What is Digg?45 Comments
- DIGGerPhelpsND, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Interesting. I remember downloading my first Mac application, Firefox, and having no idea what to do with it. It never occured to me that it could be so simple.
- wet_napkin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19@mac2: Windows?
- skoles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they all either say or directly point to your applications folder to install. Some even go so far as to make the alias already there for you to drag to.
For the Mac users who didn't know, you can drag your Applications folder to the Dock in the area next to the trash. This lets you right-click it to open up the tree showing your list of apps. Thus, dragging & dropping any apps to this link to install them.
I'll say that Gizmo and Adium have the best, most straight forward designs for the user. - roustk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14BTW, after looking at the posted Disk Image screenshots I found that my own design is the absolute worst:
http://softwaretrenches.com/2006/09/redesigning_1passwd_disk_image.html - stewacide, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Skype is one of the most (perhapse surprisingly) polished apps' on OSX, and that goes as far as the disk-image you can tell they put serious thought and effort into.
- digga, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12It's just a background picture, plus large size icons. Try it!
- mingistech, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11"For the Mac users who didn't know, you can drag your Applications folder to the Dock in the area next to the trash. This lets you right-click it to open up the tree showing your list of apps."
Thats the first thing I do whenever I create a new account on a new Mac. :) - mabino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"For the Mac users who didn't know, you can drag your Applications folder to the Dock in the area next to the trash. This lets you right-click it to open up the tree showing your list of apps."
Its worth noting that you can also click-and-hold instead of right-clicking in order to access the tree. - StarManta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7No, no, they really don't. For the first month I had it, I was running Mozilla (Suite) directly off the DMG.
Also, and maybe more importantly, many of these apps include a shortcut to your applications folder so you don't even need to open the sidebar. - spacebar14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I remember the first time I played with a Mac .. it was at a Mac store. I downloaded Firefox. I had no friggin idea what to do with the DMG. Not a clue.
The simplicity of Mac -- man. Kinda makes me wanna go buy one... - buzzert, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I like DMGs, because it's like you're actually taking the CD out of the box and putting it into your computer. Delicious Library is the best IMO.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5i like it when they provide a shortcut to the app folder, or just open a Finder window automatically so the Applications folder is there on the left hand sidebar to drag to.
- darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I think that the lack of a Registry makes up for a first-time user's lack of understanding, big time. :)
- darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I find it rather silly that even one developer would NOT put a shortcut to Applications. I mean, haven't they downloaded an app before? It just doesn't make sense...
- googlyguy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5A question: What application can developers use to make these customized DMG's?
- dimplemonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4big time digg for showing me the democracy player off this story. I like this player way better than iTunes for vidcasts. anyone else think so, too?
- shakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The problem with it is that it's not very obvious. It's not obvious to a user of a non-Mac system nor to a non-computer user. This is especially true of DMGs that don't have clear instructions.
What we need is a combination of Linux's Synaptic and Mac's .dmg. Synaptic has a great, obvious, and simple interface, but anything that's not in the repositories becomes a hassle. DMGs solve that hassle by being a standard way to disribute apps. I understand that things like shared libraries and distro differences make it hard to do this on Linux.
Klik (http://klik.atekon.de/) seems to be on the right track, but it's more of a hack than an integrated part of any Linux system right now. If a major distro would build their system with Klik packages and use Synaptic to install new Klik packages from a repository, I think it would be a real winner. All Linux packages should be distributed as Klik packages. - mac2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7At the same time other people did digg it and frankly it is cool because it IS so random, quirky, and utterly pointless. What's an OS without some eye candy?
- inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I love the idea of putting an alias of the Applications folder right there in the installer window. The first time I saw that, I just marveled at how simple and brilliant the idea was. Open the disk and drag the application over to the alias to copy/install it. Done. Beautiful. Everything should be that simple.
- roustk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3We use DropDmg. Its user interface is a bit quirky but it gets the job done.
- spacebar14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Re-reading that it makes me sound sarcastic -- but seriously, once you understand that you drag the .app to your Apps folder, it makes life -- so easyyy!
- towle_42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Did any one else notice that the background on the last one (iTheater) is one of the desktops that comes with vista? Just thought it was weird that a mac app would use that
- darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5looks like commentspam.
if you don't like the article, bury it or ignore it. Obviously, lots of people do. - judgeFire, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It's a design challenge, though - I've noticed how recent switchers never seem to realize it's just a regular window, with regular icons they're looking at.
And regular disk images have this problem that many users then proceed to launch the app from there, which is ok, but they never actually copy it anywhere. They then keep the disk mounted and the original .dmg file around for future use. Which is a mess.
Confusing...t he fully self-extracting apps are the best, IMHO. It's simple enough: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/SoftwareDistribution/Containers/chapter_3_section_3.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000145i-CH4-DontLinkElementID_7 - jimmatthews, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We had not seen anyone do the Applications alias trick when we did it for Fetch 5, but it turns out we weren't the first -- Rainer Brockerhoff’s XRay had it earlier. It has become much more common since the publication of Ben Artin's article on the Fetch disk image design: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/09/02/easy-access-to-application-folder-from-a-disk.html
- Dithre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2FileStorm is very nice.
- skellener, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Absolutely! Use Filestorm for creating the most user pleasing DMG files for OS X!!
Filestorm
http://www.mindvision.com/filestorm.asp - ismith, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I don't like internet enabled ones since they usually leave a mess of Read Mes and EULAs all over my already-cluttered desktop.
- bmson, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4My favorite is Democracy player, DMG
- inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, it's a great idea no matter who did it first and kudos to you guys for hitting on the idea. It's one of those simple, elegant things that is hard not to marvel over especially if you're a long time Mac user. That the Finder is so well designed that a single window can become a complete installer (so to speak) is just flat-out cool.
- DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Just click on the "Who dugg or blogged this" tab on the top of this page, that should give you an idea about who cares about this.
- vistic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I tried to make a disk image recently with a convenient link to a folder underneath the home directory (somewhere in ~/Library/Application Support) and realized there's no way to make a link that will point to a user's home directory. Anytime I tried to make a new link with ln -s to something like ~/ it would replace the ~ with my account name, and obviously that directory wouldn't exist on someone else's machine. :-(
So I had to leave instructions instead. - gavroche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2 I use the finder, works fine:
http://www.justbull.com/cec-cd-preview.jpg - waza8501, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Mine's not particularly great but does have a live link to the applications folder, http://web.mac.com/robwarren/iWeb/My%20iWeb/Home_files/View%20DMG.png
- mta3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ISO 9660 is good :-)
- inversegen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thanks for that, I'll remember that for future references (me a new mac user)
- smhill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It might be a good idea to read the article before commenting.
It is not about "how to". It is about usability design and best practices. - Stecchino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Me too. I just discovered Democracy through Saturday's MacOSXHints.com RSS feed. Been using it a ton over the weekend. The GUI is nice and intuitive, downloads are fast, and it's a resource-efficient app. I will be using it for vidcast/vodcast/vlogs instead of iTune from now on. Then again, with iTunes getting an overhaul on Tuesday "Showtime" September 12th, we'll see...
- raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wrong. Its the matter of installing, having, and using applications without having to fsck with the lower system internals of Linux.
Apple separated most of what you see on OS X from the Darwin portion, and did so for that exact same reason.
Diagrams:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_architecture.svg
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/index.html
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/images/arch.jpg
The problem with such initiatives as Klik and Autopackage is that they're trying to provide cross-distro packages rather than cross-distro applications. Packages are meant to be OS/distro-specific in their compilation and implementation (Gentoo's portage and Debian's APT, for example), while Applications are meant to be as cross-platform in their user-experience as possible (anything made by Mozilla, for example).
Thus, both Klik and Autopackage have been taken to task *countless* times by the developers of every major distro (take a look through http://UbuntuForums.org to see what I mean) because of this obvious conflict of interests and function.
Instead of sticking to the lower system all the time (seems to be the case with every distro), a cross-platform *Applications* layer should be in order. As far as I can see, the only thing that comes close is, ironically, WINE. http://www.winehq.com/ - strcmp, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Running it from the disk image is not always OK. It doesn't work for Thunderbird and Firefox.
- vandy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3and you downloaded slow slow slow ugly firefox why?
- xxNIRVANAxx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3who cares?
- docsnavely, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1looks like blogspam.
does it really matter what DMGs look like. i usually focus on the functionality of the end product. - michaelyurechko, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2before I comment, just want to say i own a mac...and love it...
but who cares about the design of dmg files, I mean any mac user knows that you have to drag and drop the application into the applications folder. - gotrevgo, on 10/12/2007, -18/+3I've never commented on a story without digging it but this is lame.
Is this some sort of joke? It's a background picture and in some cases an alias. How in God's name did this make it's way do the digg front page - if a software designer can't figure this out they're not designing software in the first place.
A far better tip would be to demonstrate that a user can drag an app to the "applications" icon in the sidebar, or that they can use the pill button to show the sidebar and accomplish the same thing.
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