Marc:

The web's a funny place sometime, and model railroaders seem to be less tech savvy as a rule.

If we pop up the downloader, then popup blockers will likely break our downloader - so out goes that idea.

More than a few modelers, many of them potential advertisers, have either emailed us or called us on the phone and told us they couldn't get the magazine download to work. When digging into it, the problem was they didn't know what we meant by a "right click" or a "command click".

The new downloader isn't blocked by popup blockers, and it doesn't require a right click or command click anywhere. And instead of accidentally loading this massive PDF into a quirky browser plugin, it always does a download.

Previously, without forcing a right click / command click, our huge PDF could load into the browser for display and could hang the browser. If it did manage to load the first few pages and you start to read the magazine and decide you want to go back a page - if you press the back button in the browser you will start a *second* download! What a confusing mess ... and a good way to dim the lights on our server.

You can't *force* the PDF to always download because browser security restrictions prevent you from forcing anything to go directly to disk without the consent of the user. If you can't force the PDF to download, then the default behavior is for it to come up in the browser plugin for viewing. Wrong again!

In short, a complicated mess and it's our guess more than a few potential readers just gave up rather than even email us or phone us.

Our custom downloader finally gives us a simple (left button) one-click download that doesn't popup. That means 99% of our web audience should be able to use it without any issues - and what an ordeal it was getting here, believe me.

I still forget that many folks are new too, or find the technology many of us take for granted quite confusing.

More than a few modelers, many of them potential advertisers, have either emailed us or called us on the phone and told us they couldn't get the magazine download to work. When digging into it, the problem was they didn't know what we meant by a "right click" or a "command click".

This reminds me how easy it is to assume others have the basic knowledge that we more experienced users take for granted.

I was teaching my sister how to use her new computer.  I was trying to make everything as simple as I could because she was a new user and was apprehensive about using the computer.  I thought she would have no trouble understanding the instructions I was giving her, click this click that, etc.  She stopped me suddenly and asked, "what is the mouse?"  Knowing she had worked doing data entry for a major telecommunications corporation, it never occurred to me that she would not know what a mouse was.  I just assumed she knew.  As it turned out, the data entry she did was on a "dumb" terminal.  No mouse clicks involved.

The experience gave me an insight into what it is really like to be new to computer technology.  Even so, I still make the mistake of assuming "everybody knows that".  Not true at all.

In short, a complicated mess and it's our guess more than a few potential readers just gave up rather than even email us or phone us.

Absolutely!  IMO, most people will just move on instead.  Some of them, never to return.  Making things easily accessible to the masses, especially the less experienced, has to be a top priority.

I see your point.  Then we shall  live with it.  So far it has worked without issue under Vista and IE 8.

Marc Fournier, Quebec

Joe I'm pretty shure you have already thought of this but, Have you put the Down load page as the Main first Page you open up when you join MRH? with this new simplified way of uploading your magazine I would put it on Page one with a Big Click Here to get your Free forever Magazines ASAP.

Dan

Dan - working on it now. We wanted to test it first to make sure we squashed any critical bugs first.

It looks to be pretty solid, so I've moved Issue 3's download to the new downloader and will be moving issue's 2 and 1 next.

If you select current issue in the menu bar above, you now get the magazine main comments page and a button to the new downloader. You can check it out if you want ... just don't bother downloading the July issue again unless you really do want a new copy!

I downloaded all three magazines at the same time just for the heck of it and I also downloaded each issue 1 at a time to check the time frame and in total it took about 49 seconds to down load issue #1, 63 seconds for issue #2 and 65 seconds for issue #3 then all three at the same time 2 min 58 seconds and it didn't cause any problems or corruption of any files. You definitely have a winner with the one click down loader and now I have 6 copies to delete from my computer but testing is or can be fun. I'm using Firefox on Comcast high speed internet.

Dan

I downloaded all three magazines at the same time just for the heck of it and I also downloaded each issue 1 at a time to check the time frame

That's a lot of megs just to delete the issues...

I guess you're on high speed internet! I thought I was in hog heaven bandwidth-wise when I got a 1MB broadband wifi connection - and it takes me just about forever to download stuff - maybe even 7 or 8 minutes!

Charlie

yes I'm on high speed and I just found out that I can step it up almost 25% more. Right now I can't even type as fast as I can download. In my browser I can have every advertiser here at MRH in Tabs on the top of my page and click form on to the next and open the page without any load time. I think it has alot to do do with the new Core 2 Extreme Quad-core processor QX6800 on an ASUS P5K3 Motherboard and an 1100 watt power supply it also has 4each 2GB DDR2 1066(PC8500}Ram and will take me about 2 years to finish paying it off my Truck was cheaper. I play on line video games at times and I can pick out every DSL and dial up player because they are moving just a half second slower than everybody else or than me. sometimes I feel like its cheating for me to play against them. I think at times this computer runs me more than I run it.

Dan

So when are you gonna go for a core i7-920 or an 860 with some DDR3 2000 ram?

Charlie