Modernization of SecureCRT's UI

[dcomo]

All,

As a software developer myself (Video Game Industry), I have strong believes that presentation goes a long way. Now, when I used to do Linux software development, I lived in SecureCRT 8+ hours a day. I don't use as much now, rather 1-2 hours a day.

As a number of people have mentioned over the years, SecureCRT has a somewhat dated interface. I know that many of you will agree with me that the presentation of this app doesn't really matter, and it's the functionality that does. However, presentation and display does weigh in somewhat.

Personally, I think the MS ribbon interface is amazing and many non-Microsoft software apps have picked this up and received critical acclaim for it. (Raxco's PerfectDisk is one that comes to mind.) However, even if we couldn't get a ribbon look, how many of you would agree that new/updated icons and library support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 is due?

Again, functionality-wise SecureCRT is killer and there isn't any app available that does what it does, as easy and pleasant as it does it. However, it'd be great to have a more pleasing look.

What do you all think?

[MrC]

Agreed. I've submitted similar requests, and VanDkye is receptive.

[Olaf van der Spek]

It's only about UI style and not about UI functionality, right?
I mostly use XP with the classic theme, so I haven't really noticed the lack of Vista/W7 style.
I've also disabled the toolbar.

[gan]

I'm not a big fan of the ribbon and prefer a decent looking toolbar and find scrt to have a nice GUI the way it is today. A couple of things i don't like about the ribbon is that it take up more space compared to the smaller toolbar. Also what make the ribbon useless i think is the lack of being able to easily customize the ribbon. With the toolbar you can easily add, remove and change the buttons to customize the toolbar the way you prefer. Most products with a ribbon then you do not have the option to easily customize the ribbon.

With regards to the icons i find the current icons to look ok and don't miss more fancy looking icons. What i think would be nice is to include more icons with SCRT by default. Like when you add more buttons to the toolbar most of the functions don't have an icon so you have to create one on your own which is pretty boring. For example "reconnect all", "disconnect all", "print" and most other functions do not have an icon by default so you have to waste a lot of time if you want to have decent looking toolbar when you add those functions to the toolbar.

If the ribbon will be standard in a future version of scrt i hope they will include the option to easily customize the ribbon or even better make it optional to you can still use the good old toolbar. I think the functionality is the most important, but of course the GUI is somehow important as well. Another thing i find important is the speed so if they make the GUI very fancy and the result is that scrt become slow to start and use that would be s shame.

Regarding the speed of the application i also think Vandyke should consider using some kind of a session database instead of the .ini files they use today for the sessions. I have SCRT installed on a computer with more then 1200 sessions and when i click on the connect button to display all the sessions it's pretty slow with 1200 .ini files that have to be read.

Gan

[miked]

Hi all,

Great to hear from both sides of the spectrum!

I've added a feature request for the ability to use more modern icons or a more modern toolbar. This should not incur a usage penalty either in startup or speed of application during usage.

If we add this feature we'll post a follow up message to this forum thread. For peronal e-mail notification should this feature be added, please let us know.

[MrC]

There are plenty of opportunities for improvement. Here is a mock-up UI dialog that merges the Connect and Session Properties dialogs. No reason they should be separate.