forum.i2p ~ View topic - Near-term direction

I'm Anonymous. I've posted a couple of patches to fix small problems in Syndie to the Syndie dev forum in Syndie. I just posted this message to that forum, but I thought I'd better post it here too.

I think that in jrandom's absense, we need to seriously reconsider the direction Syndie development should take in the near term.

One question that we need to answer is why we've seen so little activity in Syndie in the months since the last Syndie release. One possible answer is that the current release is effectively broken for new users, because they are unable to post. Another is that the Desktop UI confuses new users (and perhaps even existing users who upgraded from the tabbed UI) and drives them away. IMO, it's likely a combination of those factors.

Our immediate priority ought to be to ship a new release which fixes the bug preventing new users from posting. Complication/foofigher has provided a patch, but AFAIK it hasn't been committed to mtn. I know jrandom has said he'd be able to create new releases. What do we have to do to get this done?

The back-end functionality of Syndie seems reasonably stable and functional (though certainly not perfect). For that reason, I believe our secondary priority must be to improve Syndie's ease of use, with a heavy focus on new users. I see two roads forward on this: either we try to fix the Desktop UI, or we try to fix the Tabbed UI and make it the default again.

In either case, it's going to be difficult. Turning the DUI into something that new users can feel comfortable with right away is probably not a task I'm able to do on my own. The TUI would be easier, since it models familiar applications. All it really needs is polish to make it behave more the way users expect, and it makes it much easier to add features because it's a less restrictive design.

A professional UI designer might be able to turn the DUI into a better interface than the TUI, but we have no professional designers. When it comes to UI design, the only thing I'm able to do is copy familiar designs.

That's why I need to know where other people stand with regard to Syndie. If I'm going to be the person doing most of the Syndie development, then I'm going to switch back to the TUI as the primary UI.

I feel like I haven't said everything there is to say, but I'm going to stop here. I need to know if anyone besides me cares about this, because I'm just wasting my time if not.

My vote goes to the tabbed UI. I gave up syndie after trying to understand the new desktop UI for about an hour and never managed to let it do the things I wanted to be done...