ancarda@P... Re: Help Freenet - do a usability test! 21-Jun-2011 20:03:52 Having just installed & used Freenet I guess I could provide my experience. Although I am technically minded, I know almost nothing about encryption and I've never used anything like Freenet.
The install was simple however I think default options should be in place
(Medium security for default) and bit less text. Make it general & simple. Once
installing Freenet I quickly became annoyed at the loading times. Let me be
clear I've had some of the slowest internet and put up with it. I used to get
~20 KB/sec downstream. It would "feel" quicker if Freenet used more AJAX. I
want an indication something is happening rather than having an empty, looking
unresponsive page. On the regular internet I could load the body text and while
images were loading I could at-least read the article. Could something like
that be done for Freenet?
This is aimed mostly at people who expect Freenet to be like the regular
internet, after clicking if they don't see content after a few seconds they
click again.
On to hosting/blogging I uploaded some files now I can't find them/search for
them. Where did they go? I'm confused as to how this functionality works. If
that was some super-secrete document I needed spread I would consider jSite
instead.
Also, as for jSite, Could a tool be any less user-friendly? I'm proposing some
people work on a new version that is built into the sidebar. The forums took me
only a minute to figure out, the curve is very low. Since yesterday I have been
trying to publish a blog with jSite. These tools need to be in the plugin page
by default so it's easy to get up and running. I want to install & setup in a
matter of minutes then go straight to "Forums" and "Publisher".
This has GOT to be care-free, easy and simple if you want this to be more
wide-spread (which may reduce the lag). Being a developer I learned just how
stupid people can be. They don't want another application to do blogging. They
want to hit "New Blog" and start typing. For this we would need a small team of
people working on the plugin (java) and some more working on the actual
html/css that is generated. I think a few basic themes that load fast but look
nice could be made for the plugin (NO images for the themes, use CSS).
--
My response:
Okay...
First, how could we simplify the setup process? We can say the same thing in a
few less words but most of the time that results in people not being able to
understand those words. There are several problems with the defaults:
1. Users need to choose opennet. We could maybe get rid of the next question
("do you want a false sense of security and a slight slowdown or do you want
freenet to go for speed at all costs?"). But on opennet, freenet is hopelessly
insecure, therefore users must make an informed choice to use opennet. Also,
people in hostile environments need to make these choices, and they are not
necessarily geeks.
2. We could always use NORMAL physical security level. We need to warn the user
to encrypt their swapfile or its pointless. And in fact, if they don't set a
password, encryption provides only minimal protection (in that they can click
the panic button). Attacks in practice will often be at the
seized-your-computer level, especially in hostile environments...
3. Maybe we could improve things with the plugins setup. However, again,
situations where the defaults are dangerously wrong are unfortunately quite
common. But arguably we don't give the users enough information for them to
know at present. It might be possible to auto-detect but it would surely not be
reliable. But darknet won't work without some way to detect your IP address,
and even on opennet, forwarding the port is enormously helpful...
So ... it's hard. :( But input helps. "Simple", "general", and "safe" are
mutually contradictory, and not everyone who uses Freenet will know a lot about
how to stay safe online, so we have to explain things, which means lots of
words. And the fundamental, embarrassing but unavoidable truth, that OPENNET IS
HOPELESSLY INSECURE. It is still an improvement over a web browser, but a web
browser doesn't give you a false sense of security...
Web pages:
We could load the text first, by not including it in the container, but the
total load time would increase significantly and the images would be much less
reliable. Before that, you should definitely not see "an empty, unresponsive
page". You should see a progress bar. If you don't then most likely another
page is loading and is stuck waiting for images. This is due to freenet
slowness but also to browser limitations. We have AJAX code to work around it,
but it needs quite a bit of debugging before it can be enabled by default...
I am not sure what you are saying about hosting/blogging. How did you upload
files? If you uploaded them through the Upload a File wizard, they will be on
the Uploads page (until you remove them); you will need to propagate the keys
by hand (e.g. post them to Freetalk). Long term, Freetalk will have attachments
support so a message can be posted once a file has uploaded.
If a site was uploaded through FlogHelper, then in theory it is possible for
others to see them via your Web Of Trust identity; in practice this isn't
implemented yet, although Linkageddon will do it eventually hopefully. Did you
use FlogHelper? It is the obvious alternative to uploading a site in jSite.
What is wrong with jSite, exactly? Can you be specific? Apart from the obvious:
- jSite doesn't run as part of Freenet.
- jSite requires you to create your HTML externally.
FlogHelper really is the solution in most cases. We should make it more obvious
though, with a button. Or perhaps load it by default. I can see that the choice
of menu name might be a problem, but what else did you get stuck on when trying
it? Some of the pages aren't very user friendly...
Forums will be more obvious when Freetalk is bundled by default. We will create
an identity during setup. Unfortunately for architectural reasons it will take
hours to download the messages from the boards after that.
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
_______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org http://freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
