Re: TheOpenCD Installer v0.1 demo

Jon,

OK, well done; the ball is rolling :)

I've looked at your installer, and have some thoughts.

I still think that a self-contained HTML-Based installer would be very
slick, but it seems that we may have problems in getting this ready for
our first release (the beta is due out in a month!)  However, I think
that if we keep the documentation in HTML, we can easily migrate to such
an installer later.

Now, how can we proceed with the current version?

If we place two large, friendly buttons (with pictures) at the bottom
saying, 'Read about this program.' and 'Install this program on your
hard disk', then the 'install' button can launch the installer and the
'read' button can launch the default web browser or notepad.  The page
that comes up upon pressing 'read', then contains program info,
screenshots, install help, links, un-installhelp, etc.  Once the user is
in the browser, there should then be menu navigation, so that she can
easily read about any other program, or about OSS.


The way you have it now, you show the entire contents of the directory,
which is more info than the user needs to know.  I would propose instead
that each app directory contain the following files:

app_name.txt
app_blurb.txt
app_icon.ico
app_info.html
app_info.txt
install_howto.html
uninstall_howto.html
install.exe (plus cab/zip, whatever files)

The reason for having the exact same files in each directory is that it
makes it easy to add or move program, without having to update some
central database.  (so the above would be the contents of
Applications\AbiWord, for example.)

the 'Applications' directory would contain a human/machine readable file
called 'contents.txt., which would contain a listing of the apps in this
directory:

Contents of the Applications directory:
---------------------------------------
1. AbiWord	- A simple word processor
2. OpenOffice	- A complete Office suite
3. whatever.	- etc.

Most people would never view this file directly, except vthose who
choose to browse the CD 'manually'.

Upon entering the Applications directory, your install program would
read this file, and using some basic string manipulation would know what
it contains.  The sub-directories would have the same name as appears on
the list, ie. 'AbiWord'  The program would then go into each directory
and read out the relevant information.  It would present a list of
programs by name, and when you click on one of them you can see the icon
and the blurb in a small frame.  


So when, you click on a directory you will be presented with a simple
list of programs, and clicking on one of these would show an icon, (a
small screen shot?) , and a short description.


I think with this approach, we can stick to the original plan of doing
all the documentation in HTML (which allows non-programmers to
participate), but also puts us on much firmer ground with regards
actually having a working installer in place by the first beta.

Some misc. usability comments:

1. I don't  think the user should be able to 'double click' to launch
the installer.  Many people don't differentiate between single a double,
and just double click everything, which would launch the installer when
they just intended to browse, which could be scary. (not kidding)
2. If the program doesn't have its own installer but just a zip file,
then I think we should give it one.  We cannot assume that the user has
an unzipper.

So, on the whole, I think it's a good step forward, and  a branch we can
build on.  btw: Where is the source? I presume it's GPLed :-)  Does
anyone have familiarity with setting up a SourceForge CVS repository?

- Henrik


-- 

Henrik Nilsen Omma             Theoretical Physics, Oxford
35 Frenchay Road               1 Keble Road
Oxford OX2 6TG                 Oxford OX1 3NP
[email protected]          [email protected]








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