What's the easiest way to Create a User-Friendly front end for a C program on Linux platform

Question

I have a small course project that would best have a user-friendly front end. It's a network sniffer, I coded the program with C and Linux. And now I am hoping to make it more ``user-friendly".

Answer 1

If your sniffer has a command line front end, have a look at Eric S. Raymond's The of Unix Programming. In chapter 10, there's a whole section on how to name and format your command line arguments. There's also a POSIX standard for utility syntax.

These approaches won't directly make your program user friendly, only research on your users and analysis of your interfaces will help with this. However, providing an interface that works in ways that users expect will certainly help.

Answer 2

In c: Getopt

In c++, if relevant: Boost program options

Try to behave like other programs (at the very least provide a useful --help message, and print some sort of simple usage description for invalid arguments). I find the easiest way to understand how to use a program is when its manual page, or even --help message gives examples of common usage cases.

Answer 3

Im no expert in UI Design, or anything in that matter, but taking an interest in the quality of User Interface Design, I came across Aza Raskin, an interface design expert that is head of design for Mozilla Labs. I have followed some lectures and conventions that Aza has done on UI Design, and he said something that is simple, yet makes more sense then anything I have ever learned with UI Design...I may butcher it but its along the lines of If The User has to think about the design,then it is a bad design

This may seem like an insult to everybody's intelligence, but it makes sense. Something that is user friendly cant be ambiguous to the user. This means that when a user is performing some task/operation, the UI should be presented to them corresponding to the current event or situation.

The UI should be designed so that anybody who picks up your software should be able to navigate through it. This DOESNT mean that they should understand the underlying problem domain, but it does mean that if asked to find a certain functional part of the software, that they could generally navigate themselves there.

Some things to things to think about when using your software:

    1) -Do you ever ask yourself, "Do I go here or here?
    2) -Do I use tools like bold fonts and italicizing to show emphasis?
    3) -Am I sacrificing anything by making certain features "idiot proof"(Read Below)
    4) -Am I trying to do too much anywhere just to save time(programming time)

These are just some things that can help straighten out some of your design decisions. In no way is this following any pattern. Like I said, my education in this field is minimal, it is just an interest I have followed.

Regarding #3, It is important that you don't sacrifice any feature or design decision when implementing certain accommodations. If you have something where 99% of your users are using a certain feature, but 1% can be expected to make a different decision, then take this into consideration. Don't sacrifice the design for the 99% of the users to accommodate the other 1%. This doesn't mean don't accommodate the other users, I just mean don't sacrifice the integrity of the design.

Answer 4

If by user friendly you mean you want to make a gui for it then I would definitely recommend GTK. GTK is one of the more widely use Xserver tool kits and it is written in C. Another plus is that it is written in an object oriented manner. IMO being exposed to how OO programming is accomplished in C is a great thing for all CS students.

Answer 5

If you don't need to interact with the app "live" or only need limited interaction as a command line app then you can write a frontend using PyGTK. If you need to access C libraries then you can use Cython to load and call them.

But regardless of what you choose, be sure to find a professional interface designer. A bad interface can destroy the potential popularity of any app.