Hi Marco,
Marco Cawthorne wrote:
> I was wondering about the download links on the page. They still use
> the ftp:// protocol which has regrettably been phased out by every
> major browser.
well, ftp support is intentional, since it is traditional. Every major
browser... you mean every chrome-clone, since Chrome dropped support for
it? If Google is too ignorant to distinguish between a hyper-text
(transfer protocol) and a file... I don't know...
But I guess it is evil that spreads like URL part and protocol hiding,
https enforcement for pages that don't need it at all, etc, etc.
Getting upset about the general trends when we can’t control them isn’t going to change how we are perceived when people try to access the page.
When you consider the following statistics:
It seems pretty silly not to try to make it easier for people with Chrome based browsers to download the packages when Chrome based browsers account for a large portion of what people use all over the world.
>
> There are http links to those, so I was wondering if they should be
> changed to make them more accessible. I remember the old wiki used
> them too.
Yes, good point, I didn't notice since I use browser(s) which support
it. I just noticed that Firefox followed the bad practice.. they really
are a google-follower today, how sad.
I agree that it is unfortunate. It seems unnecessary to remove it as it is tried and true. While you could generate both links, as you said, via PHP then we should consider that.
I think best would be to provide both links like other sites do. Before
with the php page both links could be generated, I made it now static.
Agreed. We should provide both and use whichever one is available on the browser the user is using.
This can be made easier by removing some of the things for the page,
like "required"... I find it is useless, since it depends on what
installation you perform and what programs. The same goes for
stable/unstable version.
True. I was looking at that as well.
I personally often just copy the link and then use wget in a terminal of
a machine, so not downloading from the browser itself.
Does it even make sense to show the version number? Maybe it is easier
to do something like:
GNUstep Make | <ftp link> <http link> | Makefile Package
it is easier also to update. No need to explicitly say the version
number in each link.
Agreed.
I generally want to simplify the download/source pages even more, this
was more a stopgap thing since we were missing files and had
inconsistent links.
sources.html and downloads.html should somehow merge in one single page,
in my opinion.
Riccardo