Hi Martin,
Since I've been worked on the download page to make it as it is now, the
other part of the story :)
in the last release status meeting we wondered about that some
stoppers for 2.2 release were discovered so late.
We think that we need some more attention for the snapshots (OOo-Dev)
builds and release candidates. Therefor I'd like to ask for a second
(maybe red or orange button) to be placed beside the green button for
the stable builds to get more visibility.
You mean on the main (www.openoffice.org) page? or at
download.openoffice.org? or somewhere at the page
download.openoffice.org/2.x.x ?
The main page is there to offer a start for both beginning and advanced
users. The download process in special should be as easy as possible for
beginners, else they stop from downloading. With every change in this
process (including adding items that might be confusing), we need to
consider them.
That said, we might consider some (another?) box on the website that
offers space to announce some more development related news. That said,
the regular news section can also be used for this (and if I remember
correctly this was the way it has been done with previous versions as well?)
The download.openoffice.org pages could feature a direct link to the
2.2RC pages through some differently marked up link, but not as big in
size as the normal download box.
I have some more questions regarding the download page:
* There are separate buttons for Linux x86 and Linux PPC, but for
Solaris builds we just have one button with two links in it.
If Linux PPC would have had the same kind of QA, Linux would also have
x86 and PPC below it. We wanted to make a clear distinction between
those versions that are QA'd (which we described as "Our thoroughly
tested builds") and those which are not.
* It doesn't seem possible any more to download installation sets with
jre integrated. Even worse, there is a link below to how to install
Java separately with no hint to installation set with jre integrated.
I am not sure anymore why we evolved it into something where the +JRE
option was not available anymore. I might however have been someone who
promoted removing the choice of the +JRE option, since it is another
thing to think about for the beginner. Furthermore there is a technical
issue. We can however reintroduce it but then I would suggest something
like this:
Default +JRE (or not)
and use javascript to write a checkbox to (un)select the +JRE version.
The current download page only uses javascript unobtrusively, there is
no need to have javascript turned on, it only improves the experience
when it is. Offering the selection of +JRE only through javascript would
reduce the functionality for non-javascript users, but not to such an
extend that a 'non-JS page' is needed imho (OOo will complain when there
is no JRE installed anyhow).
It would all have been much easier when we would have had a serverside
scripting language to work with, but we don't.
* For the Windows platform, the sequence maybe should better be sorted
from newest to oldest Windows versions and maybe we should reduce the
List to the most important/known: Vista, XP, 98 (adding NT, 2000, 2003
is making the list quite long ?)
The current order is I think the most commonly used, but I don't care.
Furthermore 2.1 is not completely Vista proof, as far as I have heard,
so stating that it is would be misleading.
Please note though: I am not saying how it should be done, I am just
giving another side of the story. And secondly I am only speaking for
myself, there may be many disagreeing with me :)
g.,
Maarten
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
