> That is an architectural distinction of concern to developers, but I don't > think > users will see it that way, nor should they. It is a common mistake to think > that the best way to present an interface to the user is to mirror the > underlying architecture. Users will view Freenet as a single application, > not a > group of applications sitting on top of a common platform. Our UI must > reflect > this.
There are many users who see 'Internet' as being the icon on their Windows desktop. This does not mean that Apache will ever come with the browser, nor should it. It is true that users sometimes misrepresent what is what, and for that reason it's a good practice to hide some facts from those who aren't ready for it. One can call Freetalk "chat" or "forums" for example, and make it seemlessly integrate into the rest of the UI, and one should make a default start of FProxy with the rest of the Freenet core. However, users should not be forced to use the bundle when they only need one thing. > > Why not? Why shouldn't search also return results from discussions and your > freemail? Why shouldn't you be able to attach a file to a discussion, which > would be downloaded through the filesharing mechanism? The lack of > integration > between Google's apps is a bug, not a feature to be emulated. This is why I > still think Facebook is the separate metaphor. I don't think "oh, now I must > switch to the Facebook Mail app so I can email my friend". Its all > integrated. Facebook analogy doesn't work for the simple reason that users aren't required to run those things on their computers. If Facebook would be a distributed network, i'm sure that many who use it just to message their friends and look at photos would find it surprising that it's trying to run video conversion on their systems... and they *would* demand to have the ability to tell it to stop. ------------------------------------ Now i realise that the most likely response to what i've written will be "I haven't said that Apache should come with Firefox", and it's true there was no such statement, but my reply is to the counterargument against the Google apps analogy. - Volodya -- http://freedom.libsyn.com/ Echo of Freedom, Radical Podcast "None of us are free until all of us are free." ~ Mihail Bakunin