This is a good point by Joel that Tim follows up on.
Suppose what Tim says to be true, then by that reasoning I don’t see why there is motive to kill and remove the welcome wizard also.
To me it seems friendly for those not computer robust. Ive seen a lot of players have basic issues of setting passwords / not understanding how to connect to the server (or how to synch after). At least the wizard gets them setup and on the server and started down right track.
I think the wizard should remain as a initial start up that users can then turn off in preferences if they want after. Removal of it will only bring back the same old issues of passwords and server connecting imo
Consider the card “Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Country…” in
Twilight Struggle. You can either play it for an event and replace
some or all of your cards, or you can play it for ops and keep your
existing cards. How do you decide what to do with that card as the
American player? In part, it depends on whether you want to keep
the cards you have. If you have a card that you might want to play
on this turn, then maybe you shouldn’t discard it.
What to do with that card is a decision which people succeed at
making. This is formally the same decision as whether to keep or
remove previous versions of VASSAL.
Do we need more or different explanatory text, then, so that the
users sees that these decisions are the same? Would something like
"The installer has found previous versions of VASSAL installed on
your computer. You may keep them, or the installer may remove them
for you. You should keep the older versions of VASSAL if you use
modules which require those versions. Otherwise, it is safe to
remove those older versions.
|Yes, remove older versions.| |No, do not remove older versions.|
Mostly I dislike the Wizards because they’re ugly and they introduce
a dependence on a library which we don’t use for anything else.
I’ve had second thoughts about removing the Welcome Wizard also. I think
it would be straightforward to produce a custom wizard dialog which serves
the same purpose but is not ugly. The code for the things which we make
appear in the Wizards already exists, so this would mainly amount to
creating a container with a few buttons.
If you guys think this is necessary, then it’s necessary. But I don’t like that we have to do it this way. I prefer a no-questions-asked installation; No fuss.
I just cannot understate how computer illiterate people can be, it doesn’t matter if they are rocket scientists or advanced gamers or whatever. People who have no interest in computers are not going to know what to do when prompted with this question; As far as I’m concerned there’s a 50% chance many users will choose the option that screws them over… in which case, why have an option at all?
There is a fundamental difference here; They are playing a game they like, so they are interested in the decision making process of that game. But they hate having to use a computer, so when they see a question about versions, it just drives them nuts; For many, many people computers are a necessary evil, they just don’t want to be reminded they’re using one.
Whether you succeed or not at making a decision relies heavily on how motivated you are to think that decision through.
The best I can say is that in all cases like this the best that can be done is to mark the defaults as ‘recommended’ (I have found that it does take some of the fear and doubt out), or hide it behind an ‘advanced’ button. Anyone who can get to the point of installing Vassal in the first place (‘install Java first’ is not the most straightforward of use cases), should feel comfortable skipping advanced install options for the ‘typical’ package.
I’m not against this idea, but the Welcome wizard should be something that has been very well thought out, or it will likely do more harm than good. I’m not convinced we have the interface design knowledge to create something effective.
Well for those that do understand, they can click the “Advanced Install” button; It hides the complexity and casual users will avoid it like the plague.
What Joel is proposing is to do is ask all users to make potentially difficult decisions about which versions to keep or delete.
You don’t have to install Java first (on Windows) with the current
combination of installer and executable wrapper. The installer doesn’t
depend on Java at all, and the executable wrapper is supposed to take
you to Sun’s website and tell you to install Java if it can’t find a
suitable Java installation. (I haven’t tested this myself, though, as
I don’t have a Windows machine handy without Java.)
It’s also possible to have the installer check whether an appropriate
version of Java is installed, and download and install it for you if
not. (It doesn’t do this now, but there’s some code for this on the
NSIS wiki which I could grab.)
I think this might be the first time I’ve mentioned this to anyone.
That’s what we’d said some time ago, yes. However, at that point I’d
not given installation much thought.
Now I think that the program itself should go wherever it is that
programs go on the user’s system, and that everything else should
be in the user’s home directory.
I think we decided on that old folder structure on the assumption we would not have a decent installer; We were assuming it would still be a zip file you must manually expand.
