Please clear up DarwinPort/MacPorts confusion

John Labovitz johnl at johnlabovitz.com
Thu Apr 5 10:21:01 PDT 2007


No offense, but getting to the actual download is still more  
difficult than it should be.

Just to map it out, here's what a new user has to go through:

	- Go to macports.org
	- Click on "Downloads"
	- Click on "Downloads Directory"
	- Click on "MacPorts-1.4.0" (if they know to do that)
	- Try to figure out which of the five files to download
	- Click on the appropriate .dmg (if they've guessed correctly)

I've been using Darwin/MacPorts for years, and I still get confused  
by this process.

What if it was simpler:

	- Go to macports.org
	- Click on "Download" [note the singular; links to ?page_id=48]
	- Click on either:
		- "Download MacPorts 1.4.0 for OS X 10.3/Panther" [links to  
MacPorts-1.4.0-10.3.dmg]
		- "Download MacPorts 1.4.0 for OS X 10.4/Tiger" [links to  
MacPorts-1.4.0-10.4.dmg]

That'd be two clicks to do the most common action.  The ?page_id=48  
page could be promoted from its current status as a stepping stone  
into the SVN repo, to the definitive user-facing page.  It should  
probably mention what will happen after the DMG is downloaded, and  
what the user should do next.

Since I'm complaining about this, I'd be happy to do the changes, or  
relay the code to someone who could.

--John



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