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People should be encouraged to download and use the latest milestone build (currently 3.1M6) instead of the last stable build (currently 3.0.2). Milestones are of high quality and developers need timely feedback on problems. Therefore the milestone build should be the most prominent download on the page (http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index.php). The New and Noteworthy page also needs to be linked prominently in order to advertise new features that users should try out in this milestone. See also: http://eclipsecon.org/2005/presentations/EclipseCon2005_WiegandGammaTheEclipseWay.pdf http://www.eclipsepowered.org/archives/2005/03/01/day-2-the-eclipse-way/ (BTW, John, where's the rest of your slide show? Also the url has a typo in it (missing a dash)).
-1 People should be encouraged to download the last stable build, so that newcomers always begin with software that works. Milestones are _not_ uniformly high quality; features are frequently broken or crippled in milestones, and third party plug-ins sometimes stop working for several milestone releases. Besides, the milestones don't need any extra advertising; Eclipse is an early adopter community; developers get lots of feedback already.
-1 I think the main download page is mostly used by newcomers and general Eclipse users, judging by all the feedback I received before, during and after redesigning that page. I feel that many newcomers and general Eclipse users want to use a problem-free (or mostly) Eclipse build to do their work (I'm one of them) and that using a less-stable build to test and provide feedback should be an opt-in choice, not an opt-out one where the prominent link is a milestone build.
Aw Bob, you're just mad that the 3.1 milestones broke XMLBuddy :). Seriously, if the stable/milestone versions are "frequently broken or crippled" then there are bigger problems that should be addressed. I use the milestones every day for non-Eclipse-related development and don't share that view. This request was prompted by several internal users where I work getting an old version and then complaining to me about it. Also I noticed some people on the newsgroups complaining that they downloaded Eclipse and couldn't find the JDK5 support (which is only in the stable versions at the moment). The Eclipse Platform team has no dedicated testers and relies heavily on community involvement. I like that, a lot. Up until recently, the latest stable version was the most promoted. I'm afraid we'll lose some of that "early adopter community" if a high percentage of users download the release version. Denis, how about a compromise? You've made it relatively hard to find the stable/milestone builds now and very easy to find the release builds. I wouldn't mind if the release version was first if there was also a prominent link to the stable version close by (below or next to it). The frequent downloads list isn't good enough because it's possible that the stable release could be pushed down or off. Have a new/noteworthy/release notes link for both release and stable so the user can decide which he or she wants. The really casual downloader that just clicks on the first biggest link would still be satisfied by that.
+1/-1 I'm not sure about this. Although it's very important to let people know about the latest technology I wouldn't encourage newcomers to download the latest build. It should be clearly state what is our stable release. But the latest milestone should also be more popular. What about: --- Download now: Eclipse SDK 3.0.2, Windows. Test now: Eclipse SDK 3.1M6, Windows. Other downloads for 3.0.2. Other downloads for 3.1M6. --- "Test now:..." should use the same style and size that is used for "Download now:..."
Both Ed's amended suggestion and Gunnar's make sense. To pick a nit with the latter, the word "download" should appear in the links for both the latest stable and latest milestone (test) versions. That word is pretty much the only thing people look for. (Ed, 3.1 hasn't broken XMLBuddy yet, knock wood. I had much more trouble with the supposedly stable API in the 2.0 release, where a certain team thought it would be ok to leave a certain feature broken for several milestones while they worked on other things. But you're right that my comments come from my experience with milestones. In particular, Java code completion and formatting are almost always screwed up in the first few milestone releases...because that's when the enhancements go in, which is what test releases are all about...making for a very poor first impression.)
Created attachment 21158 [details] Snapshot of the download page as of 12:30pm 14May2005 Just now I checked http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index.php . Even though 3.1M7 has been out for half a day now, it does not appear anywhere on the download page. M6 is still listed, but only because it is being downloaded frequently so it made the top 10 list.
The top-10 is updated manually. The top-two positions are static: The latest release and the latest milestone. I don't follow the Platform release schedule religiously, so I can't update the page unless someone informs me of a new release or milestone. I have updated the download page. I guess I'm really going to have to work 24hrs/day to keep up with these things =)
Sleep is for weanies :) Sorry, I thought the top 10 was automatic so I was wondering how M7 was ever going to get there. I guess that's prominent enough so you can close this request out if you want to.
Thanks. I intentionally left 1. and 2. static for the exact purpose of promoting release and stable builds. The minute someone tells me that 3.1 release is out, I'll be updating the downloads page accordingly. I usually update positions 3-10 once a month. I haven't yet done it for April *sigh* but next time I update the top-10 I'll add a small footnote to the list indicating when it was updated.
-1 for the original idea as presented +1 with modifications I would suggest maybe changing the top header from "Get Eclipse" to "New to Eclipse?" where the "if you're not sure what you want, get this" version and help would be. Then a second section: "Ready to get involved?" where the milestone and a little blurb about community,etc would be. I'm not sure that you would really get that many more responses though. Once I've got the main program down the Update component keeps me up to date, so I wonder how many existing users cruise the download page.
