[arachne] User-friendliness or lack thereof in Arachne

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

>> An artificial limit does not offer the user a chance to remedy the
>> situation himself by freeing up additional memory, so it is the most
>> user-unfriendly and thus the worst solution I can think of.

> I find it almost too humorous for words that someone thinks
> that Arachne is failing in the "user friendly" arena.

Hi,

even though that statement of mine was related to the introduction of
the artificial limit of 2000 displayed emails, which hopefully will now
be obsolete, IMNSHO Arachne is still lacking in the user-friendliness
department.

For example, the download file requester leaves much to wish for. In the
Netscape Navigator I have been using before I switched to Arachne, one
would be asked for the file name even before the actual download
started. NN would also show all files in the directory, let the user
switch to another directory if needed and even ask him for confirmation
if the filename already exists.
Arachne, on the other hand, only knows one download directory, requires
the user to type the path if he wants to store the file in a different
location, does not inform the user about existing files and will even
happily overwrite a file if he accidentally chooses the wrong name.

The NN can also download several files at once, thereby making optimal
use of the free bandwidth, while still allowing the user to continue
browsing. Arachne limits the user to one download at a time and even
requires him to wait for the download to finish until he can continue
browsing.

Several years ago, I asked Michael Polak to do something about these
problems. I told him that I could rather do without Javascript or SSL
than without a good file requester. Naturally, when the subject changed
to things that Arachne does *not* support, he did not respond. :-/

Well, it is easy to say that Arachne is better than Netscape or Internet
Explorer if your Windows is just a few key presses away.
I would suggest that all the people on this list who would like to tell
me how user-friendly Arachne is and how bad Windows is to just try to do
without their Windows for a month, or perhaps only a week; then they
would probably realise how much Arachne is lacking.

Now that I have said what I think, go on and flame me for criticising
Arachne if you like. ;-)

Regards,

Udo

-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

-- This mail was written by a user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/

Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --

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