[tor-talk] Vidalia has been replaced with Tor Launcher

[Katya Titov]

Joe Btfsplk:
> On 1/25/2014 5:07 PM, Lunar wrote:
>> Joe Btfsplk:
>>> I missed the memo on all reasons why Vidalia - bad, Tor Launcher -
>>> good.
>> 
>> At least:
>> http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~clark/papers/2007_soups.pdf
>> http://petsymposium.org/2012/papers/hotpets12-1-usability.pdf
>> and Vidalia has no maintainers for a while now.
> 
> Thanks Lunar.  I perused those papers at my convenience (sounds
> fancy). It was lost on me if they in fact pointed out (important)
> flaws in Vidalia that Tor launcher doesn't have.
> Other than Vidalia not being maintained.

I see the main message as being that the TBB is too different from
other software to allow non-technical users to use it confidently. Some
specifics:

- 2007_soups.pdf

  - G5 Users should not make dangerous errors from which they cannot
       recover.
  - G7 Users should be sufficiently comfortable with the interface to
       continue using it.
  - G8 Users should be aware of the application's status at all times.

- hotpets12-1-usability.pdf

  - C.) Download Clarity: User wasn’t sure where on website to download
        the TBB
  - D.) Window discriminability: User wasn’t sure which window was TBB
        and which was a normal browser.
  - G.) Security Measure Confusion: Security measures taken by the TBB
        (such as redirecting from Google CAPTCHA, to DuckDuckGo)
        confused users.

Some of these are being addressed by the simplification of the
interface in the 3.x series (G7) and some are are not really Tor
specific (G5, C). Others are more difficult, and if I had answers I
would suggest them.

Unfortunately, if the software is not simple to use then people will
make mistakes, and those mistakes could result in the front door being
kicked in by jack boots, or worse. Tails and Whonix fit the bill here
and they make it very difficult to make mistakes, but they aren't the
answer for everyone.
-- 
kat