Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users

On the topic of this, I had actually proposed an entire redesign of the
installer system in a much earlier post, but in discussions on IRC I was
informed that making alternate UI's for Windows Installer systems is a
pretty difficult task.

~Shawn

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Cesare Leonardi <celeonar@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I'm just a user too, that follows the LibreOffice project with many hopes
> and that try to contribute with bug filing and comments.
>
>
> On 11/03/2011 16:17, Jared Meidal wrote:
>
> > When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask
> > where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many
> > elementary PC users.  I think this is primarily because this step is
> > unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it
> > from the user.  I suggest eliminating this step.  Either the
> > installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it
> > automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a "temp" folder in the
> > background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful
> > installation.
>
> I completely agree with you.
> I've always found strange using the desktop as temporary folder and also
> found strange that the user has to manually delete later this folder.
> I concur that this forlder should go to %temp% and that has to be deleted
> after the setup completes (even with error).
>
> I'm unsure if can be useful to make a permanent copy of this folder under
> the LibreOffice folder in %programfiles%, so that the user can modify his
> setup without having to find the original installer.
> Tipical use case is, for example, to add Impress if you haven't installed
> it in the first place, or to modify file associations, or to restore the
> program if something got screwed up.
> It wastes disk space but can be useful in many cases.
>
>
>  The second issue is that the install folder "C:\Program
> > Files\LibreOffice 3" contains the version number.  This is much
> > better than the Start Menu\Programs folder "LibreOffice 3.3" which
> > contains the point version also.  I suggest removing both.  Simply
> > "LibreOffice" is enough, and is a much more common standard and
> > expectation for Windows users.
>
> Like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, for example.
> It's something i do on every setup: i change the folder name deleting the
> version. It makes upgrades easier (from a user point of view).
> For example, when you upgrade from 2.4 to 3.x (as i'm doing now at work),
> many users ends up with a broken quicklaunch program in their startup
> folder: if you use version number in folder, quicklaunch is not able to find
> itself anymore after upgrade and you have to solve the problem manually.
>
> Another thing that i've always found strange in OpenOffice/LibreOffice
> Windows configuration is that, under the Start Menu, LibreOffice programs
> are showed with their real name (LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, etc),
> while if you right-click on the systray icon you can see the localized
> document type (i translate from italian: Text document, Spreadsheet,
> Presentation).
> My workmate believe this is a bug, me just an incoherence.
>
> In my opinion the better solution would be to render identical both
> strings, with something like this:
> Writer (Text documents)
> Calc (Spreadsheet)
> Impress (Presentations)
> ...
>
> Or reversed:
> Text documents (Writer)
> Spreadsheet (Calc)
> ...
>
> All the string should be localized, like the ones in the quicklaunch.
> And without the "LibreOffice" prefix (as "LibreOffice Writer"), since the
> word LibreOffice it is already in the folder name.
> This has the good effect of teaching the corrispondence between the name of
> the application and what it does. Many employees keeps on calling Excel the
> spreadsheet and Word the word processor and ignoring what are Calc and
> Writer...  ;-)
>
> Hope to help.
>
> Cesare.
>
>
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