Hi Bob. Please email me off-list ... I'm always interested in feedback about the web site, trying to make it better for new users. At my office, I sometimes get to work with some of our web designers & Usability consultants, so I've tried to incorporate little hints from them. But the site has never gone under formal Usability review or anything. So if there's a way to make the site better, I want your suggestions. But we can take that off-list.
The "Download" page you described got edited by Eric at one point, and he felt it was necessary to keep the old text on the page. I'm planning to re-write this page when "1.0" becomes available. -jh Bob Stammers wrote: > I'm an intermittent user of and occasional contributor to Freedos and > I have been struck lately by how un user-friendly some key parts of > the public interface are. > > In particular, I'm concerned with the website download page. > > I recently wanted to make a live CD for a particular job so I went to > the home page to get the software. Click on [Download Freedos] > > What? > > Firstly, the whole thing is too wordy. I just want to download an > ISO image and I'm on the downloads page so where is it? > > Secondly, ------------------------------------ > The MD5 sums for the FreeDOS Beta9SR2 main files are: > > 799906c1829db2957548f2f860f7f666 fdbootcd.iso (patch 5/2006) > no update - please avoid file! fdfullcd.iso (still the old iso!) > 31bf499be78bfa8300f55b199d612d57 fdos1440.img (boot helper > diskette) > 0606c3411a930ffa4cf1d53e7e931af5 rawrite.exe (writes img to > diskette) > > Don't download these "broken" ISO files (old version): > > 751556e9b8e3806efd80cf3d896aa754 fdbootcd.iso.broken (original > 11/2005) > 073b78ef205fb46af613c44934b6e29a fdfullcd.iso.broken (original > 11/2005) > ----------------------------------------- WHAT??? > > If these files are "broken", what on earth are they doing there? At > the very least it's confusing, at worst potential users will just go > away and do something else. > > Freedos is a brilliant project and will be useful and used for > decades to come but having a "better mousetrap" is only beneficial if > it looks like a better mousetrap, is easy to get hold of and use, etc > > I have criticized the download page here. I could find criticisms of > other pages or what appears when booting from a CD but the general > point is that these should all be pitched primarily at new/potential > users rather than those who already know. > > This is an offer to help thinly disguised as a rant. Please let me > know what you'd like me to do. > > -- I'm sorry my president's an idiot. I didn't vote for him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
