Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] Redesign of Context "Popup" menus, request for comments...
Hi List!
I've started to reorder/rearrange the popup menus in the three main
panes and recently checked in my first proposal.
This proposal is meant as a "Request for Comments" as others *will*
disagree about the decisions I've made, so we might find a concensus
about it. Please don't get upset if your "favourite" item has moved/removed!
As a general guideline, I've tried to follow the guidelines of the
"GNOME Human Interface Guide" about popup menus, see:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/menus-types.html#menu-type-popup
To qoute the GNOME HIG: "Popup menus provide shortcuts to those menu
items that are applicable only to the currently selected object".
So I started to remove all general elements not relevant to the
currently selected object, like "Display Filters", "Coloring Rules" and
such. These should not be in an object relevant menu.
Then I tried to rearrange the remaining items by their relevance and
tried to group them together where it does make sense. Please have a
look at the current subversion.
Some problems I'm already aware of:
1.) the "Print" item in the packet list should set the packet range to
"Selected packet only", I think I've broke that a long time ago :-( and
I'll have to fix that
2.) the "Protocol Preferences" item in the packet details should not
only select the relevant protocol page, but should also select the tree
view correctly
3.) the "Copy" item in the packet bytes might reduce the number of
selected bytes when used
4.) what should the missing "Copy" item in the packet details pane
should copy? The protocol description, the selected bytes, ...?
To 3.):
This is a serious problem I currently don't have a good solution for.
The problem behind this: if a specific byte is selected in the packet
bytes, the protocol field corresponding to it will be selected. But if
the user had selected only a protocol before, this will reduce the
amount of bytes selected (from all the protocols bytes to the field
bytes only). This way, I don't see a good way to "Copy"/"Export"
protocol relevant bytes :-(
Conclusion: I don't see my proposal as the ultimate solution, and it has
some drawbacks. However, if we want to have a more general "Copy" item
for several places, this will bring up the problems I've described above
anyway. The proposal I've made might be full of problems I just don't
see, so please comment if you see some of them.
But: Before posting something like: I use to do "this and that" for such
a while, why do you want to change it, please think about new users
which have to learn all the "uncommon behaviour" Ethereal still shows
and I just want to reduce uncommon behaviour, so Ethereal acts just like
all the other programs around the world ;-)
Regards, ULFL
