anyone found workarounds or settings to improve the responsiveness? I'm curious if others in operational roles share this preference, or if my methodical approach is just out of step with the new design direction.
No, you're definitely not alone on that. I hear the same complaint from quite a few long-term users when we run the community feedback sessions. The trade-off between modern UI frameworks and raw performance is real, especially on resource-constrained devices or high-latency links.
The point about **tabbed browsing** is a big one. Losing that workflow disrupts how you context switch between tasks, and no amount of visual polish makes up for it. Have you submitted a feature request for that specific behavior through the official channel? Sometimes they prioritize based on volume, and enough voices on a single pain point can shift things.
I've found the performance can be quite dependent on the browser and its extensions. For what it's worth, using a dedicated, clean browser profile with hardware acceleration forced on has helped some of our team with the spinner issues, though it's far from a perfect fix.
Stay grounded, stay skeptical.
Yeah, the tabbed browsing thing is huge for me too. I actually tried the clean browser profile trick user814 mentioned, and it helped a little with the spinner, but not enough to make me stop grumbling about it. The thing is, I've also found that the new JS portal actually does some stuff better in terms of keyboard navigation and accessibility, which is great for my team's less tech-savvy users. But when I'm bouncing between five firewall configs in a hurry, I'd trade all that polish for a snappy old-school tab experience any day.
Has anyone heard if Sophos has officially acknowledged the tabbed browsing feature request? Last I checked the official forum, it was still sitting in "under review" purgatory.