What is Clarity and why should you care?
To answer the last question first. Clarity means the dead of flash-based clients in VMware products. Hooray! If that is not enough for you to want to celebrate this little victory. Just know there will be one less flash-based UI out there. So if that isn’t reason to celebrate, I do not know what is. Wait, that is not all. All flash-based UI’s are going be replaced with something else – Say hello to Clarity! Flash is out and the black is called Clarity, but wait. What is Clarity?
Clarity is the name of the new design framework, which VMware has built to replace all other UI’s. It has been created based on HTML/CSS and Angular 2, but more than that, it comes with an UI tool kit and UX guides to get you started. When I say, “get you started”, I really mean it. VMware has open sourced the framework. So not only are you going to see more of this. You can also build your own applications based on this framework. As with most things open source these days, it is available on GitHub right here. As if that was not pretty cool in itself. VMware has also created the documentation to back their support of this open source project 100%. This is the true commitment to the cause. Documentation that should get you up and running in no time is available here.
Only one question still open on Clarity, what does it look like?
Currently, Log Insight 4.0 and the new client in vSphere 6.5 are the only products to have the new Clarity design. As you can see, the Clarity design has some distinct features. The first thing you will notice is the bar at the very top; sometimes this bar can seem a little massive. Navigation menu is to the left. My overall feeling is that it is somewhat flat, but has a very nice and clean look, which helps ease navigation and the flow of the UI.
What the Platypus is that?
I also mentioned something about APIs. Well, I sure did, but it really has nothing to do with Clarity. It is another project called Platypus. Just like Clarity, Platypus is open source and available on GitHub. You can find out more about it here.
Platypus is as mentioned an open source project and is again based on other open source projects, namely Open API and Swagger UI. The promise is to bring better API documentation across all of VMware’s products. Currently, the following products have support.
- vRealize Automation 7
- vRealize Operations 6.2
- vRealize Log Insight 3.3
- vRealize Orchestrator 7
- NSX 6.2
As if this was not enough, there is also a project to improve APIs across VMware’s entire product suite. The future of VMware and automation suddenly does not look that bad.
