On Sunday 14 June 2009 14:24:39 Zero3 wrote: > Ian Clarke skrev: > > Its that time again. Grab your girlfriends, boyfriends, flatmates, > > friends etc, sit them down in front of a computer, and ask them to > > install and use Freenet. Take careful note of anywhere they get stuck > > and either report it here, or report a bug. DON'T HELP THEM! Any > > time they need to ask you a question, its a usability bug. Ask them > > to provide a running commentary on what they are seeing as they use > > Freenet, make a note of anything that confuses or misleads them. > > > > Freenet has long been derided for its poor usability, but if you can > > spend 10 minutes of your's and a friend's time, you can really help us > > ensure that newbies have a good experience when they try Freenet. > > Had a friend do a quick test. Quick lineup of relevant > comments/questions/critique (my comments in parentheses): > > a) On the front page of the website: A "What is Freenet?" teaser linking > to the "What is Freenet?" page would be cool. Confusedly started to read > the news item instead. (She should have spotted the "News" headline, but > I agree on the teaser)
I think originally the reason for putting news on the main page was that a lot of people check back on the website repeatedly, looking for new stuff (i.e. news) ?: I agree we should have some basic explanation and link on the home page though ... I am not quite sure whether just copying the first para from "What is Freenet" as Dieppe has done is sufficient? "Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack." Followed by a link to learn more, a download link and news. Is this sufficiently comprehensible to newbies? I guess so, but it doesn't really answer the question! Anyway, I have applied the above to the website, apart from "Get Freenet" image, because IMHO the drop shadow makes it hard to read. Any chance of a new Get Freenet image? Also, the gap between a the end of the "Learn more" and the beginning of News is a bit too large... can we do something about this? > > b) FUD alert on the "What is Freenet?" page: > > "Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. > [...] Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of > prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content." > > (Agreed. We are scaring some people away before they even reach the > download page. I don't think we should hide the facts, but rather give a > reasoned explanation for the ways Freenet do things.) I guess there is a language issue here yeah... How about this? (deployed): 'Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Files are automatically kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files are encrypted, so generally the user cannot easily discover what is in his datastore, and hopefully can't be held accountable for it.' I have also made some other minor changes to the page. I am not convinced about the last paragraph, it is basically shameful advertising and is factually rather exaggerating (on the claim re china/mid-east): Also I think we need to play our distinctives better... darknet is a *major* distinctive for Freenet... I have rewritten the page somewhat ... > > c) On the "Philosophy" page: More focus on what Freenet actually *can > do* for citizens living under censorship and the like. Isn't that what "What is Freenet?" is about? > Too much space > spent on excusing for warez/other-stuff-people-don't-like. The "And what > of copyright?" paragraph seems like a bad excuse for providing file > sharing software. What about child porn/bomb recipes/etc.? (I agree on > some of the points. While much of the info is indeed true, it might not > be ideal to feed to first-time users up front.) Well, "What is Freenet?" is what they will see up-front. Normally I'd expect them to have read that first, and it does in fact ask them to at the top. > > d) FUD alert on the "Download" page: > > "Anti-virus software: Severe problems have been reported with Kaspersky, > and other firewalls and antivirus software may also break Freenet's > installation. Having said that, we do NOT recommend that you turn off > your antivirus software on a Windows system; if installation doesn't > work, please contact us and we will try to find out what is wrong." > > (TBH we haven't had "severe problems", and we don't know for sure if > Kaspersky was the fault (although it looks like it was). And we are only > talking about a single incident here - not "and other firewalls and > antivirus software may also".) The problems were severe. However, it is true that other firewalls and anti-virus software may not cause such problems. I have removed the warning. > > e) On the "Download page": No idea what a "node reference" is. (Could be > rephrased or explained better) That's why it's in quotes, and the "Add a friend" page does explain it. Do you have any suggestion as to how to improve the wording? > > f) The "Must use a separate browser" page in fproxy is missing a "do" > between "you" and "not". IMHO "We strongly recommend that you not use the same web browser to both browse the ordinary web and access Freenet" is readable and valid, but I have put the "do" in now for the pedantic. > Very annoying to be asked to install a second > browser. In this case, a third (using FF with IE as backup. And user is > asked not to use IE). More FUD about history leaks. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Unfortunately, the warnings about browser history stealing are factually true. Perhaps there is an argument for not naming such attacks if this intimidates people? Is the problem with IE important? There are possibilities for working around it, there has never been much enthusiasm for implementing them (even from ian who tends to be usability oriented). > No idea what a > "browser profile" is. Should we not mention browser profiles at all? And let advanced users who know about them figure it out themselves and feel smug? > (I have to agree. Quite a bit of usability fail. > Put it as an fproxy info message instead. Hopefully we will have > incognito support in FF soon enough.) Even if we do, if it behaves like profiles do, it will not be reliable, but hopefully it won't... The Browse Freenet script will need to be sure that the locally installed copy of Firefox is capable of incognito mode before using it in preference to Chrome with incognito mode or turning off the browser warning. On the other hand, if the user has Chrome installed the problem is largely solved on Windows - with the main caveat being that we have to turn off the page-loading javascript, because it doesn't work in Chrome (there is a bug for this). Perhaps we should check whether Chrome is installed and ask the user whether they want it in installation? I do think that telling the user they need a separate browser for Freenet in the installer, and letting them select one for the Browse Freenet script to always launch, is a good idea (bug #3104). The Browse Freenet script should pass in a flag if it is sure that it is starting a browser in privacy mode. Having said that, shouldn't the user be aware of this issue? A false sense of security can do a great deal of damage... https://bugs.freenetproject.org/view.php?id=3247 > > g) Confusion about the "automatic IP detection". Why does Freenet needs > my address when I'm supposed to be anonymous? So Freenet uses a magical invisible protocol that doesn't involve sending any packets over the internet, doesn't require new hardware, and is completely undetectable? > What is JSTUN? What should > I do on this page? (Agreed.) The UPnP explanation is okay, right? You want a *full* explanation for JSTUN? JSTUN: Currently: "Enable automatic IP address detection via JSTUN. Uses central servers (also used by e.g. internet telephone programs) to find out your IP address. Turn off if you are concerned about this." Longer: "Enable automatic IP address detection via JSTUN. Freenet is a distributed network, therefore other Freenet nodes need to know your IP address in order to connect. Because most computers are not directly connected to the Internet but go through routers, modems and so on, and most computers' IP address changes regularly, the easiest way to determine your current IP address is to ask some central servers which are also used by Internet telephony programs. If you are worried that this might be used to identify your use of Freenet, you should turn this off, but you will need a static IP address, a direct internet connection or some other way of finding your address such as a dyndns.com address. Note that dyndns is blocked in China!" Shorter: "Enable JSTUN. Turn this off if you have a static IP address or a dyndns address." > > h) FUD on the main fproxy page after finally getting through the wizard: Is there an implication here that it is too long? Any suggestions as to what to take out? Taking a big chunk of the user's disk space and bandwidth without asking used to lose us quite a few users. Making assumptions about security is likely to cause problems for those few users that do need it... I have considered getting rid of the welcome page at the beginning that allows you to not use the wizard... > Big read warning about connecting to the network. (Agreed. Since this is > to be expected, we shouldn't display a big, fat, red warning box. This > makes users go FUD and think they did something wrong or something is > broken. Make it a big, fat infobox instad. What big red warning? "The node is trying to connect to the network, it will be slow for a while." ??? How is this FUD? Users don't read, and have unrealistic expectations, so it is IMHO essential to tell them, while we have less than 10 peers, that Freenet may be slow for a while. Several times when I have done test installs this hasn't even shown up since it has reached 10 peers before showing the browse page!
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
_______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
