The number of people trying freenet for the first time is likely to increase greatly in the next week or two. So lets think about making the experience of the absolute newbie as pleasant as practically possible.
My suggestions: I. Mainport: 1. Just like we now can switch between graphical and text mode for the ocm, make an expert/simple mode for the entire mainport. The only difference between the two would be that the "Internals" part would be hidden in the simple mode. It is a little inundating for the first-time user and distracts them from getting where they actually want to get. 2. Reduce all error and warning messages to ultimate simplicity. Use dumbed down simple phrases. Any sentence longer than 8 words is too long, and any lexical structure hinting of exquisite British/Irish upbringing will turn away the teens from the US suburbs ;-)) II. Wininstaller: Embed help links all over the wininstaller that point either to internal help or to the website. III. Website: 1. Colors, images, interactiveness. It can get a lot fancier without using flash or other extentions. 2. Also simplify wording, shifting emphasis from how "scientifically advanced" to how "cool" freenet is. 3. Create user forum from some standart template for kids to come and complain; sourceforge's forums are not so easy to use, and most people seem to prefer one specific brand. 4. Also simplify wording in help/faq pages, but not as much as the front page. more will come very soon... _______________________________________________ devl mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hawk.freenetproject.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
