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A few feature suggestions / improvements for Sophos Anti-virus for Mac

Hi,

Been using SAV for a few months now and really like it. I have however noticed a few things that I would like to see improved in the product:

1. Could an option to be added to the menu bar item to provide quick access to Enable / Disable On Access Scanning? This would be much quicker and easier than launching SAV, going to preferences and then enabling and disabling. I disable on-access scanning when installing trusted software updates and burning CDs/DVDs so it would be handy to have quicker access to this setting.

2. When on access scanning is disabled could the SAV menu item icon more obviously illustrate the fact that it is disabled? Currently the icon changes from black to light grey which is a little too subtle imo. It isn't immediately obvious that SAV is disabled and sometimes I forget to re-enable it. Maybe the icon could be coloured (only when disabled) or have a cross through it. Also in a previous AV product that I used, it would remind you after a reboot (first time only) if you have left the on-access scanning disabled. I think that was a really useful feature!

3. I talked about this on another post but I thought it was worth mentioning again... One thing I liked in another AV app I used to use - Norton AntiVirus  for Mac - was that when you use right-click scanning from the Finder, it actually just scans the selected file/folder in a seperate headless version of the app ("small scanner") that appears, performs the scan and then is dimissed as soon as you respond to the dialog showing the scan results. I think this is more convienient than having the right-click scan launch the main Sophos AV app and then leaving it running after the scan is complete.

A couple of bugs that I've noticed too:

a) When you select "About Sophos Anti-virus" it takes absolutely ages for the about window to appear (say 15-30 secs). I have tested this on a MacBook and Mac Pro (8.0.3c) and it's very sluggish. I always get the SBOD when selecting this option (to see what version I'm running). Not a big issue but it would be great if it could be improved.

b) When I click the View Scan Log button in the "Scan Completed" dialog box after initiating a scan from the Finder, the log is never shown and the button doesn't seem to do anything. If I create a new custom scan in the main SAV application and then click the View Scan Log option from the main drop-down menu the log is opened and displayed in the Console app.

c) The download link for Mac SAV on the main Sophos web site still downloads the old version 8.02 instead of 8.0.3c. Any chance you can update that link... I read the other posts about it taking time to update the website but 8.0.3 has been out for a few weeks now and the main link is still out of date (I tried it again today because I was installing SAV on my MacBook and it still downloads the old 8.0.2 release).

Cheers,

Stuart

:1007301


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  • Thanks for your comments and suggestions. We'll certainly take them all on board.

    Can you please confirm the URL of the download page you're going to - as far as I can tell, the file at this location is up-to-date: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition/download.aspx

    Your comments on the icons are certainly interesting. Keeping colour out of the menu bar icon is a conscious decision, to keep the product more in line with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines. It's clear that many other vendors don't interpret the guidelines the same way because as I look at the menu bar on my Mac I have at least 3 icons with some colour in them.

    I think I do have an explanation for the 'About' box issue. Because the 'About' box displays information about the current virus detection engine and the number of threats protected, it has to load and query that component in order to retrieve the data. This can take some time as there is a lot of data to load up. It's possibly a question of trading off between accuracy of the data and the time taken.

    What version of OS X are you running, by the way?

    Regards

    Rich

    :1007409
Reply
  • Thanks for your comments and suggestions. We'll certainly take them all on board.

    Can you please confirm the URL of the download page you're going to - as far as I can tell, the file at this location is up-to-date: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition/download.aspx

    Your comments on the icons are certainly interesting. Keeping colour out of the menu bar icon is a conscious decision, to keep the product more in line with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines. It's clear that many other vendors don't interpret the guidelines the same way because as I look at the menu bar on my Mac I have at least 3 icons with some colour in them.

    I think I do have an explanation for the 'About' box issue. Because the 'About' box displays information about the current virus detection engine and the number of threats protected, it has to load and query that component in order to retrieve the data. This can take some time as there is a lot of data to load up. It's possibly a question of trading off between accuracy of the data and the time taken.

    What version of OS X are you running, by the way?

    Regards

    Rich

    :1007409
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