Re: Opinions: Warn about online registration checks?

JT wrote:
[...]
So the ultimate question is, "Should the shareware display an
interactive message box that interrupts the flow of the software
before doing an online database check instead of seamless operation?".

It's my opinion that you're actually asking two different questions. One has to do with how you notify the user, if at all, that you're doing some network operation. The other has to do with how involved you want the user in allowing that operation to proceed (ie, tell him in advance or just wait for a failure and ask him to fix it).

I think that the answer to the first question is that you should only check the registration in response to an explicit command from the user. This could be a "register" command in a menu, a button on a splash window, a "I can't perform this command until you register", whatever. I think that's much better than just implicitly checking the registration, especially if the implicit check could potentially occur over and over until the user has actually registered.

As for the second question, I think that you really only have one practical choice: perform the operation, and provide useful information to the user if it fails. In most cases, a firewall or proxy won't actually block outbound client network traffic, and your operation will succeed without trouble. At the same time, most users aren't network configuration savvy. So you'd probably just wind up confusing most users.

In the unusual case that outbound network oprations are blocked, if I recall correctly in Windows Vista if the firewall is blocking access, the user will be given a way to authenticate as the admin and open the access automatically, and the easiest way to get this to happen is just to try. In Windows XP SP2, the firewall offers a similar UI except that you have to be logged in as admin for it to work (otherwise you just get a "contact your admin" message).

In other words, in the large majority of cases, there's really nothing for you to warn the user about. You definitely should offer some help topic covering basic network configuration issues, but I don't think there's any need to direct the user to that until something fails.

Pete
.

Loading