Survey posted 2004-01-24 17:52 by Magnus.

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Well, I will as soon as I can...

I tend to upload more than I download, but I'll try to review as much as possible.

I'll try to get in a couple reviews every time I have nothing else to do (which seems to be pretty often). Of course, I won't do THAT many, just because some people may not like my stupidness (stupid as in spelling/grammatical errors). This is really great though. Just what I've been waiting and constantly asking for (for about 1.5 years now). :)

talk about it... ur the "busiest" author, which shouldnt exist, cuz all it does is show the people who either actually fit the description, or it shows those who turn out loads of crap (no pointing fingeres *cough*kerm*cough* ), and often it doesnt include really busy authers who are working on a long project that is very high quality. so the reviews should get people to understand what they're downloading, and if it will help them at all, and if it wont help them, say it outright and not descieve them.

*"dont" not "not"

wow---that's pretty harsh, don't you think?
I've been moving into ASM lately.

Same here. I will definitely post reviews when I have the time.

As well as myself, I'm glad this is back. Now I don't have to sort through 100s of files again! Or at least this will make that job a while lot easier.

>>Who needs reviews, just test every program yourself

I'll spend a minute reviewing the documentation before I download to see if it is interesting.

I wish ticalc's zipview feature would let me read html files as that is how many programs are being documented now.

yeah, that would be a nice feature. I think that a lot of games get very little documentation, when they should at least have a page of text outlining controls, past versions, and how to contact the author, as well as a game description. I really only download those games that have a thoughtful well-written readme file...

It might be a nice feature, but it can also be a pretty bad security hole unless we parse and handle the HTML pretty well.

(Basic XSS problem - any malware or whatever embedded in the HTML would launch as if on ticalc.org, which everybody of course trusts..)

Is there a way to simply exclude scripts and include only text, pictures, and links?

They could spit out the header to be "Content-type:text/plain" instead of "Content-type:text/html"... Or maybe change all < and > to &lt; and &gt;... Or both... But then people would have to understand HTML... Which isn't that hard... And if you wanted to see it in rendered HTML format so badly, you could always fire up a text editor, paste it in, and look at it locally...
</ramble>

Knowing HTML is a necessity. We should force people to learn it. :-D

However, allowing HTML could be easily abused. You could create a 10000 pixel-width table and mess up the page, you could create a JS program that could do countless things, and you could easily mess up the layout of the site.

That's why I said "only allow text, pictures, and links."

<IMG SRC="null.gif" WIDTH=9999 HEIGHT=9999>

That's why... :(

Actually, I would prefer taht everyone switch to the more globally-compatible XML, and then switch to Mozilla, available from the URL link.

Only a necessity to people who are nerds like us. I just wrote a simple program that shows the direct variation between the amount of control a regular teacher has over her class and the exponentially less amount of control a substitute teacher would have over the same class. Cool, huh? Not. It was part of a six-page essay (single spaced), and I came up with a bogus but working program to take up half of one page.

How would you determine that through a program?

Run it through lynx. :)

how about your own language like BBCode? (or whatever it's called)

Yeah, you can't really tell what you're getting when you download something without documentation. There's an incredibly small chance it could be a virus. Or it could have some incredibly bad memory leak. I include documentation in all of the games that I upload, but I haven't gotten any e-mails about my games. Maybe there should be a section in each review that talks about the documentation...

Yes, or better yet, you could split reviews up to smaller reviews, and have each select a type, like graphics, controls, speed and so on.

Also, you could have a field for each catagory in the upload form, to reduce the load for the editors

>>There's an incredibly small chance it could be a virus.

even if it DOES have documantation, it could be a virus :)

I downloaded this one juggling program from this site and it had an EXE in the zip. Never ran it... but Norton AV 2003 said it didn't have a virus. Anyway, when we got Norton Personal Firewall, it said that it accessed the internet, or something. Or I could be completely confused with something else. Anyway, this was a long time ago. I still never ran the program. :)

Wow, a program that can access the Internet without even running?! That's amazing!

If you were to run it, I meant. Sorry :)

Or, if upon running it the first time, it sets itself to run when Windows starts...assuming that you have Windows. Also, for a firewall, there really is no need to pay any good money; there is a very good firewall availble for free (for personal or non-profit organization use). It is called Kerio Personal Firewall 4, and is available at the website from the website link on this post. On Symantec's online tests, it rated in the top 1%-2%.

I have Norton Personal Firewall... and to my knowledge, nobody has hacked into my computer :) It has, however, recorded several potentional attacks on the system that were blocked.

Good. Because I agree completely and plan to write thoughtful well-written readmes... one of these days if I ever actually get around to uploading something. :-)

Yes, ReadMes are the cornerstone of a good package. Mine are usually overly long... :rolls eyes: Better more than not enough though, right?

Right! The more information in a readme, the better!

Yes!!! I hate it when the readme doesn't mention some important control or feature.

reviewing documentation would be good, or even give it a raiting like 5 stars ect., that people could look at at a glance. maybe someone should write a general readme format for people to use, i only uploaded one program, and the readme isn't that good, but i think it does the job. anyway, something should be done to help people with documentation.

Maybe I can just duplicate the source file(s) and call it readme.txt! The source is good enough documentation, don't you think? :-)

Well, nice readme files are, well, nice, but there are some good programs with bad readmes. Also, I hope we don't get people reviewing their own programs and giving a false appearance to what may be a program of, er, not-so-high-quality...

See, thats the thing. If a really good game has a terrible documentation, then i will be less inclined to download it, and thus the author has done himself a disservice by not creating a good readme and thereby losing potential users of his good program.