My Magic G-Ball comment aside I'll throw my 2c into the debate. First, the
decision we make today is not binding for all time. Also, I appreciate Joe's
comment about simplicity but the reality is J2EE has a steep learning curve and
as much as I would like to see Joe's mom download the server and get cracking I
doubt she has much use for a J2EE server to post recipes or pictures of her
grandchildren on the web. PHP or Ruby would be easier I think :)
I appreciate that Tomcat is an Apache Foundation project and we want to taker
that into consideration. Since my involvement in the project though I think the
Jetty team has been more actively involved in Geronimo in terms of responding to
questions and making changes. Jeff has been doing a great job at making sure
Tomcat is a first class citizen as well. I may be wrong but the Jetty community
seems to be more active in G.
That said, I suggest we put some text in the installer that gives some context
to why a customer would want to choose one over the other. Indicate that
Geronimo works equally well with either WebContainer and that what we are
providing is a choice for them to meet their specific needs. I would prefer to
have a default checked and lean toward Jetty.
Regardless of which one is chosen I think the Installer should have some text to
guide the user to making a decision and we should be clear about the Openness of
Geronimo in allowing choice, providing information to make a decision and
provide a default so Joe's mom can get cracking.
Matt
Panagiotis Astithas wrote:
Jeff Genender wrote:
Joe Bohn wrote:
I agree with Aaron with regard to usability. Users don't want to
have to make any decisions on the first install (especially when they
first pick it up for evaluation). My mom doesn't install anything on
her computer unless she can click, click, click and get it working.
I know our users are more sophisticated than her ... but we want to
make it as easy as possibly to get something working quickly. We
want to make this easy enough for my mom to install (even though she
never will). :-)
So you think your average Geronimo user will have no idea what a web
container is?
I think this is the root of your miscommunication/disagreement: the
decision to choose a web container has to stem not only from an
understanding of what a web container is, but also from an evaluation of
the relative merits of both. That is, Joe User may know from Servlets
101 what a web container provides, but he may not be aware of what this
choice entails. Of course such worries could be mitigated by a blurb in
this particular installer page that mentions that both are OK, etc.
In the end, I think that not having a default choice (whatever that may
be) is a rather loud acknowledgment of a fear to have the debate and
make a choice :-)
Cheers,
Panagiotis
