#119·termshark

Misc. UX bikeshedding

Author: deliciouslytypedCreated Apr 11, 2021Updated Sep 7, 2024

I'm running v2.2.0 and I've done my best to skim the FAQ and user guide. These are some mild annoyances as a new user:

  • Is there any way to scroll the bytes view or did I just miss it?
  • It would be nice if there was a consistent "quit/exit/close window/etc" button, as opposed to having to navigate "close" buttons sometimes, and sometimes not. For example use q for top level quit and x or c for close, or whatever. The idea is to use a different button for destructive and nondestructive "go away" operations. These should be consistent and present everywhere.
  • Buttons aren't labeled with their (global) hotkeys. If this bothers you there could be a config flag for it. It's easier to learn a UI when there are labels. All buttons should have hotkeys.
  • Not obvious how to open the analysis or misc menus with the keyboard (pressing ESC doesn't do anything for me)
  • The state of "toggle dark mode" is basically obvious, but "toggle packet colors" has no indicator of the current toggle state.
  • It's not quite obvious how to exit filter editing with the keyboard
  • The "show log" interface behaves oddly somehow, if I press "q" sometimes it asks me if I want to quit instead of closing the log.
  • The user guide, faq, bug report, and feature request buttons do nothing. I'm assuming this is because I'm running in a container and don't have xdg-open configured. The FAQ and user guide should be included in inline dialogs with a statement at the top suggesting the user go to the (stated) github URLs for more recent versions. The bug report and feature request buttons should open a dialog asking if the user wants to open their browser (the user may not want to launch their browser session) and show a copyable url.
  • This is really two points: ideally there would be a line at the bottom showing the valid keybindings in the current state (besides the standard navigation ones, namey the arrow keys), and there should be bindings for every action
  • would be nice if you could bring up the UI anyway even if there haven't been any packets yet

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7cbjlV1l28U