Login panels

The login panel that appears depends on the authentication type chosen. For the http type, it will take the form of our browser's HTTP authentication pop-up screen. For the cookie type, the phpMyAdmin-specific login panel will be displayed (covered in Chapter 2). For the external authentication (signon), the login panel is handled by the external application itself. By default, a Server choice dialog and a Language selector are present on this panel.

However, if we are using the config authentication type, no login panel is displayed, and the first displayed interface contains the navigation and the main panels.

Navigation and main panels

These panels go together and are displayed during most of our working session with phpMyAdmin. The navigation panel is our guide through the databases and tables. The main panel is the working area where the data is managed and results appear. Its exact layout depends on the choices made from the navigation panel and the sequence of operations performed. For the majority of languages (which are written from left to right) the navigation panel is located on the left side and the main panel is on the right, but for right-to-left languages such as Hebrew, these panels are reversed.

Query window

This is a distinct window that is usually opened from the navigation panel—and sometimes from the main panel when editing an SQL query. Its main purpose is to facilitate work on queries and display the results on the main panel.

Starting page

When we start phpMyAdmin, we will see one of the following panels (depending on the authentication type specified in config.inc.php, and on whether it has more than one server defined in it):