I am a Skype user who has recently been introduced to Ekiga. Of course, I now have the task of convincing some of my contacts to use Ekiga, so I went to the Ekiga website to see what Windows users would be up against in installing the app. I did not even get to download the application before realizing that Windows users would not be able to handle Ekiga. My criticism is below, please keep in mind that it is constructive criticism intended to help Ekiga, not a "rant" or troll.
This is copied verbatim from my post on the ubuntu-users list: 1) If the user looks for "ekiga" via google, then the url is gnomemeeting.org for some reason. What is that? (Yes, _I_ know, but should I have to explain that to potential users?). If the user types in ekiga.com then she arrives at ekiga.net. Redirect? That scares Windows users, who suspect malware and trickery. In my Windows days, I would have left right here. 2) "Downloads: Choose your distribution below and start downloading." What is a distribution? How do I download this? Where is the big green "download here" animated GIF? 3) If the user happens to find the Windows link (and even knows that is what she needs) then she gets a page with no files to download! She will _not_ open the README file to find what she needs! 4) If the user actually did find and open the README file under Windows downloads, the file contains this single line of text (no hyperlink): Please download from : http://snapshots.ekiga.net/snapshots/win32/archives/ 5) If the user actually follows the hyperlink then she goes to an Apache directory listing. This is what she sees: [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.1beta-7144.exe 02-Oct-2008 23:08 18M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.1beta-7144d.exe 02-Oct-2008 23:05 61M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.1beta-7205.exe 14-Oct-2008 20:31 18M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.1beta-7205d.exe 14-Oct-2008 20:31 61M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.2beta-7300.exe 30-Oct-2008 21:33 22M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.2beta-7300d.exe 30-Oct-2008 21:30 65M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.2beta-7316.exe 02-Nov-2008 09:49 22M [ ] ekiga-setup-3.0.2beta-7316d.exe 02-Nov-2008 09:59 65M Which one should she click on? How much further do you think she is going to get? -- Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il _______________________________________________ ekiga-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/ekiga-list
