Re: [rainmap] RFC on UI mockups

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 03:47:42PM -0700, alexandru wrote:
> On 2010-05-31, at 11:53 AM, David Fifield wrote:
>
> > On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 05:59:57PM -0700, Fyodor wrote:
> > > > Now included at the bottom of the scan is the full nmap command. The
> > > > user will be allowed to click it and then copy it from a pop-up
> > > > dialog. Since scans have names and the full command is readily
> > > > visible, I've opted on removing the host/IP column. 
> > >
> > > Looks good (http://rainmap.labs.hackd.net/).
> >
> > On the topic of Nmap command lines, I want to make sure that you, Alex,
> > are aware of the NmapOptions class in Zenmap,
> > zenmap/zenmapCore/NmapOptions.py. It has a command line parser that
> > produces an object whose attributes you can query. It was written for
> > the profile editor in Zenmap, so that the user could enter a command
> > line and have the GUI widgets automatically update themselves. It has
> > the additional benefit that to store profiles we don't need to keep a
> > bunch of flags like "OS detection?" "traceroute?" but can just store the
> > text string.
>
> Upon further review of both the Zenmap UI and the aforementioned class
> (Fyodor also brought it up during our last meeting) I think the most
> sensible approach would be to take an approach to UI similar to
> Zenmap's. I see a big benefit in allowing users that are familiar with
> Zenmap already to quickly transfer that knowledge over to Rainmap.
>
> Are there any parts of the Zenmap profile editor UI that anyone has
> ideas for improvements for? I mean this both in terms of grouping of
> options (though that seems quite straightforward) and other usability
> concerns. David, I reckon you might have spent the most amount of time
> thinking about it, so maybe you have some ideas queued up already.

I don't have any recommendations now, more like anti-recommendations.
The Zenmap profile editor is constructed dynamically from
share/zenmap/misc/profile_editor.xml. That's something I've thought
about getting rid of, so I suggest not using that as the basis for the
web GUI. It's nice because you can add an option just by editing the XML
file, but it's also inflexible and I think it hurts the flexibility of
the interface. We're going to have to work around it to add
Kirubakaran's script selection interface, for example.

There used to be a "command wizard" in Zenmap that offered the same
options as the profile editor, but forced you to go through the tabs in
order using next/previous buttons. We removed that because it's better
to have all the options at your disposal from the beginning. This is
especially true when you've got a nice tall web page to deal with.

I can imagine that you want to highlight the most common options
somehow, so you don't have to hunt for them in an exhaustive list of
options. Maybe a separate section at the top with the most-used options,
and then sections for "Timing," "Source," etc. below that. The named
sections should repeat options that are also in the most-used category,
so you can find them in either place.

David Fifield
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