[tor-dev] Vidalia 2.0 - an complete rewrite

[Greg Norcie]

This sounds really cool. I've found in my user studies that Vidalia can
be confusing to users (since Vidalia and the TBB are two different
application windows)

Is that an issue you're trying to solve in your rewrite?


(Reference, if you want some background:
http://petsymposium.org/2012/papers/hotpets12-1-usability.pdf)
--
Greg Norcie (greg at norcie.com)
GPG key: 0x1B873635

On 2/20/13 2:37 PM, Leo Unglaub wrote:
> Hey friends,
> i want to inform you that i am working on a complete new control tool
> for Tor. I know some people use Vidalia for it, but i never liked the
> program and the people i showed vidalia often got confused.
> 
> So i started to rewrite it from scratch and i am close to the release of
> the source code. (Currently i need to clean up some classes in there)
> 
> I had a few things on my feature list for the new control tool and i
> want to share/discuss it with you. Because maybe some of my ideas are
> bad or maybe you have some additional ideas for features.
> 
> A: "native work flow". Thats one of the main goals of my rewrite. The
> current Vidalia does things a little bit different than people are used
> to do it. So they get confused, because it does not behave "naturally".
> So instead of QT i used GTK and followed as always the GNOME HIG.
> (http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/)
> 
> 
> B: "Multi configuration setup". What do i mean by that? Well, in my case
> for example i use Tor on my laptop and i am often in different places
> where i need different settings for tor. For example, if i am at home i
> can give tor all the bandwith i have, because at home i don't care. In
> my company on the other hand i cant do that. I am allowed to run Tor in
> the company, but with a bandwith limit of 2000kbit/s. (Yes, my company
> allows this ... well, i am the technical directory, so it was my call :) )
> 
> But i need a different Tor configuration there. Or if i am giving a talk
> and only have mobile internet connections i need every bit of bandwith
> for checking my emails so i want no server, only Tor client support.
> Currently i have multiple torrc files for that and always move them
> arround. That works for command line junkies like me, but even i am
> anoyed to do this multiple times a day.
> 
> So i added the "multi configuration" support into the tool. This allows
> you to define multiple configurations and simply change them with a
> click from the gnome2 notification panel.
> 
> 
> C: "GUI for config settings". Well, some users are simply not ready to
> modify config files on there own. So i provide a simple gui (tab based)
> for all config options i found in the normal torrc file. Always with an
> explonation (with needs spellchecking, because my spelling sucks in
> german and is even worse in english :) ) so the user can deside what an
> option would to.
> 
> D: "Notifications": My control tool uses the normal desktop
> notifications to inform the user about changes in the running tor
> application. For example if there is a problem building the circuit or
> something you get the notifyd message and can simply react to events
> without having the arm log open all the time.
> 
> Thats just a quick overview of what i am duing right now. The source
> code will be released soon and is of course 100% open source. If you
> have some addiional ideas, feedback, wishes, ... i would like to hear them.
> 
> Thanks and greetings
> Leo
> 
> PS: I am Germam and very sorry for every spelling error i did above.
>