Releases and website behaviour...

[Llorean]

The documentation section of the bar on the left side of every page, everywhere seems good enough to me. That's the one I was referring to. I probably should've been clearer.

[bluebrother]

..which is fine, except the current front page text doesn't explicitly ferry people anywhere at all. I think an equally likely scenario (if not more so) is "Front Page -> Releases -> "oh..." -> Current Build -> Click the pretty picture of my player -> "oh.. what do I do with this .zip?"

Before clicking the pretty picture of the player one might find a link at the top of that page But of course a new user might not know what's this "Rockbox Utility" and simply ignore it. Maybe making that link more self-explanatory would be helpful ...

[pondlife]

Whilst we might wish users to start with the manual, I fear that many people will just head for anything vaguely labelled "download" or "install".  Even if we explicitly tell them to read the manual first, a fair few will carry on looking for a download/install link, or simply give up.

Certainly, I know I'm a member of the "if all else fails, read the instructions" club.  It's often easier to understand a manual if you're already playing with the kit, even if the manual is as good as the Rockbox one.

A seperate quick start guide/page/extract would be fine , but I'd hope that RBUtil is now mature (and simple) enough to be linked to directly as a quick-starter.  (If it is not, maybe we should aim to make it so.)

pondlife

[Llorean]

Do we care if they simply give up?

What's wrong with putting together an install guide, and putting the link to the installer in it, after directions?

Edit to clarify: I personally have a preference for saying "I'd rather they give up, then create an increased support load by willingly ignoring instructions". I think there's a group of people who are problem users, and it's a bad idea to encourage them. If they'll still skip to the end anyway, that's fine. But having the install instructions before it at least encourages people to read the docs, rather than discouraging them from doing so.

Edit again to summarize: I think asking people to read the docs, with the installer in them is vastly preferable in terms of likely success rate and generated support load to saying "here's a link to the installer, good luck" and hoping they're clever enough to choose to go back to the instructions if they have trouble, rather than messing things up or pestering people about things that are documented.

No matter how foolproof you try to make an installer, it'll never be perfect, and it's better to at least wave the documentation in front of someone first, even if they scroll straight past it to the link, because then SOME of them will at least know the documentation was there.

[Zardoz]

Many softwares have a separate install guide.

Is there anything stopping us turning the Installation chapter in the manual into a seperate guide we could offer as well?

I'd still leave that section in the normal manual too - but it might be nice to have a "quick start" method for people ?

I'm not a developer needless to remark (in fact I might be Lloreans nemesis.) I'm more than willing to contribute to a reworking of the manual (I've spotted many grammatical and spelling mistakes, and I think I could be clearer in more basic English.

Start submitting patches then.

Ok I will. How do I do that? Do the patches have to be in a certain format?

[GodEater]

We *like* patches to the manual done in LaTeX - but you can submit them as simple text files if you don't know LaTeX.

[Zardoz]

where will i submit them to? in what form? just as .txt files?

[shotofadds]

No matter how foolproof you try to make an installer, it'll never be perfect, and it's better to at least wave the documentation in front of someone first, even if they scroll straight past it to the link, because then SOME of them will at least know the documentation was there.

That's why I suggested that having the link on the front page - the waving of documentation then can't get any more obvious.

[GodEater]

Except we still have people who don't believe what's written on it

[MarcGuay]

where will i submit them to? in what form? just as .txt files?

There's a tracker called Flyspray on the left side of every page.  Attaching text files to patches for the manual would be fine.

[Zardoz]

ok but flyspray is gone

[MarcGuay]

Try clicking on "patches".  There's a known problem where it gives a blank page on 'search all'.

[bluebrother]

Something I've just put together: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/GraphicalInstall Feel free to improve ...

(the idea is to have in incorporated into some "install manual" eventually)

[JdGordon]

that installer page looks good. are there any targets which rbutil cant install the bootloader? if not then I think that page is fine, but should be taken off the wiki and put on a static page (with a note saying this page is infact up to date) and linked above FAQ on the left.