Upgrade bitcoin.org

[blockgenesis]

"Foundation" and "get started" are links to other sites, but they appear equal in the site hierarchy to sub-categories. Main-menu style links should be consistent and not launch another web site without the destination being apparent.

+1, but..

I just found it more cumbersome to write a page about the foundation to respect that rule. So if you see a solution where the foundation has the same level of visibility without the side-effects, I would love this.

Get started seemed important to me. Because weusecoins is a concrete list of wallets, payments processing services and merchants that accept Bitcoin. (And it is friendly). That brings us back to the question of promoting such services by ourselves.. And I don't think that a lot of people will agree, me the first. However, perhaps it can be merged somehow with "Choose your wallet", and then weusecoins would have a good visibility there. Two members on the forum said it was confusing. What do you think?

[bittenbob]

Im surprised not to see WalletBit under wallets. WalletBit is an eWallet and merchant solutions website. We have the "What is Bitcoin?" video on our homepage and are more than willing to help new users understand more about Bitcoin. At the very least I think we should have a link on the site.

[misterbigg]

I think bitcoin.org should be about the protocol and as such should not have any connection to any bitcoin business. I agree that a website with all this information would be useful/necessary, but I would rather see a different domain dedicated to that.

The reality is there is only so much "mental bandwidth" available to customers. A single website that acts as a portal to the entire target audience (individuals, merchants, developers, speculators) performs better than splitting it up to different domains. It's easy to understand why, only one URL to advertise. And when anyone writes about Bitcoin, there's just one place to go to instead of two.

Thinking about it more, listing all the established commercial entities somewhere on bitcoin.org is a good idea, because it shows that Bitcoin has commercial backing.

So, yeah of course WalletBit should be shuffled in there somewhere. And everyone else.

[blockgenesis]

Im surprised not to see WalletBit under wallets. WalletBit is an eWallet and merchant solutions website. We have the "What is Bitcoin?" video on our homepage and are more than willing to help new users understand more about Bitcoin. At the very least I think we should have a link on the site.

The consensus on the current "choose-your-wallet" page is very fragile. The only thing that seems to have enough acceptance is to only display online wallets that cannot use, lose, steal their user funds like blockchain. For the other category (walletbit - paymium - coinbase), most probably that an "acceptable level of insurance" needs to be discussed.

Also, promotion of any businesses on bitcoin.org does not generate a lot of enthusiasm so far for many legitimate reasons. Just like bittorent.com does not link to specific BitTorrent businesses. I think a complete website should be entirely dedicated to the promotion of good e-commerce / wallet / merchants. So far weusecoins does this to a certain degree and we link to it everywhere. And if something friendly and more extensive is done, I will (and I think other will agree) gladly put a lot of visibility on it.

Yet I think that the real reason why we have to list Bitcoin wallets at all is that the default client is not suitable for most users.

[notig]

this may be just personal preference........ but I want bitcoin.org to look and feel a LOT like the heroku website.

www.heroku.com  . So slick and gorgeous.

[blockgenesis]

I submitted a pull request with English fixes. Additional problems that I didn't fix:
- Anonymity and freeness of transactions are overstated.
- I don't think MyWallet should be included without a lot of warning. It's no more secure than an EWallet unless you're using the browser plugin.

Thanks for the commit. I will let Mike review it.

But wait.. concerning blockchain, as far as I know, blockchain stores an encrypted version of the wallet on their server and send it to the browser and the decryption only happens within the browser on client side. Which means if someone hacks blockchain, or if blockchain disappear, they won't be able to steal the Bitcoins. The plugin only increases the security, by having the javascript pre-loaded so that any potential malicious javascript injected into the website wouldn't be able to sniff the decryption keys during a time. If I'm not mistaken, this is much more secure than traditional e-wallet. And on the matter of computers failures and viruses, this is even more secure than software wallets because you have a remote copy of your wallet without the traditional risks of a online backup.

[theymos]

Thanks for the commit. I will let Mike review it.

But wait.. concerning blockchain, as far as I know, blockchain stores an encrypted version of the wallet on their server and send it to the browser and the decryption only happens within the browser on client side. Which means if someone hacks blockchain, or if blockchain disappear, they won't be able to steal the Bitcoins. The plugin only increases the security, by having the javascript pre-loaded so that any potential malicious javascript injected into the website wouldn't be able to sniff the decryption keys during a time. If I'm not mistaken, this is much more secure than traditional e-wallet. And on the matter of computers failures and viruses, this is even more secure than software wallets because you have a remote copy of your wallet without the traditional risks of a online backup.

If blockchain.info is hacked, the attacker can easily change the JavaScript so that all MyWallet users send their bitcoins to the attacker. This is a little better than EWallets because you need to actually visit blockchain.info to be affected and using the plugin can prevent it, but it's still much less secure than a regular client IMO.

[blockgenesis]

Thanks for the commit. I will let Mike review it.

But wait.. concerning blockchain, as far as I know, blockchain stores an encrypted version of the wallet on their server and send it to the browser and the decryption only happens within the browser on client side. Which means if someone hacks blockchain, or if blockchain disappear, they won't be able to steal the Bitcoins. The plugin only increases the security, by having the javascript pre-loaded so that any potential malicious javascript injected into the website wouldn't be able to sniff the decryption keys during a time. If I'm not mistaken, this is much more secure than traditional e-wallet. And on the matter of computers failures and viruses, this is even more secure than software wallets because you have a remote copy of your wallet without the traditional risks of a online backup.

If blockchain.info is hacked, the attacker can easily change the JavaScript so that all MyWallet users send their bitcoins to the attacker. This is a little better than EWallets because you need to actually visit blockchain.info to be affected and using the plugin can prevent it, but it's still much less secure than a regular client IMO.

I know that we tend to take security of online wallets very seriously (and we should). But we should not forget to look at them in a relative way. I'm not the one who will decide of this in the end, however I think that blockchain is needed there. Because it is more secure for some, less for others (depending on the use and on the technical skills of the users).

However this makes one thing clear : We should bring people to the extension and present it like an absolute security requirement.

[mareo87]

this may be just personal preference........ but I want bitcoin.org to look and feel a LOT like the heroku website.

www.heroku.com  . So slick and gorgeous.

i like the design in heroku. design influence credibility if a website looks like it were design in 1995 than ppl would trust less that website. generally speaking

[mareo87]

Am I the only person who thinks that bitcoin.org should be for "the masses" instead of "Freaks and Geeks?"

Bitpay?

i agree that bitcoin.org should be upgrade and provide more information for the "freaks and geeks"

but at the same time i believe that weusecoins.com should be the place to go for "the masses"

and bitcoinfoundation.org is for corp. and business ppl to go to.

each of this 3 website should have their own scope of audience and role to provide information to the general public

[herzmeister]

I love the new layout. And I especially like seeing Multibit first on the client list. I remember first trying the "default" client only to get very frustrated, but when I later tried out MultiBit it was smooth sailing.

Multibit will complain on most newbie machines that "No Java found". Which is tedious to install too. So it's not quite recommendable for beginners either.

[Mike Hearn]

We should just bundle the JRE with MultiBit to simplify such things. Or compile it to native code with a tool like Excelsior JET.

[deepceleron]

I love the new layout. And I especially like seeing Multibit first on the client list. I remember first trying the "default" client only to get very frustrated, but when I later tried out MultiBit it was smooth sailing.

Multibit will complain on most newbie machines that "No Java found". Which is tedious presumptive and dangerous to install too. So it's not quite recommendable for beginners either.

I fixed the quoted text for you. There was a new Java release 10 days ago fixing critical security holes, and already there is another vulnerability disclosed. When that's patched, the next one will be used...

http://blog.fireeye.com/research/2013/02/yaj0-yet-another-java-zero-day-2.html#more

http://www.zdnet.com/java-zero-day-malware-was-signed-with-certificates-stolen-from-security-vendor-7000012079/

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/Feb/135

And before you say "this only matters if you use a browser plugin", no:

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/Feb/12

[Mike Hearn]

Yes, it only matters for the browser plugin (which is rightfully being disabled by browser makers).

By definition, you cannot have a security hole in a library in an installed program because the entire thing runs at the same privilege level as the app - unless it allows for remote exploits. However we don't know of any such bugs in MultiBit/bitcoinj, I'm not even sure how we'd write one, given that it doesn't download or run any code.

Java security bugs get a lot of attention because so many people have their browsers set to run Java applets automatically, so it's an escape from the browser sandbox. If you explicitly install the app, it's no different to any other app runtime (.net or whatever)

[herb]

I think it would be nice to have well produced documentary style video that gives the definition of money, a brief history of money, a brief overview of how bitcoin works, and why bitcoin is better than the currency we currently have. This should be posted front and center on the home page. The video at weusecoins is very well done but it's too short to convince people. There needs to be more info about the FED and the USD. Check out this video promoting gold... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyV0OfU3-FU. Something along those lines would be nice, just replace the words "gold & silver" with "bitcoin". Documentary style videos seem to be very effective at turning public perception.

[blockgenesis]

I can help with this.

The design looks a little bit cheesy to say the least.

Feel free to prepare and suggest improvements on the design.

[Herodes]

..snip...

blockgenesis, great post. Don't know if you're associated with the foundation or not, but surely, bitcoin.org could be the full time job of at least one person. I don't think that the wage needs to be all that high, we just need one person that's super motivated and interested in bitcoin, and that actually does a good job. The foundation has enough resources to make this happen, no ?

[blockgenesis]

blockgenesis, great post. Don't know if you're associated with the foundation or not, but surely, bitcoin.org could be the full time job of at least one person. I don't think that the wage needs to be all that high, we just need one person that's super motivated and interested in bitcoin, and that actually does a good job. The foundation has enough resources to make this happen, no ?

Thanks! I'm a member of the foundation and I don't know that much about theirs resources yet. But so far it seems like bitcoin.org could be managed in team the same way than bitcoin-qt is developed.

[sega01]

Re: http://174.142.20.146/en/

I am really liking what the new bitcoin.org site is becoming. The wording, style, and everything seems helpful for both newcomers and developers. A formal Bitcoin specification-type document that's been fully formatted would be awesome, for sure :-). Maybe something RFC-style.

Great job everyone!

[blockgenesis]

Re: http://174.142.20.146/en/

I am really liking what the new bitcoin.org site is becoming. The wording, style, and everything seems helpful for both newcomers and developers. A formal Bitcoin specification-type document that's been fully formatted would be awesome, for sure :-). Maybe something RFC-style.

Great job everyone!

Absolutely! This website is only a start. I would also link to see more and more high quality content. And I have in mind to have it translated to many languages. So that Bitcoin can better expand in every possible countries (this is decentralization).