Would it be possible to add an element of colorizing the middle pane's text based on particular events or metrics?
For example, if a process hits X PB restraints/time, the text for that cell is changed to yellow. This could even go further with multiple stages of "severity", e.g.:
- <3 = Default/White
- >2 = Yellow
- >5 = Red
Also possible (AND/OR) would be color-tinting (subtly) an entire process row if and when it hits a particular threshold, event, or alert, whether it's PBing, page faults, thread count, commit size, CPU time, etc.
The benefit of this is that, currently, PL presents data "two dimensionally": an XY-plane made up of column + row that triangulate to a single point of cell data. However, by adding color, not only is it visually stimulating to the brain, but it opens a "third dimension" of information -- and in the same amount of GUI space + layout!
(Warning: thesis-length spitballing ahead)
The question then would be
"Well, what determines an appropriate threshold? When should 'white' become 'yellow'?" An initial simple possibility could be a basic flat comparison of average/overall stats amongst all (perhaps OS vs. non-OS) processes, e.g., "
Of processes that have gotten PB'd in the past 24-hours, if the average is 2 PB's, any process >2 PB's gets its "PB Time" cell text bumped to yellow."Now what would be
really awesome for determining appropriate thresholds/metrics is if PL weighed the past X hours/days/weeks/months of data for that metric for each process (simpler than it probably sounds), and only if and when a process deviates beyond its daily/weekly/whateverly average
for that metric, the cell (or row) is changed colors or bolded in order to stand out as anomalous, potentially warranting a deeper digging into, or at least keeping an eye on going forward.
This would be
massively helpful in particular because there are so many processes running on an average computer, anywhere from sub ~100 to many hundreds of processes (currently 580 processes running on mine, I'm not proud to admit). It becomes an increasingly arduous task for a person to know what processes are misbehaving unless it's starkly obvious, such as a program redlining 90% CPU or memory or I/O or whatever. But often times problematic processes or resource abuses don't manifest as easily, like a process that redlines for only short bursts of time but happens more spread apart, frequently enough to affect system performance but interspersed enough that the average user wouldn't catch it.
By adding color + threshold alerts, IMO it would evolve PL into not only a performance enhancer/enforcer, but upgrade PL into an omnipotent all-seeing
sentinel, monitoring statistical log data and informing the user of problematic processes, problems, and/or resource inefficiencies that the average user wouldn't catch or even know about.
This would be massively beneficial in improving system performance because performance issues aren't always the fault of a singular process, but rather, two or more processes fueling a downstream tug-of-war over a resource or scheduling priority. Doing this would help make those problematic processes better stand out, helping the user to get to the bottom of the real source of the issue, e.g., which process is the primary problem/instigator, if it's looking like it's a driver or hardware issue that's affecting processes downstream, etc.
PL could have a button/function similar to "Insights" -- or even better, included in the Insights report -- that processes all the above data and gives the user a digest readout of potential problems in their system, similar to what Resplendence's "
WhoCrashed" software does for BSODs/system dmp files.
Even being aptly technical, I still rely on a few tools like "WhoCrashed" that can digest technical data and spit out an "executive-level" summary, because we only have so much time in a day, and software that can do this to save us time or hassle is extremely beneficial. I can still pull out the tools to dissect a dump file if necessary, but I'd rather default to an automated digest analysis first, since most of the time a deeper-dive isn't necessary, like if I see it's due to a particularly buggy beta process/driver that I have to deal with for now.
Anyway, I realize this may be too beyond scope, and no problem if so, just spitballing some potential development ideas. Perhaps I could even make this on my own as an external third-party "mod" for PL, as an overlay or external report.
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