Downloads - Immodest Proposal

[Curry Kenworthy]

Richard:
 > How they handle email address harvesting at the .com site for
 > the proprietary edition is, literally, their business.

My interest is primarily for the .com site, and I'm comfortable sharing 
my opinion. Of course they have every right to their own decision too 
and I have the deepest respect for that. In my experience LiveCode is a 
company that does listen over time, so it's always interesting to have a 
discussion, whatever the venue and final result, always in a friendly 
spirit. That's a nice distinction you have to make a direct contact only 
to the company about .com matters, but I didn't feel that way on this 
particular topic, plus I can learn in the process and see what a few 
other users think too!

While discussing this I should have added that I still LOVE the full 
downloads page at downloads.livecode.com and even made a video about it 
a while back. It could be an overwhelming page for non-geeks on their 
very first day, but it's just right for many initiated users, even when 
they are still fairly new to the LC world. Hope it will never go away. A 
dynamic link at the top could help people quickly access the most 
relevant version or two for their own platform, and there could be other 
tweaks but I like the concept pretty much as it is.

One more observation is that I do see other companies requiring a signup 
too, but interestingly enough the word "Download" is still sometimes 
prominent in their signup mechanism! It's a nice call to action and can 
be paired with other phrases to cover all the bases. Personally I like 
to see a download at the beginning, that's me, but I had to chuckle 
seeing how it's possible to have it both ways, with "Download" leading 
to a sign up. And of course it's very true, people are signing up with 
the goal of accessing those downloads. Pretty good approach.

Best wishes,

Curry Kenworthy

Custom Software Development
LiveCode Training and Consulting
http://livecodeconsulting.com/