** Reply to message from Henry Sobotka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Wed, 21 Nov 2001 18:21:35 -0500
> Stan Goodman wrote: > > > > I don't think the developers spend much time or effort thinking about a > > user's-eye view of the program. The current problem is a very good example, and > > your observation that Mozilla can't be updated by installing new versions over > > old ones supplies whatever emphasis was needed. > > Actually it's more a problem of user forgetfulness than developer > thoughtlessness. Nothing of the sort. Nobody is forgetting anything. The fact that it is a Beta isn't a license to provide a half-assed program that can't be updated in-situ. You cannot name another "readily available" program that had this "feature". > > Users tend to forget that anything short of Mozilla 1.0 is effectively a > preview release with sometimes radical changes from milestone to > milestone, or even overnight if a major chunk of code gets checked in. > While now, with the focus more on stability and performance, this is > less of a problem than it was six months or a year ago, the gap between > the IBM release (0.6.0) and the current version (0.9.6) is wide enough > to guarantee disaster. > > Also, because Mozilla is readily available to end-users, people tend to > forget it's really a generic wholesale off-the-warehouse-shelf product, > so to speak, intended to be filtered through "packagers/retailers" (e.g. > Netscape, IBM etc.) before reaching them. In other words, one would > expect a branded release to deal with installation issues such as > uninstalling a prior version, but not binaries zipped hot-off-the-tree. It isn't that it is merely "readily available" to end users; the fact that it is so available, with glowing descriptions, is an invitation to end-user use. Now I understand that it is being inflicted on end users. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel
