[tor-talk] TB download improvement

[Andrew Lewman]

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:33:01 +0200 (CEST)
Outlaw <outlaw at omail.pro> wrote:

> Hey there, Tor devs :) IMHO present torproject.org is very difficult
> for average internet user. For those who don`t know english well, it
> is almost impossible to find proper link.  

Hmm, the large purple and orange 'Download tor' button on the index page
was missed?

We spent three months testing website designs based on real user
feedback and usability testing. The green box and purple download
button were designed to catch your eye first, and testing proves it
works. The testing included barely English-speaking users by design.

> I think it is the question of resources - to provide multilingual
> website up to date, which Tor team just doesn`t have. So I have two
> suggestions that require minimal effort:

We had one, and it was mostly out of date and giving incorrect advice
in many languages. See
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6851 for the current
discussion about re-enabling website translations.

> 1. Easy one. Make a static link like
> "https://torproject.org/download/torbrowser-win-latest.exe"

No. This is a bad idea because then everyone thinks they have the
latest tor, all the time. When people ask for support, they explain
they have the latest tor, when really their version is 3 years out of
date. 

Our answer to this is a secure updater, codenamed thandy. See
https://gitweb.torproject.org/thandy.git/blob/HEAD:/specs/thandy-spec.txt
for the details. We just received some funding to implement this over
the next year.

> 2. A bit harder. Make a page for each language and OS with script that
> starts downloading latest release:
> "http://torproject.org/download/win/de" for example. Advantage of this
> method will be that you can provide some message, like version or
> other important stuff.

We have this already. When you click the big download button on the
homepage, you are sent to
https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en. There are
language drop-downs for the 13 TBB translations.

> People like one big red button DOWNLOAD and nothing else,

Consider Tor as a sophisticated as a formula 1 race car. Just because
you have a drivers license and can drive a nice sedan on the street
doesn't mean you can hop into a formula 1 car and even get out of the
pit lane without killing yourself. 

People who don't want to read the warnings, and just want to
download and run, are dangerous. They will de-anonymize themselves. At
best, they disclose they wanted privacy, at worst, they get arrested,
tortured, and killed while their family is blacklisted for life.

We are working on improving the usability of Tor to help users make
smart decisions. Research takes time and thought. The same process goes
for the website. 

Our website is free software, with the repository located at
https://svn.torproject.org/svn/website/trunk/. Feel free to submit
patches of your ideas to improve the usability of the site.

Thanks for the feedback.

-- 
Andrew
http://tpo.is/contact
pgp 0x6B4D6475