[QGIS-Developer] Download troubles? Download in the background?

[Johannes Kröger (WhereGroup)]

Hi Andreas,

ouch!

Javascript is not required for the download. If it is disabled, all OS 
options are expanded and the big green buttons directly point to the 
files anyways. The "donate" popup is only triggered in addition to the 
normal link click (if javascript is enabled).

If the users really just not realise that a download has started, maybe 
making the text that says that QGIS is being downloaded bold on the 
"donate" popup might help? The popup might just be too intrusive and 
distracting even.

Some sites use images to point their users towards the browser's 
download manager, maybe there is a freely available library that does 
this for all kinds of browsers and screens?

Downloads are often painfully slow though and might even time out in bad 
cases I guess. Having some more/faster download mirrors might help. The 
osgeo.org mirror is often unusable (I think it is that mirror that most 
often causes issues, norbit.de usually seems fine for me - from Germany 
though...). Here is one story of a user in South Korea: 
https://fosstodon.org/@ianthetechie/110943928875054838

Maybe users see super slow or failing downloads and think that it is a 
matter of donation.

I am aware of download.osgeo.org and norbit.de mirrors, are there more? 
It would probably be a good idea to have one in Asia and maybe one in 
Africa, depending on the routing. At least for Asia OVH has cheap offers 
that might just be good enough.

PS, if a CDN (probably overkill) would be considered: I am strongly 
against using Cloudflare as they are a global surveillance opportunity 
for the US and we would all be stupid not to assume that any traffic 
going through them is logged by three letter agencies. We should not 
participate in that kind of centralisation. There are alternatives like 
https://european-alternatives.eu/alternative-to/cloudflare . I would 
happily research a good choice.


Could you try to find out more details about why they get so confused?

Cheers, Hannes


Am 20.09.23 um 08:50 schrieb Andreas Neumann via QGIS-Developer:
> Hi all,
>
> Recently (past 1-4 months) I get a lot of emails at finance at qgis.org 
> from people who say that they donated but then could not download 
> QGIS. I think I got at least 40-50 such emails until now.
>
> Sometimes they ask: how many times do I have to donate until I can 
> download QGIS?
>
> I then explain them that donations are optional, often direct them to 
> the direct download page - and I tell them that downloads may take longer.
>
> I believe that many users aren't aware that QGIS is downloading "in 
> the background". Because the QGIS downloads are rather large this can 
> take several minutes ...
> Or may there be other problems with downloads? Does it require 
> Javascript to be enabled?
>
> I wonder if we can display some hint that QGIS is downloaded "in the 
> background" and can take a while to download ....
>
> I believe this is because many users don't know how their browsers 
> work with the downloads of large files ...
>
> Is there anything we can do to inform users and enhance the download 
> experience - so that I don't get that many emails?
>
> Thank you for your replies,
> Andreas
>
> --
> Andreas Neumann
> QGIS.ORG <http://QGIS.ORG> board member (treasurer)
>
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-- 
Johannes Kröger / GIS-Entwickler/-Berater

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