The evolution of Quay.io UI: Progress and future vision

The Quay team is excited to announce that we have reached a new milestone in our journey in reimagining a modern Quay.io experience.

We have been working hard to refresh the Quay.io user experience with a new user interface (UI) redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up. Today, we are releasing the first public preview on Quay.io and we would like your input. Help us build a better Quay today with this five-minute survey, and get access to new features.

Once you sign in to your Quay.io account, simply use the toggle in the top navigation bar to switch to the new UI.

You will be redirected to the new screen layout, and your selection will persist until you log out.

A balanced approach: Progress and performance

If you are familiar with other PatternFly-based projects like OKD or Cockpit you will feel right at home. Quay.io's look and feel have been modernized and aligned with other Red Hat managed services. The underlying PatternFly framework gives Quay.io a security-forward, responsive and intuitive interface to carry out daily tasks in the container registry service.

We're navigating UI changes with care for our users. The existing terminology and data model have been retained from the original Quay.io experience that launched in 2013. On the left side of the navigation panel, you can immediately access any organization you own or contribute to. Your user account can now be found among the list of organizations, too. Tabular and paginated lists combined with powerful filtering features that help you browse content more quickly.

The new tag list view gives you handy shortcuts and comprehensive information about images contained in a repository.

As depicted above, you can delve into container image information with Quay.io's newest functionality—the enhanced tag listing view. Here you can glean crucial details about your container images at a glance including image size to creation/modification dates, digests and security vulnerabilities. Whether it's regular or multi-arch images, you can now seamlessly review data on architecture-specific child manifests. For faster navigation, leverage quick shortcuts to generate pull commands. Managing container images has also been simplified within the new Quay.io UI.

The UI features we have remastered in PatternFly include:

• Organization list: A summary of all organizations accessible to the user with summary counts of teams, users and robot accounts, and last modification date.
• Tag list: A unified repository view that streamlines access to vital image information like pull commands and representation of multi-arch images.
• Tag history: Enabling an audit trail to all tag-related events in a repository, including the ability to restore tags to older versions in case of accidental deletion or overwrites.

The tag history view gives a look into how tags were created, overwritten or deleted over time.

• Account settings: Personalization options for optimal control of the experience.
• Robot accounts: Wizard-based creation and batch permission management.
• Teams: Facilitating streamlined collaboration through team-based permission management.

The team management panel puts organization owners in full control over who can do what.

• Default permissions: Defining a standard set of permissions for any repository.

The default permission setting enables you to make sure that a certain set of users always have appropriate access to any content in the organization.

The next two redesigned features we want to deliver are Usage logs and Builds. These additions will bring us closer to providing a unified experience across the old and new UI. We expect to finish the build-out of the new UI with Account and Billing settings in the first quarter of 2024, at which point we will permanently move to the new UI.

In addition to these refreshed interfaces, this announcement includes an exciting highlight: We're thrilled to announce the integration of the Quay.io experience with console.redhat.com.

What will change for you

Overall, these UI changes will provide value in the following ways:

• Improved performance and reliability: The new UI leaves behind old, unmaintained JavaScript libraries, providing a more robust front-end architecture.
• Modern user experience: Enjoy a modern design that enhances usability and navigation. This release aims to address top requests for increased intuitiveness and product consistency.
• Improved productivity: The new UI offers an easier way to manage content at scale. Nearly all modification and configuration steps can now be performed across a large set of organizations, repositories, users, teams, robots or image tags at once, reducing the need for custom batch processing outside of the UI.
• Foundation for Red Hat Insights: The updated UI sets a strong foundation for automation and analysis to provide an overview of user data in the form of an insightful dashboard. Stay tuned for "My Quay Page" data insights later this year.

We understand that adapting to change takes time. That is why we've introduced a toggle that allows you to switch between the new and old UI as we incrementally complete the new UI experience. This means that (for a limited time) you can start exploring the new features and enhancements while having the option to revert to the old UI if needed.

A change of address: Consistent experience

All the UI features we prioritized deliver core functionality, navigation and layout in alignment with the UI of console.redhat.com—the home of all managed services provided by Red Hat.

This was a conscious decision because we plan to move the user experience of the Quay.io web UI for all authenticated users to console.redhat.com/quay. Users without a Quay.io account will continue to use services at the quay.io domain. Both experiences will be based on the same new PatternFly interface. This change will commence once the new UI reaches feature parity with the current interface.

The UI change allows us to offer the Quay.io service for users with an account alongside a comprehensive suite of Red Hat offerings, providing a unified experience for registered users across all Red Hat managed services. To simplify this transition, authenticated users will be redirected to console.redhat.com/quay as soon as any action that requires authentication is performed on Quay.io.

Ongoing commitment to open source

Quay.io will remain accessible to public users and also the free usage tier still exists, making Quay.io a home to FOSS projects. Our commitment to open source and your experience is at the core of everything we do. The Quay.io website will remain the entry point for users without a Quay.io login and allows to view and search public content. Users that want to carry out actions that require a login, like managing their account or their private repositories, will be forwarded to the Quay.io UI at console.redhat.com/quay.

Your voice matters: Join us in shaping the future of Quay.io

As we gear up for the changes this new user experience will bring, your feedback is our guiding light and continues to shape the path ahead. Please take the time to share your experiences with us on our new survey and console.redhat.com/quay UI today!

The journey towards an enhanced Quay UI continues, and we can't wait to have you on board as we explore new horizons and embrace the future of Quay. Contact the team for any issues at support@quay.io.

Note: The timeline depicted is subject to change without notice; however, we will do everything in our power to meet these estimates. The estimated dates represent provisional plans and rough estimates to the best of our knowledge today.