Hi all,
I have been experimenting a couple of months with (com)swiki's on
our intranet, and found out that the threshold to add links to uploaded
documents, is too high for people who are unfamiliar with these things.
Maybe the reason is that two separate actions are required, each with its
own problems/psychological barriers: 1) the document needs to be sent to the
server via the upload mechanism 2) in the swiki-page a link has to be
established to a document in the uploads area (directory).
This two-step process is not straightforward, because it requires
moving between several windows (from the edit view to the uploads list -
always forgetting the exact name of the uploaded document - and back). Maybe
it would be acceptable if there were no complications - but I encountered at
least one using ComSwiki 9 on NT. Uploading success seems to depend on the
status of the directory containing the file to be uploaded. It is for me not
quite clear how this worked, but it appears that directories need to be
shared in some way - anyway, many users experienced problems with uploading,
trying to upload from the "wrong" directory, and stopped using the swikis.
Apart from unraveling what the right settings should be, wouldn't it
be a good idea to add the option (while editing a swiki page) [insert
upload] in the menu? After selecting it the upload dialog should appear and
the selected document should be uploaded AND the link to the uploaded
document should be inserted directly at cursor position. As an additional
benefit we would avoid stupid misspellings (e.g. added spaces arising when
copying the name of a file).
What do you think? (a still more user-friendly way would be to use
drag-and-drop, just throwing documents from any file list onto your internet
browser where they would be added as links to uploads - but I am afraid such
an implementation would be really complicated)
Comments?
Hans Baveco
ALTERRA, Green World Research
Department of Landscape Ecology
Tel: 31.317.477964
Fax: 31.317.424988
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
