User talk:Beltzner/Specification of Stub Installer User Interface

Comments from bsmedberg

Is there any reason we can't put the locale-selector directly on the welcome page? (I'm pretty sure that there is not a technical reason we couldn't do this).

On the intro page, can we get some more attractive text (see the NS8 installer, which has "You are about to install the latest version of the Netscape Browser. The Netscape Browser comes with many new and useful features..."

On the license page, I really would like the button to just say "Back" "Accept" "Cancel", instead of having the radiobuttons.

About "setup types", I'd like to reorder this a lot: let's go ahead and start downloading files ASAP, then, while the download is taking place, ask for information like "where do you want to install" (I think we should go ahead and present this option to everyone, with a reasonable default), as well as more advanced options such as "do you want to save the downloaded files for later" and "do you want developer tools". I'm not sure where we should put options for selecting a proxy server (do we just use the windows defaults?).

We really don't have that much in the way of optional components: IMO we should always install talkback and devtools, and just disable them if the user doesn't want them. This is all within the technical bounds of a ffox 1.5.0.1 release.

I'm interested to figure out where the stub installer would/should save partially-downloaded files in the event of a "pause" or network interruption. Traditionally we have stored them in the temp directory somewhere, but that has been a bad solution in a lot of ways.

--bsmedberg 18:34, 1 Nov 2005 (PST)

Replies from beltzner

On your recommenation from IRC, I checked out some other stub installers. I think it's important, however, to try and keep as standard an install experience as possible; we don't want to be tied to the way things have always been done in the past, but at the same time, we don't want to create such a radically different UE that people don't know what to expect.

• Picking the language should be the first step so that the majority of the UE/strings are localized. We could incorporate it into the first page, though, and just update the content dynamically. I'll fiddle with this.

• I purposefully didn't change much of the text as I wasn't sure what the delivery target was: some people were talking Fx 1.5! I'm quite happy to change it, but we should probably run text by the product teams. Again, I shall fiddle. My gut feeling is, though, less is more. People have already opted to download at this point; we don't need to oversell, but it'd be a good way to cue them to features in advance.

• AIUI there are legal implications for the EULA w.r.t requiring that users take a positive action (ie: click the radio button). However, this could be complete BS. I'll check it with shaver/mitchell, and would be happy to ditch. Heck, I'd be happy to totally skip the EULA!

• If we start to download files as we're asking for options (which was a version I'd fiddled with but didn't post) then we need to make it clear that we're not downloading unneccessary bits. Doable, but I really don't like the way that the NS8 installer does it. Especially with the prevelance of firewall apps, we don't want to touch the network before people expect us to!

• Options for where to install and proxy server should be hidden, buried, etc. I'm tempted to leave the proxy server instructions completely to the command line, and only show them if we have problems hitting the download server.

• Where to store temporary files? Same place that the app is going to be installed to, I'd say.

-- Beltzner 21:43, 1 Nov 2005 (PST)

Auto-detect user's language in the first step

Why don't detect the user's language in the first step to show a text in a language he can understand ? I'm talking about "Select your language", which could be translated. --Snap 13:03, 14 Mar 2006 (PST)

Comments from ispiked

When I initially saw the "Keep a copy of the installation files" I was like, "Why would anyone want to do this?". Then I realized that they'd need it if they wanted to uninstall later. But then I thought, "Shouldn't uninstalling later remove this?"

I mean, they definitely don't need it if they intend to keep Firefox installed, because the automatic updates will handle this.

Where are we planning to start the user out (location wise) when they choose that checkbox? My Documents?

--ispiked 14:25, 20 May 2006 (PST)