> I do recognise the power in having a listings service on the > distribution site, though.
Probably best if the listings are maintained by the content provider, as they have the biggest stake in keeping their info up to date so people can find their content (similar to palmgear.com--they just wrote the engine, the people with the things to offer generate the actual content). I don't see much improvement in putting the out-of-box-experience samples off in a web directory on the distribution site in a desktop-client based manager (not that a full web directory wouldn't also be useful). One could force the sample list load dynamically from the distro site every time it is loaded, but then control is removed from the user in deciding when they would like to go online and update the samples. > At the very least, it should not be > distributed with the software because it will change more often than > the software (I hope), The software is destributed in releases. Ship a snapshot of the sample sites with it. There is an option to hit a button and the list of samples can be updated to the directory when the user decides to. > and it should be possible to pull listings > files from multiple sources (not just plkr.org). Right now we have pluck-comics, some command line samples in the documentation and the home.html sample. Currently we require knowledge of HTML/command line to be able to manipulate/customize samples to see how (if?) the program works. Think it should be easier for a casual user to be able to select some things to give Plucker for a spin, when first starting out. For multiple listings sources, the url can be typed in directly. Can add an edit box for the listings file to use to generate the samples, so that can type one other than plkr if so desired. If there becomes a number of choices of where to download a directory definition (or a specialized list that the user might be interested in), can start shipping these too. Best wishes, Robert
