| -----Original Message-----
| From: Ulf Lamping
|
| Hi List!
|
| After having a deep thought about the usability of the
| Ethereal menu in general, and reading the "Human Interface
| Guidelines" both of Gnome and KDE, I would like to suggest a
| cleaned up menu structure and other minor usability enhancements.
|
| As a new release will be come in the next days, I don't want
| to start changing things in CVS, before this release is out.
| Otherwise the users will be contronted two times with "major"
| GUI updates.
|
| Please find attached a html document, which will outline the
| changes I'm thinking of.
|
| Feel free to send comments to this on the developer list (if
| you find an error, have an answer to one of the open question, ...)
|
| Regards, ULFL
Excellent overview!
Regarding "Edit->Mark Frame" feature, I'd like to have an
"Invert Selection" as a minimum addition.
"View->Show frame in new window": replace with
"View->Frame in new window"
I suppose the "Analyse->Decode As" will still be available
by right-clicking on a packet in the tree pane? If so, we
can then also get rid of "Analysis->Follow TCP Stream".
Should "TCP Stream Analysis" be part of "Analyze" or of
"Statistics"? IMHO both menu items overlap in functionality.
Regarding the Packet versus Frame discussion, I think this is difficult to
circumvent as every protocol defines an own name for its SDU/PDU. Ethernet
and Frame Relay talk of frames, while ATM talks of packets :) Upper-level
protocols define their own jargon: TCP segments, IP datagrams, others define
PDUs that convey SDUs etc... So all depends on the lowest-level protocol in
the capture.
Regarding capture versus display filters, I thought Ethereal once intended
to be rather independent from the packet capture interface, and for this I
think it is OK to keep both (capture and display filter language)in. However
I agree that not all users have access to pcap man pages, so we will have to
provide at least an URL and ideally a pcap man page to Ethereal.
Maybe we can provide a "Cool tip of the day" feature where FAQ items (and
the capture versus display filter language) are displayed as pop-up on start
of Ethereal (and via an "i" button on Ulf's new toolbar?)...
Something not mentioned here but discussed over the last few days, is
providing a mechanism that prevents automatic rescan of the entire packet
list when the end-user is not yet done with configuring (e.g., IO-stat
automatically scans the packet list at almost every click). Instead a button
"Apply" should be foreseen.
Regards,
Olivier