ANNOUNCEMENT: Live Wireshark University & Allegro Packets online APAC Wireshark Training Session
April 17th, 2024 | 14:30-16:00 SGT (UTC+8) | Online

Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Capture start and capture stop icons in the toolbar

From: Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 15:06:38 -0500
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 2:41 PM, Michael Tuexen
<Michael.Tuexen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2012, at 8:01 PM, Evan Huus wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> For the Qt toolbar I created start and stop capture icons based on the
>>> media player/recorder "record" (circle) and "stop" (square)
>>> conventions[1][2]. "Record" makes more sense to me; we are recording
>>> packets to disk after all. It also makes things easier if we ever get
>>> around to adding a playback feature. My versions are
>>> capture_start_24.png, capture_start_active_24.png, and
>>> capture_stop_24.png in the "image" directory.
>>
>> +1
>>
>>> A media-player-ized "capture options" icon could be a record button with
>>> a superimposed wrench. I'm not sure about the "interface list" or
>>> "restart capture" buttons however.
>>
>> +1 for the "capture options" icon.
>>
>> I would suggest that (in qtshark) the entire "interface list" dialog
>> be merged into the "capture options" dialog - there's a large amount
>> of information duplicated between them and they do almost the same
>> thing already. The dialog should generally be rethought at the same
>> time, as the current "capture options" dialog is already quite busy --
>> perhaps splitting it into tabs is the way to go? With the dialogues
> Hi Evan,
>
> the capture options dialog was rethought for 1.8 to support the
> capturing from multiple interfaces. We wanted to clean things up
> on the one hand side, don't change too much on the other.

That was already in trunk when I first started hacking on Wireshark :)

I'm not too familiar with the old (1.6?) dialog, but after a quick
glance at some old documentation screenshots it looks like the 1.8
version is already a lot cleaner than it was.

> So if you have concrete suggestions how to improve the capture
> options dialog box, Irene and myself will be more than happy
> to discuss it. Please provide some feedback.

I have a bunch of ideas floating around in my head - I will try and do
some simple wireframes tonight, but for now, a quick summary:

Three tabs: Input, Output, Options
- Input tab contains some melding of the list of interfaces in
"capture options" and the list of interfaces in "capture interfaces".
- Output tab contains everything from the "Capture File(s)" section in
"capture options", plus possibly a few more we don't expose right now.
- Options tab contains the other three sections from "capture options"
(display options, name resolution, stop capture...)

Some misc other things I've been thinking about:
- it would be nice if the "Capture on all interfaces" checkbox lived
in the column title as a master checkbox (see the "In Store" column at
[1] for an example).
- it would be nice if the "Prom. Mode" column contained editable
checkboxes, and the "Capture all in promiscuous mode" was a column
master checkbox as well
- it's not immediately clear in the "Stop Capture..." section whether
multiple checked options will be combined with a logical AND or a
logical OR
- same AND vs OR issue with the various "Use multiple files" options
- the "capture interfaces" dialog has a button for each interface,
whereas the "capture options" dialog has double-clickable rows -- I'm
not sure which one is better, but we should pick one (I'm leaning
towards the buttons)

I'm be very happy to discuss further, this is all just
back-of-a-napkin ideas right now.

Cheers,
Evan

[1] http://dhtmlx.com/docs/products/dhtmlxGrid/samples/08_filtering/03_pro_filter_num.html

> Best regards
> Michael
>> merged we only need one icon, which can be the record button with a
>> superimposed wrench.
>>
>> For "restart capture" I would think we should be using a record button
>> with superimposed "refresh" circular arrow people know from web
>> browsing. Perhaps the current "reload capture file" icon would be
>> sufficient there?
>>
>>> At some point I was hoping to see if we could get Elliott Aldrich (who
>>> made the current document icon and several interface icons) to create
>>> updated versions of the main toolbar icons including the capture ones.
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons#Media
>>> [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons#Media
>>>
>>> On 12/7/12 6:38 AM, Maynard, Chris wrote:
>>>> +1
>>>>
>>>> There was mention of these icons some time ago, but no changes were ever made: http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201107/msg00092.html
>>>>
>>>> - Chris
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: wireshark-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [wireshark-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Guy Harris [guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
>>>> Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 4:08 AM
>>>> To: wireshark-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> Subject: [Wireshark-dev] Capture start and capture stop icons in the toolbar
>>>>
>>>> On Dec 6, 2012, at 5:46 PM, gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Use a different "close" button in the main toolbar. It looks better but
>>>>> is still wrong (on OS X at least).
>>>>
>>>> As long as we're playing with the toolbar:
>>>>
>>>> I've always found the icon on the "start a capture" button a bit non-obvious.  I guess it's supposed to be an image of a plug-in network adapter card for some parallel bus (although that's not the first thing that comes to mind when I look at it), but:
>>>>
>>>>        1) the sorts of machines on which a lot of people run Wireshark have built-in network adapters
>>>>
>>>> and
>>>>
>>>>        2) even a lot of the add-on adapters out there plug into serial buses (USB, PCI Express/Thunderbolt)
>>>>
>>>> so a "conventional PCI" card might be an out-of-date icon these days, and, in addition, a number of the other sniffers I've seen use the CD player "start" (right-pointing triangle, pick your color), "stop" (square, probably red or black), and, in some cases, "pause" (two parallel vertical lines) icons for the capture buttons.
>>>>
>>>> ("Pause" means "don't receive packets, but, if you click the pause button again, continue capturing with the same options, without discarding or saving the already-captured packets.")
>>>>
>>>
>>> ___________________________________________________________________________
>>> Sent via:    Wireshark-dev mailing list <wireshark-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> Archives:    http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev
>>> Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev
>>>             mailto:wireshark-dev-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe
>> ___________________________________________________________________________
>> Sent via:    Wireshark-dev mailing list <wireshark-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Archives:    http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev
>> Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev
>>             mailto:wireshark-dev-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe
>>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Sent via:    Wireshark-dev mailing list <wireshark-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Archives:    http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev
> Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev
>              mailto:wireshark-dev-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe