Download links on announcement pages for older versions are wrong

• Jul 21, 2019 - 09:10
Type
musescore.org
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

It is very confusing to be on an older announcement page (3.2.1 for example,
https://musescore.org/en/3.2.1)
have a section that states
Download Musescore 3.2.1 Release,
be given a download link, only to then download the latest.

Other projects/products will either
(a) link to the generic downloads landing page, e.g.
Download latest version here
The user have to pick their own binary there, but it means the links in the release notes do not "degrade" as badly as they currently do.
(b) just leave the old link (may be useful for historical reasons)
(c) strikethrough the old version, remove the link and state it has been superceded by a newer version, with link. A lot of maintenance if you do this manually.

I personally would recommended (a)

Comments

• Jul 21, 2019 - 18:56

I would recommend (a) because:

  1. It involves the least work.
  2. The generic download link is less likely to break than specialist links based on the filetype.
  3. It ensures users always get the latest version.
  4. But it does (3) in a way that is not confusing.

Finally, the Downloads page might be improved in future to offer the correct download to the user based on their browser's user agent string. This would ensure that users on Windows only see the Windows downloads, etc. unless they choose to "show more". This would give the best user experience in my opinion.

I don't think the release page should link directly to files, because it means that users miss out on contextual information available on the Downloads page (either that or the contextual information has to be duplicated on the release page, which is a waste of space).

Reply

• May 3, 2022 - 16:40
Status active ⇒ closed

Since someone else will do the release management on MuseScore 4.0 onwards (with Anatoly having left), I am closing this, until we get a better idea of how they are going to handle this, and if our old concerns and observations are still valid.

Reply