Feature Request: port the 1.3x web interface to 1.4.x

[Kyle Schmitt]

Short version: my servers run older cups (1.3.x), getting my first exposure to cups 1.4.x in Ubuntu 9.10.  The new web UI is pretty, but several steps backwards for usability.  Can the old web-ui be ported please?

I'm a linux admin for a manufacturing company, so I'm in charge of a fairly large number of printers.  Being a production environment, and using server versions of linux, the CUPS I use is fairly dated (1.2.x through 1.3.x).  The web UI is 1.3 may look slightly dated, but it's easy to navigate, and you see most of the information you need on any given screen.  After updating my laptop to ubuntu 9.10 I came face to face with cups 1.4.  The interface is pretty, but not very usable.

Add a printer: If you're in an environment with many printers, this page is now painful.  Since it's AJAX, it populates the list of printers as you view it.  If you want to choose something form the "Other Network Printers" list, your target can jump off the page while you try to click it.  Yes the drop-down list of auto-detected printers in 1.3.x was ugly, but this isn't better.

Managing an individual printer:
Adding options to clean the print heads & print the self-test page were nice.  Breaking the options for the printer into separate pages for general, banners & policies is a pain.  It's nice to see the whole picture all at once.

On one had the web UI is the least important part of CUPS: it doesn't rasterize pages, do scheduling, handle the logging, check for print errors, etc.  But in some ways it's the most important part of CUPS, because it's what people see first, and use most to interact with it.  The old UI was admittedly a bit ugly, but it was very functional.

Thanks
--Kyle