[Gimp-web] menu structure

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:50:10 +0000, David Marrs <David.Marrs at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Guillermo Espertino wrote:
> > About the download stuff. I think it could be very nice to use O.S. 
> > detection in the homepage download button, just as in Mozilla website 
> > (and other sites too).
> 
> Attached is a patch that will do this. It requires the following server 
> environment variables to be set:  [...]

Unfortunately, this patch is not a good idea because it does the OS
detection on the server side.  This will not work.  There is a good
reason why the automatic download buttons used by Mozilla and other
sites do the OS detection using client-side Javascript code: anything
done on the server side may be cached by proxies.

Many Internet service providers (e.g., AOL), schools, universities and
companies have optional or mandatory proxies shared by all their users.
If you attempt to change the page depending on the client OS as
detected by the server, you will quickly run into problems because some
users will get a cached copy of the page offering them the wrong
version.

So the only good solution is to put a bit of optional Javascript in the
page.  The examples provided by Mozilla are relatively simple and can
be adapted to www.gimp.org easily.  There is also a <noscript> part in
order to support those who block Javascript.

Note that the whole point of these download buttons offered by Mozilla
and other sites is to provide a one-click download, or at most two
clicks if there is an intermediate page with sufficiently important
information that should be read by the user before downloading the
installer.  This means that the download button should link directly to
the downloadable file, or link to a page that contains a direct link to
that file.

I don't think that the pages that we have now would qualify for this
direct download.  Currently, downloading the Windows installer (probably
the main target for this download button) requires 4 to 5 clicks: one to
get our "/windows/" page, one to go to gimp-win.sourceforge.net, one to
go to gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html, one get the file (which may
require an additional click to select a mirror site).  This assumes that
the future installer would also contain GTK+ and that the user does not
want to install the help files.  Otherwise, you can add another dozen
clicks, which is far from the "one-click" goal of the download button.
The download button should really be a direct link to the file, without
having to go through the intermediate pages.

-Raphaël