re: snarky comments
I made it so that the comments show up just below the big version of the image
(the one you get when you click on a thumbnail). But, since these screen
captures are big, the comments end up too far below the screenshots.
Ah well... :-) I'm really hoping somebody will step up to do a Flash
timeline-like thing, and this problem will go away. Or, maybe somebody will
figure out a way for everybody (not just me) to be able to attach comments to
each screen capture?? That would be cool!
re: your 4 questions
I think your questions are exactly the right ones to ask:
suggested look and feel improvements
suggested flow of control improvements
which is overall best and why?, and
what would a combined best experience look like?
I'd really like to hear some other people's answers, before I provide any
opinions of my own. Why? My goal here is to get an open conversation going,
rather than just having me throw out my own personal opinions. Overall, I
think
we'll end up with a better vision *together*, than any one person (including
me)
can provide.
I'll jump in after more people have had a chance to look at the screenshots...
:-)
So, what do other people notice about the various install experiences?
What leaps out at you?
What is conspicious by being absent?
Mike
Sarah Jelinek wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Mike Pogue wrote:
>
>> In my humble opinion, the graphical installation experience is
>> tremendously important.
>>
>
> Agreed completely.
>
>> Why? A developer starts to form opinions of Solaris/OpenSolaris
>> almost immediately from the look and feel of the initial install (on
>> their laptop, most likely). Even if they use something like jumpstart
>> later, that initial install experience sticks with them. Yes, I've
>> seen the mockup of what the install experience might look like in the
>> future (I give it a 5 out of 10, maybe... :-).
>> So, how can it be better? Well, before we try to answer that, I
>> figure we should all first be familiar with what other OS's are doing
>> out there in the way of installation. And, not everybody has the time
>> to go do a bunch of installs themselves, just to form an opinion on
>> graphical installation techniques.
>> So, I've been busy doing some screen capturing for several OS's, so
>> that everybody (yes, you) can participate in this discussion. Here is
>> my first try at presenting the results:
>>
>> http://www.zenstarstudio.com/install
>>
>> I did installs of various OS's (Windows XP, S11b43, SuSE10, Ubuntu)
>> under VMWare Workstation, and screen-captured the results. I
>> post-processed these down to individual frames, 1 second apart, and
>> then I went through and picked up frames whenever anything interesting
>> had changed. I organized these sequentially, made thumbnails
>> (automatically -- I'm not completely crazy), and I squished the whole
>> thing into a couple of (somewhat ragged) web pages. Oh, and of
>> course, I had to add some snarky one-line comments about each page, too.
>>
>> Note: The last 2 thumbnails on the Ubuntu page are what happens when
>> you pop the Ubuntu CD into a Windows box. Interesting idea, eh?
>>
>> I invite you to check 'em out, compare and contrast the various
>> installers, and join the discussion!
>>
>
> This is good stuff. Some initial things are obvious:
>
> 1. The Solaris installer asks *way* to many system configuration
> questions before even starting the installation. And, it is actually
> confusing because halfway through the whole process we switch to the
> installation without what appears to me an obvious transition, it almost
> looks like we started over with the install with the 2 'Welcome'
> screens. I am not sure we should really call these two things, that is
> the initial system configuration we must gather and then the
> installation data, out separately.
>
> 2. SuSE asks only a few questions prior to install and then asks the
> rest of the configuration questions after rebooting. But, the screen
> that says 'Installation Complete' after doing the post-initial install
> system configuration seems confusing to me as a user.
>
> 3. I don't like the 'notes' shown during the windows installation, the
> why windows xp is so great stuff. Just my opinion.
>
> 4. Ubuntu gets to the point quickly to get an install done. Although
> some of your thumbnails for this don't appear to show anything really
> happening at some points during the install.
>
> So, since you have seen the proposed new install experience you are
> obviously aware we are working on Solaris install. The data you have
> here is excellent and a clear and easy way to see the user interface
> differences of the various installers. Thank you for doing this. I did
> not see any of the snarky one-line comments you mention above. Did I
> miss that somehow?
>
> My question to you now is, now that you have seen these different
> installers and you rate our proposed new installation experience a 5 out
> of 10, what specific recommendations do you have to improve that score,
> and why? Specifically I am interested in your thoughts on things like:
> 1. Look and feel improvements
> 2. Flow of control improvements
> 3. Which of the install experiences you have captured do you like best
> and why?
> 4. If we could combine the best of these experiences what would that
> look like?
>
> I think that I personally need to think about what might be the specific
> differences with Solaris that might not fit easily in to some of these
> other install experiences. Do we have special configuration needs,
> special 'target' needs, things like that.
>
> This is good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to help and contribute.
>
> sarah
> ****
>
>> Note: I had trouble downloading RH from their website, so I don't yet
>> have any screen captures for that OS. Maybe they knew what I was
>> going to do? :-)
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> P.S. Feel free to contribute a better display page for these.
>> Locations of the full and thumb images are obvious from looking at the
>> page source. If I were a Flash programmer (which I'm not), I probably
>> would have made a horizontal scrolling thingie to display the
>> thumbnails -- that would have taken up much less vertical room than
>> the CSS thing that I did.
>>
>> P.P.S. If the OpenSolaris install community wants to host this stuff,
>> that would be a good idea, too. I don't know when my site bandwidth
>> will run out!
>>
>>
>> This message posted from opensolaris.org
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>>
>>
>
>
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