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[previously posted on NG in 2007] It would be great to have more useful filtering on the ebf download page especially by Operating System and by SA major version number. Ideally the List would be organised / filterable by a) Major software version - when you go to the page you are looking for v11, v10 or v9 or v8 etc and aren't interested in the others. b) By Platform Popularity. I'm sure Window x86 accounts for 80%+ of downloads, yet it's at the bottom of the list. c) By language, if you are using the Chinese version, you are unlikely to be interested in French or German ebfs. d) For each version & platform & language, prioritise the maintenance releases and latest ebf - again that is what most people would be looking for. e) Helpful filters - the current Display one seems to have no effect - presumably its relevant to ASE etc, the time filter by defaults screens out most maintenance releases, leading to confusion. My suggestion would be filters by Version, Platform, Language & Latest / All- defaults for all these (except the last) could be obtained from users current MySybase profile. With a system like this most users will get a short list first time, nearly always containing what they are looking for. I appreciate that iAnywhere, may not be masters in their own house on this one, since the bulk of downloads from this site will be ASE & other Sybase products. Perhaps iAnywhere could do their own download area for updates as they have (very nicely) for the SA Developers Edition. |
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I agree that iAnywhere should design their own download area. In my opinion, a simple, compact STATIC HTML display would answer everyone's needs... there are not enough entries, even if you list them ALL, to warrant any kind of sophisticated searching or filtering... all you need is a simple Table of Contents list of hyperlinks; e.g., V11 on Linux, V10 on Linux, ..., V11 on Windows, V10 on Windows, ... which would fit all on one page (using two columns if necessary. Then each section could be in reverse order by date, with COMPACT one-line descriptions. Anyone needing an EBF released in the past two years would get there in two clicks. Now, it averages 47 clicks, if you count the all the redisplaying and scrolling down and up and "where was that?" and "I must have missed it!" futzing around. The sybase.com website shows all the signs of Severe Overthinking, formerly known as Design By Committee. FWIW, here is an example of a compact static website design, DIFFERENT from what is needed for the iAnywhere download area, but nonetheless shows the power of the simple static <A> tag over confusing dynamic searching/filtering: http://www.risingroad.com/foxhound/faq/index.html |
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Since Breck has established a permanently linked EBF summary page in his blog lately, I'd like to point to that: Breck's Blog: SQL Anywhere latest EBFs Note: "Only EBFs for the latest fully-supported versions of SQL Anywhere are shown here: [currently] 11.0.1 and 12.0.1." That makes it really easy and fast to check for current versions... Thanks again, Breck:) 3
Thank you! ...and thanks to Jeff Albion, it now has direct links!
(19 Jun '12, 16:29)
Breck Carter
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Last year I used the feedback button on the EBF page to suggest part of your proposal. Never heard from them though...