New downloads pages

We’re very pleased to announce that we’ve done a complete (and probably long overdue!) revamp of the download pages on our site. This should hopefully make things easier for users to find. There are still some rough edges that we’re hoping to sort out over the next few weeks, but on the whole they are fully functional. We hope you like the changes.

Stuff still on my todo list:

• Some ROOL pages still have the “Software” link at the top of the page, rather than “Downloads”
• The linked “Help” pages for each download will need moving from their old locations – right now, there are no help pages
• The HardDisc4 documentation needs doing to help explain what to do with these downloads

Unfortunately, as you say, all of the info links seem to be broken at the moment. It is also a pity that the opportunity to include compressed full Sd card images rather than just the ROM has not been taken. Especially for the Pandaboard ES.

Crikey, there’s no pleasing some people! SD card images are in the works, but you can’t have everything all at once – we’ve only got so much time… :-P

Hee hee! It’s very nice, Steve. Good work!

All the help pages that I can find have now been put into the correct locations.

but you can’t have everything all at once – we’ve only got so much time… :-P

Possibly a dopy question, but have the logo graphics for beagle and panda been checked for copyright?
Yes, I know, but sillier mistakes have come up.

Pedant issue: BeagleBoard and PandaBoard are incorrectly capitalised on the main page and in their page titles.

Usability feedback: Perhaps make sure the ROMs are at the top of their respective pages? At the moment the Beagle ROMs are hidden underneath the localisation files.

Bah-humbug feedback: Maybe the main page should have the entries listed alphabetically. Totally has nothing to do with the fact that BeagleBoard will then be first, honest ;-)

But other than that, the changes look great. Nice work!

but you can’t have everything all at once – we’ve only got so much time… :-P

Possibly a dopy question, but have the logo graphics for beagle and panda been checked for copyright?
Yes, I know, but sillier mistakes have come up.

The BeagleBoard and PandaBoard sites imply the logos are under the CC BY-SA license, so attribution is most likely needed.

Right, capitalisation fixed in a few places, logo attributions in place, ordering of the main page links adjusted to be alphabetical (but with miscellaneous in the end position). Ordering the downloads themselves is more tricky, because the magic Ruby script that processes directories into the page you see sorts things alphabetically by the group name. So I’d need to change the groups to have meaningful names where the ROM images are at the top (or whatever).

A bit of cunning renaming later, I think that’s the download ordering sorted out. Any more ideas?

Looks good to me!

Although: I think it would be worth having PlingSystem on both the RiscPC page and the Miscellaneous page. After all, it contains content for Archimedes machines, and people who don’t want RISC OS 5 but do want updated modules are perhaps more likely to check the Miscellaneous page first rather than a machine-specific page. And on a related note:

• Maybe embolden the “for use with pre-RISC OS 5 machines” text
• And maybe add a (bold) note to the descriptions of the hard disc images to make it clear that PlingSystem is required if the image is to be used on a pre-RISC OS 5 machine

And something else that’s been bugging me: Instead of just saying “See our press release (2013-07-24) for more information.”, actually make it link to the press release in question.

but you can’t have everything all at once – we’ve only got so much time… :-P

Yes, I know but let me give an example. It was clear that the next Pi rom was going to be RC12 (as RC11 was the current version) so I wrote a similar help page, based on the RC11 page, but guessed the name you would use for the RC12 page when it was produced so that the help page simply appeared immediately you had finished the RC12 rom and made it available.

So if you have an upgrade like this in the wings and you (and only you) know the name you are going to give the page, then it is a simple matter to copy the existing help page to give it the right name so that it would appear when the new pages are made available.

It is not extra effort, it is simply planning to do things in the right order.

But the new pages are very good.

SD card images are in the works,

I am working on it (I agreed to find a way of getting the necessary source stuff together to allow the firmware to be bundled by an organisation that is scrupulously careful to comply with the GPL not realising that the organisation that makes the firmware available does not, itself, take complince so seriously).

The new format seems much more logical and easy to navigate, with one exception AFAICS – if I were a newcomer looking to install RPCEmu (either using RO4 or RO5), I would find no reference as to which ROM/Hard disk images were suitable. As the vast majority of visitors to the Downloads page will be Mac- or PC-users, some of whom may wish to try the OS under emulation before committing to the purchase of suitable hardware, this seems an oversight.

. As the vast majority of visitors to the Downloads page will be Mac- or PC-users,

[citation needed]

Does ROOL keep a count of how many of each image is downloaded? Could be interesting…

. As the vast majority of visitors to the Downloads page will be Mac- or PC-users,

[citation needed]

Not really, the vast majority of people on the planet with a computer are PC or Mac users.

Stage one: look you can run an emulator of an old machine that does this, stage 2 look you can buy a dinky object that fits in your pocket that does the same.

And something else that’s been bugging me: Instead of just saying “See our press release (2013-07-24) for more information.”, actually make it link to the press release in question.

There was a reason I didn’t do this in the past – the yaml configuration file that sits behind the text on the page couldn’t take the mark-up required to embed links in the description; the yaml parser would just bomb-out and leave the page looking crazy. I noticed yesterday that Andrew had figured out the multiple levels of escaping to get a link to work – I’ll copy that technique.

OK, the PlingSystem download is in both the ‘common’ and ‘RiscPC’ sections. Descriptions updated with some boldness and I’ve converted the press release comments into links. I’m having a think about the RPCemu section.

I’m having a think about the RPCemu section.

On its own link as “emulated systems”?

Indeed – it’s more a case of sorting out logos, doing back-end symlinks (and scripts to maintain them), composing all the words to actually put on the page, etc…

A separate ‘emulated systems’ section would be ideal IMO. Would it be too much to ask for a zipped version of the ROOL RPCEmu stick (with an up-to-date version of RPCEmu)?

zipped version of the ROOL RPCEmu stick

But that may negatively affect any revenue from postal sales of the stick.

I am working on it (SD card image) (I agreed to find a way of getting the necessary source stuff together to allow the firmware to be bundled by ROOL)

My current plan is to demand the GPL source code from someone who sells SD cards with boot firmware on them for the Pandaboard (say CJE Micros) so that ROOL can bundle the firmware as well as the ROM (they need to be able to offer or bundle the source to the firmware to do this legally).

Do you think this approach would work?

see next post.

“But that may negatively affect any revenue from postal sales of the stick”

Not if the download was chargeable via the ROOL store…