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Every major player provides the reasonable default when downloading binaries. Every single one. There’s a reason for that. Regular users are not technical and
by josteink 7y ago
Every major player provides the reasonable default when downloading binaries. Every single one. There’s a reason for that.
Regular users are not technical and if you ask them to make a choice based on technical matters (Windows, MAC, Linux, Apple AppStore, Android AppStore, Chrone WebStore, whatever), where you instead could have had -1 clear choice- already presented by default in a big nice button, you will lose conversions or increase tech-support costs.
The evidence for this is so overwhelming that knowingly trying to ignore that makes it look like you have an agenda or horse to grind.
- zzzcpan 7y agoNo, these are not UX metrics, these are commercial metrics. There is a reason conversions and tech-support costs and almost all a/b tests and all that are not even remotely good UX metrics, as they do not exist to measure anything users care about in the product, only what companies care about.
- josteink 7y agoOkay.so let’s hypothetically say I buy your argument that providing a reasonable default is bad UX. In what other places of application development should we also stop providing reasonable defaults and force the user to choose instead? - country? city? - localization? - number for local support hotline? - email of logged in user? - type of currency for payments? No? Then why is having a reasonable default for downloads bad?
- zzo38computer 7y agoMy "WebOptions" idea would permit the user to customize these and other settings (both globally and locally; there could be some set of "common" keys as well as supporting keys specific for the server), in a similar format to cookies, although the server and document scripts would not be allowed to set them, and the user only sets them explicitly. For email, there is a "From" header, so that can be used if it is available. But anyways, the service should not make it difficult to download if it detects a wrong computer; it should allow it always, and should not be so difficult by trying to hide it.
- londons_explore 7y agoA good chunk of users don't know what OS they're running. Perhaps you should propose a feature detection for it. It could look like the media source API for resolutions and formats for web video - except the same for binary formats for software.