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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Icon Poll - is this OK?

From: Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:58:00 -0400
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:42 AM, Edwin Groothuis
<Edwin.Groothuis@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On 4/10/13 3:57 PM, Kurt Knochner wrote:
>>>> Laura Chappell wrote:
>>>
>>>>> RECOMMENDATION:
>>>>> Start= just green arrow
>>>>> Stop= just red square
>>>
>>>> a lot of other network sniffers chose that for their icons too.
>>>
>>>> http://goo.gl/EtySX
>>
>>> This makes zero sense to me. Why would you click on a "play" button to
>>> capture packets?
>
>> This.
>
>> At risk of repeating myself: if the icon is confusing fix the icon,
>> but I think the recording metaphor is right. Perhaps Guy's suggestion
>> of adding fill/depth so that it looks less like an indicator light and
>> more like a button is worth pursuing.
>>
>> However, as Laura's poll showed, the power of green=start and red=stop
>> is not to be ignored (this suggests to me that the standard 'record'
>> icon of a red circle isn't optimal in the first place). Perhaps just a
>> green circle for start and a red square for stop?
>
> The stop button doesn't do anything if there is no capturing happening.
> The capture button doesn't do anything if there is a capture happening.
>
> Why do we need two buttons?
> Can't we have a single button which is for enabling and disabling the capturing of packets.

Perhaps it makes more sense to merge 'start' and 'restart' since
(especially as of r48818) their icons are already similar. This would
also mean that accidental double-clicks would be effectively harmless
- you would at most lose the packets which arrived during the
double-click interval.

Evan