Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] New Wireshark welcome page!
From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:42:12 -0700

On Apr 16, 2008, at 7:10 PM, Maynard, Chris wrote:

Hi Ulf,

I like it. I always thought the blank gray screen at startup was somewhat plain and boring. We've got all the real estate to do something with, why not put it to good use?

Yes - the new one gets a "nice glitz" award from me!

Somewhat related to this - I was thinking about proposing a "Wireshark Tips" at startup - the "Did you know?" stuff that many programs have that depict a "Tip of the day" for instance. A lot of new features keep getting added to Wireshark and I'm not sure everyone is always aware of them, so that might be one way to help introduce these features. It's easy to assume that everyone will actually go back and re-read the user documentation to find out what's new each time, but I'm not sure that actually happens. One thing I find about these tips though is that many times they get turned off because it's annoying to have to hit a close button each time upon startup for the tip dialog; however, if there's a section on this new startup page of yours reserved for a "Tip of the day" and perhaps with a "Next Tip" button to cycle through the tips, then the user wouldn't have to close an extra dialog. That to me would seem like it would be useful.

That also sounds like a good idea.

3) Security: Text should read, "Work with Wireshark as securely as possible"

I've checked in a fix for that.

6) Add a development section? Getting started, README.developer, SVN link, mailing lists, bugzilla, buildbot, reporting bugs, links to IETF (for RFC's), IANA, etc.???

Well, maybe - but I suspect 99 44/100% of the users aren't going to be developers, so maybe just pointing them to the Wireshark Web site would suffice for that.