[arachne] Re: how much work will users do?

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

On 16 Jan 08 at 20:51, glennmcc@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>The above mentioned 1.htm is now at my site.
>
>http://cisnet.com/glennmcc/1.htm
>
>Ray would also need to write similar pages to be used for
>creating/editing ... minitrm.cfg and pppdrc.cfg
>
>We need the opinions of you... the users.
>
>Will you use Ray's idea for creating/editing those
>three .CFG files from inside of Arachne ?

IMHO the standard wizards are much more comfortable as the user need 
not care about variable names, but can concentrate on the parameters. 

The layout of the file 1.htm is not very optimized. 

I have became an Arachne user in the year 1999 (ver. 1.48) 
when I was looking for internet applications running 
under DOS. Most of the software I tried to install failed. 
There were three reasons, which convinced me to use Arachne: 

1) the spirit of the interface with the not serious icons

2) the fact, that 1 minute after installing I was online 

3) the wizard told me, how to modify the dial prefix in order
   to make the dial-up work in European telephone network

Later I realized that Arachne was more than any other application
conscious of internationalization issues and offered good solutions
for the codepage problem. 

Although I almost never had to use the wizards again, I consider them 
to be indispensable. 

Ray's alternative is not bad, but cannot compete with the wizards.
IMO instructions of this kind, which help to edit manually
configuration files, should be added to Arachne documentation in
\DOC\USER directory. They need not tell the user how he can edit a
file. Instead of an editor window I would prefer an editor link to
the configuration file. It should be clear that these instructions
are NOT a wizard, but ought to support "experienced" or "committed" 
users who do not give up after the first try.

Regards, 
Christof Lange

________________________________________________________________

Ceskobratrska cirkev evangelicka - Betlemska kaple na Zizkove
Prokopova 4/216, 130 00 Praha  3, Czech Republic
Tel. (+420) 222 78 06 73 / 222 78 20 02 / 603 18 87 53
http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov

                  Arachne at FreeLists                  
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --

Other related posts: