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From: "Gavin McDonald" <gavin@16degrees.com.au>
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Subject: RE: How to handle the downloads?
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2011 09:04:46 +1000
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Brown [mailto:andy@the-martin-byrd.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2 August 2011 8:48 AM
> To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
> 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)<marcus.mail@wtnet.de> 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?

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.

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)

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!

Gav...

> 
> Andy