[Adium-devl] Let's abandon disk images

[Michael Dippery]

I'm going to butt in with a comment from the peanut gallery.

I'll start off by saying that I LOVE the concept of the disk image,  
so on the one hand I hate to see it go, but on the other hand, I've  
seen that it is VERY problematic, especially for new users. The  
concept especially seems to be a problem for Windows switchers, but  
even veteran Mac users seem to get tripped up. I've lost count of the  
number of times I've used other people's Macs, only to see Firefox or  
Adium or other apps run from a mounted disk image, rather than copied  
to the hard drive. I've also lost count of the number of times  
friends and colleagues have frantically asked me, "Oh my God, why  
isn't Firefox/Adium/whatever not launching when I click it's Dock  
icon!" Most of the time, it's because the user has ejected (and often  
times trashed) the disk image.

So while I like the concept, it seems pretty difficult for new, and  
even intermediate users, to grasp. The biggest thing I don't like  
about using a {bzip2, gzip}-compressed tarball is that users tend to  
decompress them and then leave the application file hanging around  
their desktop...but I guess if users want to be messy then that's  
their right. :)

To be honest, up until recently, I was a big fan of distributing  
software via dmg files. I figured, "Hey, users should just LEARN how  
these things work. I picked it up, they'll get it eventually too."  
Then I took a step back and really thought about it, and realized  
that maybe there really ARE usability problems with the format.


That's my $0.02,
-- Michael


On Mar 29, 2007, at 6:18 PM, Peter Hosey wrote:

> They're great for those of us who have a clue, but that's not  
> Adium's userbase. Adium's users are non-technical people, and it's  
> becoming clear to me from feedback emails that some people just  
> don't get disk images. There's no long-term way around that except  
> to drop them.
>
> I propose that from 1.1 forward, we do all releases in tbz format.
>
> It simplifies the user experience:
> ⁃ No more alias to the Applications folder.
> ⁃ No more "Drag this here and then drag this other thing here and  
> then drag this third thing here".
>
> It downloads and opens up into a nice little folder. I can't see  
> how anybody could be confused by the tbz process.
>
> It simplifies our own release process:
>
> 	xcodebuild -configuration Deployment
> 	&& mkdir "Adium $VERSION"
> 	&& mv ../build/Deployment/Adium.app "Adium $VERSION"
> 	&& ln ../ReadMe.txt ../LICENSE.txt "Adium $VERSION"
> 	&& tar cjf "Adium-$VERSION.tbz" "Adium $VERSION"
>
> No making aliases. No AppleScripts. No getting every icon and label  
> in Just The Right Place. A simple five-line shell script and we're  
> *DONE*.