Firefox etc. default homepage

[Kyrre Ness Sjobak]

lør, 07.05.2005 kl. 15.34 skrev Rahul Sundaram:
> Hi
> 
> >Definitively. Perhaps giving the release notes when people ask for them,
> >together with other documentation - and not try to "push it down their
> >throat"?
> >
> Users do not ask for information like this typically because they arent 
> aware that its documented at all. A promiment display on the browser  
> isnt equivalent to "push it down their throat" . We might replace those 
> by a first login wizard which guides them through instead of the current 
> setup but it still requires a glaring display to make sure users wont 
> miss out.
> 
> "
> 
It is, at least to some degree, "pushed down their throat", as a user
who clicks on "web browser" expects that, and nothing more/less - not a
big manual about how the computer they happen to open the webbrowser on
ticks.

Just take my mother as an example: She is a pretty unexperienced
computer user/nettizen, and about the only program she ever uses is
Firefox (with the apropriate plugins) on an old, beat-up laptop running
Windows ME. Which she is quite happy with - she can get info on whatever
she wants, in a no-fuzz way.

Sometimes she wants to use my computer (because she only wants to check
something really quick and doesn't care to turn on hers, etc.), wich
runs fedora. No problem, she finds the webbrowser icon, and is greeted
with a page full of non-interesting (to her) crap, instead of the usual
google search page. Thats when she cries for help, and tells me my
computer is difficult to use.

Same story with new users on the system i admin at school - i set them
up with a home folder and an account on the LDAP server, and let them
log on. First thing they go for is the webbrowser. Secound is thing they
do is staring, frightened at the display.

A login-something would certainly be better than the current situation.
Doesn't KDE have something like this - kandalf? Would that be possible
to use (and create something similar for Gnome if it doesn't already
exist) as a basis, and giving such things as links to release notes,
fedoraforum.org etc.?

But that would still be giving the user information the user didn't ask
for. What about a shortcut on the standard desktop+somewhere in the
laucher menu to the docs provided by the docs project? And how many of
the RHEL docs could be copy-pasted into fedora usage?

> Another reason to put it somewhere else, is to ensure it doesn't "get
> lost" when the user changes his/her homepage to something more usefull..."
> 
> good point
> 
> 
> 
> "
> 
> Not every user is also an admin, and the stuff in the release-notes is
> primarily meant for admins."
> 
> 
>  I have been working on a more end user friendly version of the release 
> notes which can be used for non-root logins as the default page

No sensefull admin i know logs in grapically as root, and if he/she
does, he/she does not start surfing the web - and therefore does not
start firefox. Sice firefox is never started as root, the "full" release
notes never get seen.

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