[kakarot]

It's not Mozilla's fault that there are people out there who never bother to learn their computer well enough to understand what the "Downloads" folder is. It's a ubiquitous archetype found in every OS both desktop and mobile.

What's the point in setting standards if you don't use them?

[laumars]

You do realise the people you're criticizing are actually the vast majority of people who own a computer? The arrogance demonstrated on HN sometimes just shows that some people in tech are completely detached from how normal people interact with a computer.

> What's the point in setting standards if you don't use them?

Just to be clear, you're talking about a de facto standard and nothing more. Also there's nothing stating people have to follow standards (particularly given how many standards are out there which contradict each other) let alone the de facto ones.

[kakarot]

I didn't criticize anyone. It's a simple fact that most people don't take the time to sit down and understand the systems they use. I don't understand how recognizing that makes me arrogant. Recognizing there is a disconnect is the first step towards creating better systems and educational material for those systems.

> Just to be clear, you're talking about a de facto standard and nothing more.

It doesn't get much more standard than a "Downloads" folder in your user directory. It doesn't need to be an ISO standard to be recognized as a standard that everyone should learn.

Honestly you're the one being arrogant and assumptive right now. Accessibility is very important to me, and I'm not simply disregarding the vast majority of users. What's better, one ten-second educational widget for a user which teachers them to better understand the system they use, or a prompt each and every time you want to download something?

Prompts scare people, a lot of people never even read them. I've seen people download things, go through the download folder prompt, and then immediately ask me where the file was saved to.

[laumars]

> I didn't criticize anyone.

> Accessibility is very important to me, and I'm not simply disregarding the vast majority of users.

Fair enough. The language you used did feel like it was intended to be a criticism (re "It's not Mozilla's fault that there are people out there who never bother to learn their computer") because the common complaint techies seem to make about people who are less computer literate is that they hadn't bothered to learn it (an argument you maintained in your last post too). When in fact it's often a case that they have tried but simply don't understand where to start, or they're not naturally used to that kind of activity (much like how I'm useless at writing songs regardless of how hard I used to try). And some people are just intimidated by computers so always second guess themselves even when they probably do know what they're doing.

> Recognizing there is a disconnect is the first step towards creating better systems and educational material for those systems.

At risk of degrading the discussion, technically I was the one who highlighted the problem in the context of creating better systems. You then went on to say it's not system’s (Mozilla’s) fault.

> What's better, one ten-second educational widget for a user which teachers them to better understand the system they use, or a prompt each and every time you want to download something?

That's an interesting question. The truthful answer is I don't know. I've worked with people who only needed to be shown something once and they picked it up straight away; but I've also worked with people who have no ability to remember how to operate a computer or were intimidated by it so would second guess themselves constantly and thus they needed the machine to walk them through each step of the process each and every time. I'm an unofficial tech support for my elderly neighbours (which is unfortunate for all parties involved because I don't use any of the platforms they run so spend most of my time making educated guesses) and they also benefit from repeated instructions.

[kakarot]

> At risk of degrading the discussion, technically I was the one who highlighted the problem in the context of creating better systems. You then went on to say it's not system’s (Mozilla’s) fault.

I'll clarify that point. The thing is that there is a deficit in computer literacy education when it comes to learning some basic portable operating system conventions. The Downloads folder is one of those conventions. Tools are supposed to work together and not step on each others' toes. This allows compartmentalization of problems and scope so that the workload can be shared.

In the case of Mozilla/Google making it the default to use a convention set by its parent system, the OS, that is exactly what they are supposed to do. It truly isn't their problem if users aren't familiar with this convention, and any onboarding about the Downloads folder shouldn't need to happen in the browser and thus be replicated many times by any program that uses the Downloads folder, but instead the onboarding needs to happen from the OS side.

So I'm not dismissing the casual user who hasn't bothered to read the directories listed in their home directory and do some very basic critical thinking. They aren't stupid. They're just afraid of their computer more than anything else, like a car. They're afraid they could break something. But the problem is their OS's to solve, not their browser.

[laumars]

I get the point your making but unfortunately you're completely wrong on all technical details described:

1/ The downloads folder wasn't an OS convention that browsers adopted. It was actually the reverse. Some browsers created that folder and defaulted there and then Windows later adopted it to it's portfolio of configurable user directories (like the Pictures folder). I was a heavy Windows developer at that time and had been working on my own 3rd party browser so I remember that transition well.

2/ Also there is no such convention on Linux nor the BSDs. Some desktop environments such as KDE will copy the conventions used by Windows but KDE has always been influenced by Windows's classic desktop shell (explorer.exe) so it's little surprise that KDE will come with a Downloads directory. However there are other desktop environments and standalone window managers won't create a downloads directory and thus browsers are back to creating one themselves. Sure you can argue that Linux is fragmented so doesn't count but the same is true for BSD and all the desktop "hobby" OS's I've used too (aside ReactOS - but again it aims to mimic Windows). So this isn't a universal cross platform convention as you described but really more of something that just Windows (and possibly OS X?) plus a few mobile OSs have adopted. However if your sample size just consists of browsers on Windows then I'm sure "Downloads" would feel like a standard to you.

3/ This is also limited to mostly just the big desktop browsers (Firefox, Chrome, etc). Many smaller browsers - and particularly ones not based on Chromium / Blink - don't follow that convention. So again, if you're only comparing Chrome, Firefox and possible IE and/or Edge then I could see how you might consider this a standard but the reality is that's not the case.

When you consider that there are as many - if not more - exceptions as there are instances that follow that convention, it really becomes hard to even call this a de facto standard; it's certainly not universal across all platforms (browsers nor desktops) like you argued it was and it wasn't even a convention which Microsoft created as an OS standard which browsers were forced into adopting.

This is why I keep pushing back when you say "standard". It isn't. It's not standardised and it's not even de facto.

4/ You argue it's the responsibility of the OS to educate people where stuff gets downloaded to but that's just passing the buck. Yes Windows (for example) could make stuff more discoverable for sure but it's the browser which the users are using to download their actual files on so that's the browsers UI they're interfacing with and the UX they're experiencing when the confusion hits. You wouldn't blame the oven for cooking a bad meal if someone misread the instructions in a cook book. Blaming the OS for a bad UX in the browser is equally misguided.

However I do agree with you that some users are afraid of their computer but then you are just reiterating the argument I opened this tangent with.

[kakarot]

I haven't used BSD much so I can't make any claims as to the typical user directory layout.

> particularly ones not based on Chromium / Blink - don't follow that convention

To be fair, browsers with small market share are not the ones who decide what informal standards are considered.

> When you consider that there are as many - if not more - exceptions as there are instances that follow that convention, it really becomes hard to even call this a de facto standard;

Again, this boils down to how you believe informal standards should be considered. No doubt you can say there are more exceptions to the rule when anyone with two hands can make their own browser. But should we be considering those browsers, or just the ones with overwhelming market share? That's kind of the point of standards: Cover the typical use cases.

> Microsoft created as an OS standard which browsers were forced into adopting.

That's just not true. Microsoft forced neither Mozilla nor Google to implement this standard. No one was forced to do anything, it just seemed like a sensible idea and caught on.

This is why I keep pushing back when you say "standard". It isn't. It's not standardised and it's not even de facto.

Again, I need to point out that it doesn't need to be an ISO standard to be considered an informal standard. Informal standards are created organically, not intentionally.

> just passing the buck

Lol no. It's called not repeating work. It's a core tenant of the open software community. Don't do someone else's work if you don't have to. Why should each single program onboard the user to a directory which is informally standard on most popular operating systems? It's not passing the buck, it's being DRY.

> You wouldn't blame the oven for cooking a bad meal if someone misread the instructions in a cook book.

Bad analogy. The cookbook doesn't offer instructions on how to use your oven. The oven manual does. If you use an oven without reading the oven manual and expect to learn every safety tip from a random cookbook or internet recipe, then you're not operating your oven correctly. At least a computer won't explode on you.

> you are just reiterating the argument I opened this tangent with.

Only if you strawman me.

This isn't a chance for either of us to come out superior. This is just a conversation about UX. So put the compulsive need to batter down every point I make on ice and look at things for what they are.