Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] New Wireshark welcome page!

[Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>]

Graeme Lunt schrieb:
> > No, that's what the about dialog is for. I want to avoid too much
> > information on that page, because it will get more and more confusing
> > and less informative.
> >     
> I think it is useful to have this information on the front page as
> most users will never actually go and look at the about dialog. If
> they can see that their copy of Wireshark is 12 months out of date
> when they start it, they might look for a later version.
>   
So how do they know that the version is 12 months old? How do they know 
that a new version is available every 3-6 months or so? Do they actually 
care about these details?

IMHO, this version discussion is a very developer centric point of view. 
For a developer it's important to know it, if some user comes up with a 
problem.


BUT - to my experience - for a common user this usually is of NO interest.
> > Hopefully we'll get an automatic update mechanism for the Windows
> > version in the not too distant future, so the version info won't be that
> > interesting as it currently may seem.
> >     
> Unfortunately, for my user community (and I suspect others), they will
> not be able to use this functionality as they will generally be on an
> isolated network.
>   
While my user community will be able to use this update mechanism, I 
also have to face this problem until the update stuff is available, 
here's how I currently deal with it:

a) set up an "in house" webpage, centric to the protocols and stuff used 
"in house" (with a specialised changelog, install instructions of WS and 
additional "in house" stuff like special settings, filter strings that 
proved useful, ...)
b) set up an "in house" mailing list (low volume) where users can 
register - I manually maintain this list

So everytime I get contacted by someone using Wireshark in house, I 
point him to our webpage and mention the mailing list - in the long run 
this saved me a *lot* of time as the number of user questions went down 
dramatically! For every new WS version, I'll send out a mail with 
details of the changes, where to find install files, some general news, ...


Even with all this stuff, getting a mail for a new version and alike, 
users don't tend to upgrade their WS if a new version comes out.


To my opinion, most users will simply ignore the version number - and 
therefore it's not a good idea to clutter the welcome page with it ...

Regards, ULFL

P.S: See 
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/principles-simplicity.html.en