[Sparkle] Proposed solution

[Florian Albrecht]

Hi Andy,

sorry for jumping into the discussion rather late:

On 06.08.2007, at 02:40, Andy Matuschak wrote:

> Alright guys, thanks for talking this out with me. I think I have  
> the basic behaviors I'd like in mind now. Here's what I'm envisioning:
>
> User opens an app using Sparkle for the first time. It gives a  
> brief explanation of what Sparkle is and asks if he wants to  
> install it.
No, please don't! This has been my main gripe with all apps using  
Sparkle and the main reason we disabled the default behaviour in our  
apps.

Put yourself in the position of the user: You downloaded an app from  
a website, not exactly knowing what it is, but it looks interesting.  
You just want to have a look at it. Depending the app you probably  
need to run an installer or do any other setup voodoo. Now, as  you  
finally think you are ready to give it a try it bothers you by having  
to make a decision whether you want that app to automatically do the  
update thing.

Don't get me wrong, the functionality is great and it's perfect to  
give the user a choice whether checking happens, but I strongly feel  
that it should not be the first time a user starts a new application.  
Apart from distracting the user from her task it also gives the user  
a feeling that his running application might not be the greatest and  
best thing available.

In some cases, such as an incompatibility with a system update,  
alerting the user might be the only right thing to do, but in my  
experience this is rarely the case.

I would suggest the following approach:
  - In case the Sparkle package is already there (installed by some  
other app) just register the new app with it and don't bother the  
user at all. The developer can always provide some preference setting  
for later.
  - In case Sparkle is not installed, give the choice to the  
application developer. My feeling is that we would want to either  
install it automatically, do it while being inside our setup  
assistant or preferably do it at a later time, as we feel that the  
first run is too important for decisions like that.
  - Actually I would really like to keep the Sparkle functionality  
inside the application in addition to a daemon solution as it then  
would be much easier to handle that initial startup case.
> If user agrees, the app's stub downloads and installs the package:  
> a prefpane and a daemon with login item.
> If the user refuses, nothing happens; he'll have to find the  
> Sparkle homepage later if he wants it.
Have you thought about different Sparkle versions having to be  
compatible at all times? Or how would we handle different Sparkle  
versions?
> The daemon begins checking for updates. If one is found, a Sparkle  
> icon appears in the dock and bounces (though perhaps not repeatedly  
> like Software Update—argh!), badged with the number of updates  
> available.
Then we would need to make sure that people know what Sparkle is!

For me it is still very alienating that some unknown icon appears in  
my Dock each time I start Photoshop CS3. As it turns out, it's there  
(rather ugly) software updater trying to catch my attention while  
checking all sorts of things.
> The update window looks identical to Apple's Software Update  
> window. Release notes are displayed. There are check boxes, but all  
> are checked by default.
If you make it *identical*, people will not see that it's not Apple's  
Software Update. This might be good or bad. In our experience I'd  
rather have something specific to refer to in case of a support  
incident.

Just my 0.02 for now.

Cheerio,

  f l o r i a n

--

Florian Albrecht
Boinx Software.

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