| So here's a long list of my thoughts with the program that i constructed tonight and elaborated today. sat at work, plenty of time to spend :) most of them are general observations coming from a person that's been gaming for over 15 years (10 spent online), some are small things but some i think might be worth a look!
- when asking for permission for a program through the firewall, the window pops up asking what you would like to do with the selection. on certain faster PC's (and in additional to the game actually loading and taking up resources), it might not always be possible to click the appropriate option within the time limit set. could this be an option to toggle for advanced users? i have left the PC unattended (it's on 24 hours) last night and two program which i know regularly connect to the internet were blocked too!
- feature suggestion: when hovering over an option (both in standard and advances modes) could a popup balloon be introduced to possibly explain what the option does? although i know there is a complete dedicated knowledge base within the program itself, there is such knowledge that people take for granted (for example, heuristic scanning) that not everyone will fully understand. a quick hover over the option gives a brief description of how it affects the user.
- scan inside archives: although for basic users this would be understood as zip / rar files, but in further detail there is a larger range of archived volumes that i'm not sure whether it would scan or not: .cab, .iso, .bin, .7z, and so on. could there be an option i might've missed for this? if not, would there be a possibility that when ticked, you could choose which archives can be included or excluded?
- firewall, allowing network access: by default, there is an option for "do not ask me again": but at least 90% of the programs that have been given permissions, i have had to click this button. possibly a button for "save this setting for further programs" could be incorporated for advanced users, to save a click or two :)
- game profiles, general / AV / firewall settings: is it possible to just click the game and then have them all in tabbed view instead of having to close the window then double click again? could make it more streamlined and easier to navigate, as it got a bit tedious having to go out then back into different options!
- game profile icon: this is really insignificant but i thought it might be worth a mention: within windows, most icons are bound to a particular program. for example, team fortress 2's icon can only be found on the executable file itself, and no seperate icon file is found for it. i would like to change the icon to that, but it limits the search for just .ico files. could it be incorporated into the search to extract icon files from executables?
- MS Outlook: if the spamguard is meant as a substitution for the microsoft junk email filter, could spamguard give the option to the user to turn it off from that point on? is there any integration within spamguard to read the filters provided by microsoft for the program, and use it as a base for what spam comes through?
- firewall program permissions: just had an instance where BGAV just asked for permission for a particular program (in this case last.fm's system tray helper), and i clicked on another window just after not realising it's there. subsequently it's now not allowed without my knowing, i would have to go in and manually change it. could an option be made so that the permission request stays on top of all other windows? although i think this might conflict with the first suggestion in this post, maybe as a submenu could be created so that you could turn the "no" timer off, but then give you the option to keep always on top? if that made any sense at all :)
- bug / dev needed: in the game profiles under general settings, there is an option for "action on launch". it's giving no other option than "ask", could it be done so it gives yes and no straight from the word go, or is this meant to happen but is missing due to a bug?
i hope this helps, otherwise yo've got a strong program! :)
Trev
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