Re: Feature: option to open windows as tabs

[Paul Offord <Paul.Offord () advance7 com>]

A couple of things I’ve noted.  Microsoft Message Analyzer uses tabs in the main window but I confess I don’t think 
I’ve used them to look at multiple traces.

Second point, maybe dockable windows would be better.  We use Telerik for Workbench and it provides a typical dockable 
window mechanism.  This meets both needs.  If you dock one window on top of another you get tabs.  Or you can undock a 
window and move it to another monitor.  By the way, I’m not promoting Telerik here, just using it for illustration.

Best regards…Paul

From: Wireshark-dev <wireshark-dev-bounces () wireshark org> On Behalf Of Roland Knall
Sent: 07 May 2018 09:17
To: Developer support list for Wireshark <wireshark-dev () wireshark org>
Subject: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Feature: option to open windows as tabs

I think before we submit this patch, we should agree on a general UI concept going forward.

TL;DR: I think tabs for the main window is the wrong approach and will alienate a lot of users


There are basically three main uses for tabs in an application (besides from preference dialogs).

The first approach is your basic webbrowser, who displays multiple webpages in each individual tab. This actually is 
something Apple tries to enforce anyway and others do as well, but always the content of the tabs are similar. It is 
always a webcontent or a textdocument, .... They can be opened and closed individually and do not care about or 
influence each other. The Wireshark equivalent would be a capture file. IO Graph and the packet list do influence each 
other deeply, as does the packet list and every other dialog.

Now in the second approach (e.g. iTunes or music player application), you may have tabs which present you the same data 
in a different method  (Album, Artists, Playlist, ...). In these cases the tabs are always present, their view can be 
toggled, but in reality they are always there. Equivalent in Wireshark would be, that all dialogs are generated on 
capture file load and be always there, but hidden.

If tabs are not used for the main window, the usually are being used as utility tabs (see your favorite IDE e.g. 
QtCreator, Visual Studio, Eclipse, ...). This would be the third approach. They present additional information to the 
main document, a search possibility, graphical representation, ....

Wireshark's dialogs do not present different, independant data (first approach), but in the most cases an aggregated 
view (third approach) and sometimes an alternative view (second approach). Therefore, making them tabs to the main 
window is contradictory (as stated above). Users would have a program which operates very different to other programs 
they use daily. Making dialogs tabs to a utility window (byte view, packet detail) seems more to be the natural method. 
And then they can be dockable as well.

One last (but important) argument is screen size. A lot of people have big screens now. The tabbed approach for the 
main window really only makes sense on smaller screens. On a big screen tabs do not lead to a better utilisation of the 
space, making the work with a lot of tabs more cumbersome.

regards
Roland

Am So., 6. Mai 2018 um 09:37 Uhr schrieb Paul Offord <Paul.Offord () advance7 com<mailto:Paul.Offord () advance7 com>>:
> I *think* Windows DLLs may also function as shared libraries.

They do.  One instance in RAM mapped into the virtual address space of any process referencing the DLL.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wireshark-dev <wireshark-dev-bounces () wireshark org<mailto:wireshark-dev-bounces () wireshark org>> On Behalf 
Of Guy Harris
Sent: 05 May 2018 19:25
To: Developer support list for Wireshark <wireshark-dev () wireshark org<mailto:wireshark-dev () wireshark org>>
Subject: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Feature: option to open windows as tabs

On May 5, 2018, at 10:04 AM, Peter Wu <peter () lekensteyn nl<mailto:peter () lekensteyn nl>> wrote:

> Memory usage will probably suck due to exact copies of the process,

On most if not all UN*Xes, the executable image's code and read-only data, and libwireshark's/libwiretap's/libwsutil's 
code and read-only data, should be shared between all of the processes.

You won't, however, share the results of reading in configuration files, e.g. the new fields added by reading in the 
RADIUS and DIAMETER dictionaries...

...unless they're read in by the UI process, and handed to the dissector processes as (read-only) shared memory.

I *think* Windows DLLs may also function as shared libraries.
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