Comments for ESET Smart Security 7
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* 32-bit on W7 Pro 32-bit *
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USER INTERFACE APPEARANCE - Visual Usability
I have not tried any ESET products
before, so let me say I found the layout
and variety of controls attractive.
Thanks for a very pretty dashboard
to work with.
I realize years of development on previous
products used by other reviewers lead them
to comment favorably on the familiarity of
the interface. Nevertheless, I hope I provide
useful feedback about the visual impact on
the first-time user, with long familiarity
with the presentation of GUIs and the
evolution of their style.
I have a programming background and
the eyes of a sexagenerian (60+ year-old).
FYI, 3 times more light gets into the
eyes of a young person vs. and old person.
This is a URL for an article about dispersion
of eyesight deficits among the population:
"Age-Related Vision Loss in the Workplace"
hxxp://www.afb.org/section.aspx?TopicID=116&SubTopicID=70&DocumentID=2888&mode=print
I am using an 20" diagonal LCD screen
display (Dell E207WFP 1680 x 1050 pixels)
11.5" high, 17" wide (two 8.5" x 11" pieces of
paper side by side). This is a minimal size
screen for a desktop, but larger than any
laptop, and more resolution than a cheap
laptop like my old Dell Studio 17" LCD
with 1440 x 900 vs. HDTV is 1920 x 1080.
On the 20" 1680 x 1050 pixel display, the
Title of white characters on grey banner
"ESET SMART SECURITY 7 [beta]" (largest on the
window opened by "Open ESET Smart Security 7"),
are barely 4mm in height. The Windows title
bar "[e] ESET Smart Security - BETA are 3 mm high.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS - USABILITY
TESTING the window opened by "Open ESET Smart Security 7":
Topics below are FONT SIZE, WIDGET SIZE, and COLORS
FONT SIZE
Layout is clear, similar to Windows Explorer:
top level menu in left hand column, menu selected
page on the right.
Clean interface, but small fonts are tough on
older eyes and more likely to be misread.
Changing Windows text size has no effect on
ESET text sizes!
On Windows 7 Control_Panel->
Display->Make_it_easier_to_read_what's_on_your_screen
[ ] Smaller - 100% (default)
[ ] Medium - 125%
[ ] Larger - 150%
(I began at "Medium", tried "Smaller")
For example on "Computer scan" page, two fonts
are used. The larger font is "Smart scan"
the smaller font is "Local disk scan",
"Threats found: 3" "Objects cleaned: 0"
(The left hand column menu uses a third
font sized between the other two. It matches
the size of Windows "default" text size but
does not grow when Windows text size is
changed. Interestingly, the mouse hover
balloon over the left column menu items
does change text size when Windows text
size is changed.
WIDGET SIZE
The little arrows that open dropdown
menus, for example to the lower left
of the Computer_Scan->Smart_scan icon,
are too teeny, and they don't use color
to highlight their presence. Likewise,
the pause and stop pushbuttons to the
right of the scan progress bars are
matched to very narrow bar sizes. The
style is modern, but losing readability
is unnecessary. Pushbuttons very nearly the
size and colors of text slow down the
user in discovering their function.
The "Warning", "Threats found" window
popped up from
COLORS
Colors are pretty, but pale blue text is maybe
too pale. (I guess your visually equating blue
with hyperlinks on web pages?) Greyed out is
maybe too greyed out, why not high contrast
black on white?
If we're going to use grey for options
which cannot be operated or selected by the
user, then DO NOT USE GREY FOR ICON COLORS
LIKE the gear icon for "Setup" in the left
hand column. And maybe the grey-blue for
"Tools" in the left hand column is too close
to grey! Let the colors signify operability
of the option as the user expects (google
the phrase "greyed out"; over 2 million hits!)
Not sure why moving mouse over areas causes
the background color to change.
- MAKE CHOICES MORE OBVIOUS:
This sentence confused me at first:
"After all scans computer takes no action."
drop down menu.
Do you mean "After all scans have completed
computer action may be "Shut down", "Reboot"
"Sleep" "Hibernate" "No action"?
A still concise, but more precise, wording might be:
"After all scans finish: No action"
where the "No action" might be a different font,
entirely capitalized, a different color, in a box
or some conbination of the above, to make it clear
that this is a choice. The first impression
does not make the choice function pop visually.
SCANNING: TEST Computer scan page
My first experience on the computer scan page
allowed me to click repeatedly on the blue
magnifying glass and "Smart scan" with the tiny
gray (i) in a circle. Each time, it opened up
a section above with the smart scan progress
bar. I found three running at the same time
Smart scan (progress bar)
Smart scan (progress bar)
First scan (progres bar)
After clicking on the blue smart scan and opening
more segments, I realized a now had six simultaneous
scans going on. That makes the user feel silly.
Perhaps, grey out the pushbutton when a "Smart scan"
is already running?
Just to make sure all those scans were running
at once, I opened up my sysinternals
Process Explorer to see the real-time performance
graph of the ekrn.exe process and then clicked on
the "Smart scan" icon six more times, opening a
total of 8 segments on the computer scan window,
forcing it to show scrollbar on the right hand
side.
After a while, the I had all eight progress bars
moving. The private bytes didn't increase, the
CPU usage and read I/O spiked at the beginning
of the progress bar action, but then both CPU
and I/O settled down. CPU usage was even lower
than when just two or three scans were running,
for a while. But you can see all this for yourself
(sysinternals.com are free from Mark Russinovich
now works for microsoft, your performance graph
looks remarkably like his).
The option to "Open scan in a new window", is a
nice touch. But what does the pushbutton
"To background" mean? Does it mean "close window"
or "change priority of scan?". "Pause" and "Stop"
seem clear, but next to "To background", the "To
background" is mysterious!
Eventually, with all those scans running (and nothing
else but my typing this document :-) CPU was consistently
over 40%. So, I closed the scans with the [x] on the
main". Pausing the scans dropped CPU and I/O to zero.
I resumed the "First scan" window and CPU was mostly
around 10% for a minute. Then, with only one scan
running ekrn CPU jumped to nearly 50% for a whole
minute or two, while I/O was nearly zero.
I disabled the only network adapter (ethernet to
Internet) because I did have a browser open, but
wasn't using it. still ekrn CPU was over 25%
while only "First scan" was running.
The secondary scan window (the one popped up by
blue "Show log" has a number of problems:
Each time I click "Show log" a new window pops
up. After opening nine "Log" windows, I stopped
clicking the button. Usually, I expect the app
to bring an existing window to the front, not
just pop up a new window with the same information
as the other eight! Maybe I didn't see the previously
opened windows because clocking "Show log" on the
"Computer scan" window brings it on top of the
already open log windows! So a user could really
make a mistake continuing to click on "Show log"!
Once the "Show log" "Log - ESET Smart Security"
window pops up, it has a horizontal scroll bar at
the bottom. The bar doesn't let me read the long
messages. When I click on the vertical side of
the window and drag it to a larger width, the
horizontal scroll bar vanishes, but I still cannot
read the long message. As you drag the vertical
side of the window larger and smaller, you'll see
the horizontal scroll bar appear, but once the
drag stops, the horizontal scroll bar disappears.
It appears to be a bug.
I found I could continue to "Open scan in a new window"
repeatedly opening windows for the same scan. Perhaps
popping the existing window to the top might be the
better response to the "Open scan in a new window"
pushbutton if a window already exists.
It was a little bit mysterious that stopping the scan
with the [X] pushbutton pops up the "/!\ Warning
Threats Found" window. Why not let the red sentences
(for example: "Threats found: 25 Objects cleaned: 5"
serve as a pushbutton to popup the list of threats
found so far during the scan?)
The "/!\ Warning Threats Found" window is generous
in allowing selection and some actions. Why not allow
the action to "restore and exclude from scanning"
in this window? (As allowed in Quarantine window?)
After some experimentation it became clear that I would
prefer to access the "/!\ Warning Threats Found" window
with the pause [||] pushbutton, and have the "Finish"
pushbutton on that window change to "Resume Scan".
That way, I could examine "Threats Found" without
having to restart a scan.
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Brief Functional Failure Observations:
The Setup->Advanced_Setup->HIPS->Advanced_Setup
checkbox options are greyed out:
[ ] Log all blocked functions
[ ] Notify when changes occur in Startup applications
I could see a BETA release not ready to provide logging
for a customer. But I wonder if you really can't
"Notify when changes occur in Startup application
I would guess that functionality already existed
in previous products?
