Usability Disaster Story on 24 Jan 2008

[Jens]

This is fascinating! (And highly unfortunate!)

I'm sure I'm not alone in being very interested in seeing a follow-up
post on this subject in another month or two, now that the "bug" is
fixed.

[MaNoLeTe]

It would be nice a no-javascript version. Maybe containing a similar
list like the one here:
http://mono-project.com/OldReleases

My two cents.
Manuel

[lim...@gmail.com]

Why not also put in big red letters at the top of all s/w that is not
the latest version "THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION" and a link to the
current version ?

[lext...@gmail.com]

The new download page is much better than the old version. Sometimes I
found statistics quite surprising but helpful when you maintain a web
site or a desktop applications. And that's why Microsoft embeds agents
in its products and Google invents Analytics.

[Colin Walters]

One thing I would say is that if you distribute software to Windows or
MacOS X users, you also need to ship an update system with your own
application, and this includes frameworks like Mono. It sucks, but
it's life for proprietary platform users.

[Justizin]

This is a great story about why MediaWiki is not a very good general-
purpose CMS, or, at that, release management system. I have lived a
few such stories myself.. ;)

[ruurd]

New download page... no workee with konqueror?

[Erik Renes]

Incredible, absolutely incredible ... that 95% of all users would
click the image instead of the link.

[Vlad]

Miguel,

While you are tweaking the download page, please consider updating the
VMWare image to OpenSuse 10.3 with Mono 1.2.6 rather than 10.2 with
1.2.5. One huge download is bad enough, but having to upgrade
afterwards is not nice. You can keep the old stuff around for those
that like those versions, but the download page should be current for
those downloading the VM as well.

Thanks,

Vlad

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

[ Multireply email ]
 

Why not also put in big red letters at the top of all s/w that is not
the latest version "THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION" and a link to the
current version ?

This sounds like a good suggestion;    With the new setup this is probably not as important, but we should do that for the old pages.

Good idea.

Bummer;   This is something that we really have not thought about, but I can see the point of it.   I will discuss this with our team, it seems like a new universe of things to look into, as am not familiar with the customs on those worlds, the expectations and the privacy requirements.    

It would be nice a no-javascript version. Maybe containing a similar
list like the one here:
http://mono-project.com/OldReleases

 
We might be able to generate this from the new infrastructure;   Am not sure how much work it is, but it seems like a good idea.  Did you have problems with your browser?

Although we use Analytics, we do not really mine it for useful data;   And I just get very depressed every time I look at the content that people use, it seems to be "Downloads", "Start" and little else.    Things might have improved ever since Jonathan redesigned the "Plans" page though.

Analytics in this case would not have pointed out the problem (in fact, it does not show up there significantly, its overwhelmed by people reading other pages).   The actual mistake with the downloads could only be spotted by the actual page with the RPMs.

Well, hopefully we will not have much more to report.   "Downloads are good" is probably as far as we will go.  

Of all the mistakes we have made, this is probably at the top (and am mostly responsible for it).

Am not sure that I would blame MediaWiki for this failure;   This was a user error, a lack of testing, and of doing a usability walk-through.   Particularly embarrassing because am and advocate of doing both things.

We are considering a switch to DekiWiki, in part because it has ACLs, a nicer UI and runs on Mono, so it would be dogfooding for us.   But the Deki team and my team is too busy right now to do a migration.

New download page... no workee with konqueror?

Thanks for reporting this, we will look into fixing it.

Asbjorn said:

Isn't it a usability disaster to require JavaScript to download the
software too? If it requires JavaScript to prevent Google from
indexing the pages, there are far more effective solutions to it than
hiding everything by an inaccessible JavaScript.

We could probably remedy that by using meta tags, and probably loading some of the text directly into the HTML page instead of JSonig it all from another source;   But there is not much content there beyond being a mono download.  

Is there something in particular that you think needs to be indexed by Google?

Thanks to everyone for the feedback!
Miguel

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

This is one of our priorities, and am also rooting for us to have this new image up and running as soon as we can.   

Am puzzled as to why it has taken us so long.

Miguel.

[MaNoLeTe]

> MaNoLeTe ha escrito:

Miguel:

> We might be able to generate this from the new infrastructure;
> Am not sure how much work it is, but it seems like a good idea.
> Did you have problems with your browser?

No, I didn't. I was using Firefox with NO-Script when I tested the new
download page.
I just enabled javascript and everything works fine.

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

Yeah, you replaced it with a page that doesn't work at all with JS
off. Brilliant.

[Justin Ryan]

> Justin said:
>
> >
> > This is a great story about why MediaWiki is not a very good general-
> > purpose CMS, or, at that, release management system. I have lived a
> > few such stories myself.. ;)
> >
>
> Am not sure that I would blame MediaWiki for this failure; This was a user
> error, a lack of testing, and of doing a usability walk-through.
> Particularly embarrassing because am and advocate of doing both things.
>

I just think there's a lot of work to manage all this by hand. I wish
that PloneSoftwareCenter were better suited to use for projects other
than Plone, but it is a solution that really helps our community to
pare down these sort of issues. If we decide, say, that at the top of
every old release, it should say in big red letters some warning, that
only has to be done once in an xml template. If someone later decides
this is dumb, they can remove it. No editing of content is necessary.

See:

http://www.plone.org/download

I can't remember the last time I heard of anyone downloading the wrong
release of Plone.

> We are considering a switch to DekiWiki, in part because it has ACLs, a
> nicer UI and runs on Mono, so it would be dogfooding for us. But the Deki
> team and my team is too busy right now to do a migration.
>

ACLs, eh? That sounds like the beginnings of post-renaissance
security architecture. I suppose that implies Roles? Does it have
workflowed security? [0]

I can sure see the appeal of dogfooding, but I think this is a problem
that a ton of projects face and not every project can build their own
release system. I am often frustrated with our inability to dogfood a
replacement for Trac, but Trac's wiki a release management system does
not make.

I actually am growing to really abhor advocating Plone, but PSC is
something you should take a look at. Maybe DekiWiki or something else
you can dogfood has the capability of building something similar, the
concept is not very complicated, but the ability to actually have a
release workflow which controls all of these messages that people see
really takes the work out of release management.

I tell you what, if you can get something like PSC running on Mono, it
will be a heck of a lot faster! ;)

Off to the haight for me!

Ciao,

J

--
Justin Alan Ryan
Independent Interaction Architect
Volunteer, ASA SF
Bachelor Student Math / Fine Art
http://www.bitmonk.net/
* : +1-415-226-1199

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man"
-Jebediah Springfield

[kurt.b.kaiser]

Error: This page needs JavaScript

Bzzzt! Whatever for?

[Angus S-F]

Your download page is broken for people who don't trust Javascript.
You need (IMHO, of course) to come up with a static or CSS-controlled
page that works without scripting.

[Dominic Mitchell]

Unfortunately, the old download page is still better than the old
one. It at least allows you to download something. When I viewed the
new page, I just get "Error: This page needs JavaScript". :(

-Dom

[floresg]

On Jan 25, 11:54 am, "Miguel de Icaza" <miguel.de.ic...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Reddit users have a bunch of helpful (and some not so helpful)
suggestions.
http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/66lb9/comments/

[Regina Obe]

Another Usability problem. The ASP.NET 2.0 demo gives a 404 for the
GridView section. I verfied I downloaded the latest Mono version.

[duckboy]

Interesting post - I have 2 comments:

If your logs include the "Referer" HTTP request header, you should be
able to immediately see "http://www.mono-project.com/
Image:Mono_icon_windows.gif" as the source of the erroneous download
clicks, rather than speculating. Logging the referrer URL does make
logs bigger, but I find it's one of the most useful fields for
figuring out who your users are based on where they come from. [Note:
if you're running low on space for logs, storing them in a compressed
directory will give you 90% or so compression out of them since
they're plain text.]

Secondly, it's no surprise whatsoever that Mac & Windows users clicked
on the pretty icon - they've been trained to click on pretty icons
from birth, and wouldn't know a command prompt / terminal window if it
slapped them in the face (besides, an icon is a clearer & easier mouse
target; clicking on a text link is harder 'cos you have to aim for the
text, and again many Mac/Windows users aren't sure where in the text
they should click [amazingly!]). Don't bemoan them for being GUI-
biased; allow for it! :D

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello Regina,

     Am not sure I know which demo you are talking about, could you send me some steps to reproduce this problem, or a screenshot of the issue?

[stephen]

That's me! I received the wrong version! The whole thing was so
confusing... I figured sites for Linux people were meant to be
difficult to fit the culture. I just wanted the Mac version. I'll
come back though.

[Miguel de Icaza]

Am glad you will;   It is a bit sad that a lot of people got the wrong Mono without knowing it.   First impressions count, and they are going to get a two year old impression of it.

Miguel.

[pedromj]

Hi,

Talking about the website...

I think Mono users can be increased if it has a few valuable features
for the project like a newsletter, a forum and other things.
Enterpirses and engineers needs such things to feed their IT depatment
with information and support. I''m talking about features that, for
example, DB4O and ZeroC's ICE has. Mono Project is mature enough to be
promoted and ""selled"".

Best wishes,

Pedro

[Miguel de Icaza]

Do you have a few pointers as to what exactly you mean?

What do you think we are missing?

[pedromj]

List of promotional products:

- A newsletter with the latest news in Mono and other surrounding
projects like Cecil, Gendarme, MoMA, etc. It can contain a few
articles
with success stories and examples. For example, take a look to
http://developer.db4o.com/blogs/newsletter/archive/2007/11/13/newsletter-37-db4o-7-0-released-new-xtremeconnect-pairing-service.aspx

- A forum. I like a unified news, forum, mail-list like Google Groups.
Take a look to http://developer.db4o.com/forums/default.aspx.

- Datasheets. A few datasheets of Mono, Mono + Linux, Mono in server
side and Mono in desktop side. They should be focused in promoting
Mono
and show its benefits.

- Public support plans. I know that Novell offers support for Mono but
people should know that Mono offers official (paid) support from their
first impression, maybe published in the datasheets.

Other things that I don't remember at the time.

Best wishes,

Pedro

[Asbjørn Ulsberg]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:53:36 +0100, Miguel de Icaza
<miguel....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Asbjorn said:
>
> Isn't it a usability disaster to require JavaScript to download the
>> software too? If it requires JavaScript to prevent Google from
>> indexing the pages, there are far more effective solutions to it than
>> hiding everything by an inaccessible JavaScript.
>>
>
> We could probably remedy that by using meta tags, and probably loading
> some of the text directly into the HTML page instead of JSonig it all
> from
> another source; But there is not much content there beyond being a mono
> download.

Having the URIs available in the HTML source would definately be
preferable. That way, "Progressive Enhancement" would be working as
intended when JavaScript is supported and "Graceful Degradation" as well
when it's not.

> Is there something in particular that you think needs to be indexed by
> Google?

Not really, I just thought you might have used it to prevent Google from
indexing it. If you're not, then please consider employing progressive
enhancement by having a working HTML document that you apply JavaScript
features upon with the likes of jQuery. That way, it works for everybody;
even Google (although that might not matter at all).

--
Asbjørn Ulsberg -=|=- asbj...@gmail.com
«He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»