# Cylc 8 GUI is extremely limited?

**URL:** <https://cylc.discourse.group/t/cylc-8-gui-is-extremely-limited/504>\
**Category:** Cylc 8 Migration\
**Created:** [July 13, 2022, 10:15pm UTC](https://cylc.discourse.group/t/cylc-8-gui-is-extremely-limited/504 "2022-07-13T22:15:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![russbnavy](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/cylc.discourse.group/russbnavy/32/96_2.png) [@russbnavy](https://cylc.discourse.group/u/russbnavy)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 10:15pm UTC](https://cylc.discourse.group/t/cylc-8-gui-is-extremely-limited/504/1 "2022-07-13T22:15:04Z")

</div>

One of the major things we use in Cylc 7 is the GTK GUI for everything from manually editing one-shot jobs, viewing logs, viewing dependencies, and accessing task documentation via the URL field and I’m seeing none of that in the new web-based UI… I haven’t found anything in the docs about the UI defaulting to a restricted set of controls, so are all those abilities from the Cylc 7 GUI gone with Cylc 8 or am I missing a flag that I need to define?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hilary.j.oliver](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/cylc.discourse.group/hilary.j.oliver/32/4_2.png) [@hilary.j.oliver](https://cylc.discourse.group/u/hilary.j.oliver)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 5:30am UTC](https://cylc.discourse.group/t/cylc-8-gui-is-extremely-limited/504/2 "2022-07-14T05:30:53Z")

</div>

Hi @russbnavy ,

Well, yes and no! (And the “yes” is only temporary).

The Cylc 8 web UI is **much more capable** than the Cylc 7 GUI, with regard to data model and communications protocols (and more too, such as fine-grained authorization) to handle all kinds of workflow efficiently in the future. [Architecture — Cylc 8.0rc3 documentation](https://cylc.github.io/cylc-doc/latest/html/reference/architecture/index.html)

However, we haven’t yet implemented some higher-level features of the old GUI on top of the new framework. Missing features include:

- the “graph view” (i.e. dependency view)
- the “dot view” (the 3rd Cylc 7 GUI view)
- “edit run” (presumably what you mean by: _manually editing one-shot jobs_)
  - ( **workaround** : change task settings with `cylc broadcast` before triggering)

- integrated job log viewer
  - ( **workaround** : use `cylc review` from the latest Cylc 7 release, which as an interim measure has been modified to handle Cylc 8 log directories).

From your question I wonder if you haven’t found the control capability in the new web GUI, though. If you click on a (monochromatic) task icon you will get a menu with all the usual commands (trigger, hold, release, etc.).

Anyhow, I think you can rest assured that the new web UI will totally outclass the old desktop GUI before too long.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![russbnavy](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/cylc.discourse.group/russbnavy/32/96_2.png) [@russbnavy](https://cylc.discourse.group/u/russbnavy)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 3:17pm UTC](https://cylc.discourse.group/t/cylc-8-gui-is-extremely-limited/504/3 "2022-07-14T15:17:00Z")

</div>

Ok, yes I was able to figure out the task controls (hold, release, trigger, etc) but like you say I didn’t see the missing bits. That answers my question, thanks!