_____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ian Clarke Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 7:58 PM To: Discussion of development issues Subject: Re: [freenet-dev] Our current web interface and its usability On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 4:05 AM, xor <[email protected]> wrote: We DO NOT need a new web interface. Our current web interface is easy to use, works well, is sufficient, and it is also easy to write plugins which use it - I've worked with it for WoT and Freetalk and it was fun. I hope this is true, but I'm skeptical. I'd recomend getting some non-techies to try Freenet, without guidance from you, and to point out anything in the web interface that doesn't make sense. I'd like to think that they won't find anything to point to, but I doubt it :-) The persons I've showed it to sit at their PC very much but are not experts. I'd call them "power users", they are familiar with eMule etc. and do not like wasting much time on configuring complex stuff. They were impressed by the clear layout of the web interface and thought it was a good representation of a p2p program. Anyway I've tried my best to point out anything which is difficult to use in my bug reports. We're all steeped in a pretty good understanding of Freenet, and the terminology used, but newbies aren't. A term that makes perfect sense to us, such as Matthew's use of the term "node" in the progress page, is likely to confuse newbies. "Node" should really be replaced with "Client" *everywhere* because client is the common word. I also think that some words should be replaced. I did that for a few things in my last few commits. Further, for example I suggested to replace "Key" with "Download link" on the downloads & uploads page. I think there is more stuff I can help with if I take the time to read all strings in the english language file. I can also help with the German translation as I am a native German speaker. But of course we won't need to rewrite any code for replacing the words so lets just do that :) I think to create a good UI, we need to mistrust our personal perceptions of what makes sense, because, frankly, we aren't our target audience. True. I claim to be able to imagine in some way what a newbie might behave like ;) And I know some newbies. I'd encourage everyone to find newbies whenever possible, and watch them install and try to use Freenet, reporting any issues they run into to this list, or as bugs Get them to give you a narrative of what they see ("not sure what that button does" or "hmm, not sure what I'm supposed to do now"), and report it. Anything you need to explain to them is a *bug*, because most of our future users won't have you sitting there to explain it. Always trying to do so. I'd prefer to avoid a ground-up redesign of the UI too, but for anyone that wants to work on the UI, please grab a friend or relative unfamiliar with Freenet, and watch them trying to install or use it. Okay good. As I've said, my basic point is that it would cost us too much resources as the current interfaces are quite useful for developers and the outcome of it is useful to users and can be made even better if we fix a few glitches and add some scripting which hopefully our GSoC people will be able to do =) Ian. -- Ian Clarke CEO, Uprizer Labs Email: [email protected] Ph: +1 512 422 3588 Fax: +1 512 276 6674
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