Am 08/02/2011 01:04 AM, schrieb Gavin McDonald:
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Brown [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, 2 August 2011 8:48 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: How to handle the downloads?
Marcus (OOo) wrote:
Am 08/01/2011 09:25 PM, schrieb Ross Gardler:
On 1 August 2011 18:20, Marcus (OOo)<[email protected]> wrote:
AFAIK the current projects at Apache doesn't have high download
numbers compared with OOo. So, a download request can point directly
to a mirror or a mirror list is shown and the users have to choose
themselves from where to get the software best.
I wouldn't make any assumptions about the current mirror
infrastructure. What you write above does not reflect how things work
here. The ASF is a pretty large collection of projects with some very
large numbers behind it.
I've looked at this both pages:
http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
When comparing it with the one from the current OOo project you should
be able to see big differences:
- too many links
- too much data on one page
- too much information to read to get an overview
- too less clear structure
Please keep in mind that we have to deal with end-users. Maybe there
are a lot of power-users but even they prefer a simple and straight
solution. ;-)
I have to agree with Marcus on this. It has to be simple.
Example, see this page:
http://forrest.apache.org/mirrors.cgi
Now , forget all the developer oriented content on that page and focus on
the part that says:
Current official release (closest mirror site selected automatically)
Now, it has chosen the closest mirror already, the link to the file is
there, they click on it
and download it - what is the difficulty here, please explain?
Why to invent the wheel again? Why not just use the website as it is and
make changes to the underlaying infrastructure if necessary, so that
it's working also inside Apache?
Perhaps the download link needs to be a big shiny blue/green graphic Icon
with the words 'Download now!'
on it to make more user intuitive, no problem there, you can do that.
Of course, a simple thing.
On the page is an 'Other' mirrors section where one can optionally choose
another mirror if
the chosen one is having issues for some reason (it should not, as all
mirrors are checked hourly
for their usefulness and removed from being a automatically chosen mirror
if there are issues.)
(this too is optional)
OK, thats good. We have a link to an alternative webpage to download.
Still without to present specific mirrors.
So, effectively, you can remove everything and replace it with a pretty
Download Icon, can't get
any simpler than that. In other words, it can work in exactly the same way
the current OpenOffice.org
program downloads now.
Oh, actually just checked, the nice and easy 'Download now!' button on
openoffice.org redirects to
http://planetmirror.com/pub/openoffice/ (for me)
oops, now what is a user to do? My program didn't download, where is it,
what's the filename I'm looking for,
what does stable mean, hmm, ooh theres the word developer, perhaps Im in the
wrong place, HELP!
OK, forget this mirror. It doesn't work since months and was already
deleted from the network. However, it comes back from time to time. :-(
Try again.
Marcus
