New bitcoin.org Clients page

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

I liked Luke-Jr layout. Maybe a 'comparison' page with that table would be a good idea.

ThomasV, sorry, but I agree with Mike Hearn text, saying explicitly that a client-server solution provides less privacy. This is a fact, and users should at least be aware of it. That said, not sure the "more suited to tech-saavy" part is necessary...

Finally, Bitcoin-QT should definitely not be labeled "official". Even the term "original code from Satoshi" is not really accurate. AFAIK, only the bitcoind part is "original", the GUI is totally new. And Bitcoin-QT is not the only GUI using bitcoind, is it? (If I remember well Armory uses bitcoind too, making it as "original" as Bitcoin-QT. Please correct me if I'm wrong).


I appreciate the listing of multiple alternatives in bitcoin.org. Good job!

[1713438731]

1713438731

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

Noob users want "the Bitcoin client", they don't know what is the Satoshi client

These "noob users" will probably read some recommendation somewhere, or receive it from a friend, of what client to download. How many users of uTorrent have ever accessed bittorrent.org?

We are not trying to sell something on bitcoin.org. This is "the protocol page", and it would better have a good level of transparency. If that implies some people will have to do a minimal homework before starting to use the software, so be it.

Also, I'm not even sure we should recommend bitcoin to "total noobs". The chances they end up losing their money to malware are too high, IMHO. "Total noobs" will have to wait for a dedicated, air gapped bitcoin device, unfortunately.

[ThomasV]

ThomasV, sorry, but I agree with Mike Hearn text, saying explicitly that a client-server solution provides less privacy.

I was not complaining about that; I was complaining about what he wrote on the need to be "tech savvy".

Now if there's going to be a similar page about "web wallets", I hope that mike will be fair enough to mention the same lack of privacy associated with them, and the fact that "you don't contribute your computer's resources to the network" when using them.
Oh, and did I mention that Electrum too has "the ability to construct transactions whils disconnected from the internet"? no, I did not, because I think that is the sort of technical detail that we do not want to mention on that kind of page. but apparently Mike has decided it's important to be mentioned for some clients.

[genjix]

Next up would be a page for mobile / web wallets, maybe?

+1
I think also that there must be a page/section dedicated to web wallets and another one to mobile clients.

Yep. 'Web Wallets' sounds good.

I'm not sure about a mobile section since that can be represented using the platform icons; for instance Electrum has an android client - would that get another entry for mobile clients?

[Mike Hearn]

As the main developer of Electrum, I strongly disagree with this message. It is inaccurate, and it sounds like you are trying to scare users off.
Electrum simplifies the use of Bitcoin, because it removes the need to download the complete blockchain, and to do regular backups of your wallet.
These two aspects of the Satoshi client make it require a substantially higher "level of technical ability" than Electrum.

One issue with trying to sum up the differences between clients like this is that we'll inevitably run into disputes. But we don't have much choice - there has to be some guidance to users on how to pick which clients to try.

The reason I put this (and genjix agreed with me) is that your clients website is clearly not intended for regular end users. It lists "easy to review the source" as a feature, for example. It's great that you've focused on making backups easy and this is recognized in the text. That is only one component of usability. If I pointed somebody who is not a programmer to your page, or even someone who is but who isn't very experienced, they'd probably run into problems at the first step of simply installing the app. When was the last time you went to the website of a typical software company and was told to download/install Python yourself?

If the install and website was more end user focused, eg, provided regular installers for the common platforms, dropped the technical stuff from the front page, then I'd probably not have said that. It can certainly be changed in future. The core software itself doesn't seem to have any particular usability issues.

Anyway, the description isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of all features provided. It tries to pick a few distinguishing features and mentions them. The main distinguishing feature of Electrum is probably speed and the deterministic wallets, and those are mentioned (well, easy backups are mentioned).

Yes, if I wrote a description for a web wallet, I would mention the lack of privacy and potential security issues too.

So, the main question is whether the description of clients should be left to developers or independent reviewers.

Like I said, I haven't developed any of these clients. I wrote a library that is used by one of them, but that's about it. Amir also hasn't developed any clients, just a (different) library.

You're welcome to suggest alternative reviewers, but you'll note that I dished out some criticism of the client based on my library as well.

[Mike Hearn]

For instance Electrum has an android client - would that get another entry for mobile clients?

Sorry again Thomas, but I'd suggest not including Electrum on a page for Android clients. Here is what you arrive at if you click the "New Android client!" link:

  http://ecdsa.org/electrum/android.html

You are told to follow a 4 step process that involves manually download and install various packages that are not in the Market, download and manually run scripts, etc. This is by no reasonable standard describable as "very simple". Very simple means you go to the market web page and click install:

  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImRlLnNjaGlsZGJhY2gud2FsbGV0Il0.

then you're done. Upgrades happen automatically.

The given rationale for this convoluted install process is "this gives users the possibility to see what the code is doing, and to check that it does not contain malware". The issue is, again, Electrums website conflates users and developers. They are not the same people. Users cannot read Python and even many developers won't read it well enough to be sure there are no security issues lurking there, assuming they even bother.

If we actually suggested users follow this procedure we'd simply lose a lot of credibility. Again, the software might work very well, but there would need to be improvements to the installation / upgrade process.

[Luke-Jr]

I went with the objective comparison table intentionally to avoid all this subjective arguing

[Mike Hearn]

Yeah, but that doesn't remove the complexity, it just pushes it onto our users, who are least qualified to make a decision. Easier for us, not so great for wider adoption.

Though it's sucky it's probably better for us to just thrash it out here. The descriptions aren't set in stone. We could put something about not supporting the network on other clients, or better, just drop that part and make it clear that by running Bitcoin-Qt you are helping support the network and project, then just not mention it for the others.

[genjix]

For instance Electrum has an android client - would that get another entry for mobile clients?

Sorry again Thomas, but I'd suggest not including Electrum on a page for Android clients. Here is what you arrive at if you click the "New Android client!" link:

  http://ecdsa.org/electrum/android.html

Well presumably that will change in the future. I think it's best to have 2 sections - 'normal' clients and 'web wallets'. Mobile clients can be bunched informally together and we can use the screenshots, platform icons and description to distinguish them. Really mobile clients are already a grey area what with touchpads running android and/or ubuntu. I kinda see them merging in the future.

The only useful main distinction is whether you keep your own wallet or trust someone else. External services are always vulnerable to shut down. The Electrum-model is not a worry as several servers can be combined together, and they never have access to your wallet. The only worry is a lack of privacy which we enumerated in the description.

[ThomasV]

I went with the objective comparison table intentionally to avoid all this subjective arguing

I think that your table is very useful, but it serves a different purpose: it is an objective comparison, not an introduction text.

For the 'clients' page, Amir asked me to write a 300 words description of Electrum, which I did.
Amir's request made me believe that the 'clients' page was going to contain descriptions of their work made by developers, and not an objective comparison by independent reviewers.
Amir brought some corrections to my text, which was consistent with the idea of developers describing their work, since he contributes to Electrum too.

But finally my text went to the trash, and Electrum gets a completely different 'review' text written by someone who probably never used it.
You can understand that I'm pissed.
why was I asked to write a description in the first place?

[BitPay Business Solutions]

I had organized the clients into a similar table a few months ago, with something simple designed for the first-time user.

http://lovebitcoins.org/getStarted.html

I wanted to put more emphasis on the mobile clients, because this is much easier and faster for a first-time user to get up and running.  This is especially true whenever I meet someone in person, since they always have their phone, but they never have a computer.

If the newbie likes what they see in the mobile, they can always become more of a power user. 

[Kluge]

The more I think about it, the more I like Luke's design. It would have been great the first time I was picking out a client. I still don't know what all's available. Maybe it could be "perverted" to include more subjective and apparently controversial wording such as "development focus" (e.g. "slow, widely-tested, conservative development cycle," "easy-to-use," "requires minimal computing/network power"), "advantages" ("allows 'offline wallets,'" "doesn't require 8+ hours of downloading and verifying a blockchain before usable," "can be used anywhere you have web access without requiring downloading anything"), disadvantages ("Requires at least 2gb of RAM," "minimal functionality doesn't allow you to do much more than send and receive bitcoins," "doesn't support encrypted wallets," "proprietary software disallows community from thoroughly examining the software").


Any jargon can link over to a FAQ section which explains the basics of downloading the blockchain (advantages & disadvantages, and how a Bitcoin wallet is able to function without one), what an offline wallet is and how it's able to function, what a "QR code" is and how some Bitcoin clients take advantage of the technology -- stuff like that. Mostly facts with some minimally-controversial opinion thrown in. I'd like to see "typical RAM usage" included in the fact sheet, too.


ETA: Then again, I like the Bit-Pay design, too. It's extremely simple, but it's so populated (even while still excluding quite a few clients), it seems pointless to have one "intermediate" option and then a giant pile of clients in the "advanced" section where it seems explanation differentiating them is necessary.

[ThomasV]

The reason I put this (and genjix agreed with me) is that your clients website is clearly not intended for regular end users. It lists "easy to review the source" as a feature, for example. It's great that you've focused on making backups easy and this is recognized in the text. That is only one component of usability. If I pointed somebody who is not a programmer to your page, or even someone who is but who isn't very experienced, they'd probably run into problems at the first step of simply installing the app. When was the last time you went to the website of a typical software company and was told to download/install Python yourself?

If the install and website was more end user focused, eg, provided regular installers for the common platforms, dropped the technical stuff from the front page, then I'd probably not have said that. It can certainly be changed in future. The core software itself doesn't seem to have any particular usability issues.

I agree with what you wrote here; it is true that we do not have an easy installation method yet.
but your text does say that; it says that the software itself, not the installation, isn't user friendly and is more suited for tech savvy people.

in addition, I believe the page should make it clear that it is a review, and that it does not necessarily reflect the views of the client developers.

[Mike Hearn]

OK, sure. I don't see the usability of installation as separate from the usability of software, but it can be argued both ways. I think if that gets fixed we can just drop the parts about it being for tech-savvy people entirely.

Agree we can make it clear the reviews are independent. Amir?

For what it's worth, there's a reason I'm so focused on the install. At Google we measure how many users make it from "see product web page" to "running the software". It's amazing to see how people drop off through this funnel. There are some interesting findings from these studies:

• Users abandon installs a lot. Of people who see the web page, typically only a small percentage will actually end up running the software.
• Literally every additional click required kills a significant number of installs. Users really do give up at every possible point through an install. Google has put a ton of effort into reducing the number of clicks needed to install our software. If you have Google Update already active on the system, the number of clicks on Windows to go from the Chrome web page to it being open and running on your desktop is tiny - actually there are no confirmation prompts at all, IIRC.
• The longer an install takes, eg because of a large download, the lower your success rate will be.
• If anything is even slightly confusing, that will cause users to drop out too. For instance the way MacOS X handles software installation by default is consistent, GUI oriented and totally confusing (I'm talking about the DMG + drag/drop to apps folder). There's a reason virtually all consumer software has a link to the Applications folder with a giant arrow telling you what to do, and it's because huge numbers of users won't be able to correctly install the software if you don't do that, despite that it works exactly the same way for almost every MacOS app. Apple really dropped the ball on the design of this setup.

So when I see an install process that involves manual dependency resolution, what I see is not a minor picky issue but a massive drop in the success rate of users who click through that. Like probably >90% abandon rate. And if users click through to this client and are overwhelmed by the instructions, or fail to correctly follow them, they won't necessarily go back and try a new one. They'll just drop out entirely and we'll lose them for a while until one day they decide to try Bitcoin again (assuming that ever happens).

This can largely be resolved with simple installers. The advantage of being open source is you don't require a long EULA either (this also drops the success rate). You can literally have a one click install'n'go experience. You can, if you want, beat most commercial software for ease of install.

[ThomasV]

So when I see an install process that involves manual dependency resolution

Perhaps the page is not clear about that, but there is not one install process, there is choice.
Linux users have the choice between install from source and a tarball that contains all the dependencies.
Windows users too have choice between a zip file and a binary

let me know if the webpage failed to convey this.

[etotheipi]

OK, sure. I don't see the usability of installation as separate from the usability of software, but it can be argued both ways. I think if that gets fixed we can just drop the parts about it being for tech-savvy people entirely.

Agree we can make it clear the reviews are independent. Amir?

For what it's worth, there's a reason I'm so focused on the install. At Google we measure how many users make it from "see product web page" to "running the software". It's amazing to see how people drop off through this funnel. There are some interesting findings from these studies:

• Users abandon installs a lot. Of people who see the web page, typically only a small percentage will actually end up running the software.
• Literally every additional click required kills a significant number of installs. Users really do give up at every possible point through an install. Google has put a ton of effort into reducing the number of clicks needed to install our software. If you have Google Update already active on the system, the number of clicks on Windows to go from the Chrome web page to it being open and running on your desktop is tiny - actually there are no confirmation prompts at all, IIRC.
• The longer an install takes, eg because of a large download, the lower your success rate will be.
• If anything is even slightly confusing, that will cause users to drop out too. For instance the way MacOS X handles software installation by default is consistent, GUI oriented and totally confusing (I'm talking about the DMG + drag/drop to apps folder). There's a reason virtually all consumer software has a link to the Applications folder with a giant arrow telling you what to do, and it's because huge numbers of users won't be able to correctly install the software if you don't do that, despite that it works exactly the same way for almost every MacOS app. Apple really dropped the ball on the design of this setup.

So when I see an install process that involves manual dependency resolution, what I see is not a minor picky issue but a massive drop in the success rate of users who click through that. Like probably >90% abandon rate. And if users click through to this client and are overwhelmed by the instructions, or fail to correctly follow them, they won't necessarily go back and try a new one. They'll just drop out entirely and we'll lose them for a while until one day they decide to try Bitcoin again (assuming that ever happens).

This can largely be resolved with simple installers. The advantage of being open source is you don't require a long EULA either (this also drops the success rate). You can literally have a one click install'n'go experience. You can, if you want, beat most commercial software for ease of install.

To follow up on that, I recognized how many of my own users were getting stuck at the installation process, so I finally dug into it a couple weekends ago and Got It Done, in Armory.  

I used Jgaa's "War Setup" for Windows.  It is pretty fast and easy after you get past a few hangups (like how to add your license if it's not on their default list).  I selected the "Minimal" install which literally just has an EULA and a "Install" button.  Done.  It's almost too easy -- the program is installed before you even realize that was the last button to press! 

For Linux, I made Debian packages to support Ubuntu/Debian, and that was actually a pain in the ass, but totally worth it once you figure it out.  Worth it because it's easy to tie it into your build process so that building the .deb package is just an extra couple keystrokes on the command-line build process.

I figured, anyone using a non-Ubuntu setup is likely familiar with the compile from source process, and Armory's isn't so bad.  So I left that as is.

If I ever get a Mac, I will make an installer for that too, but I don't know how difficult that is.

I've gotten tremendously positive response to making installers.  Hopefully what I wrote above can help others make them...

[genjix]

I'd prefer not to have the reviews independent as there is a potential for abuse there. As an example: say that one day I have a falling out with MultiBit (they are great guys btw ), and so I try to show them in a bad light. Such a situation is not good for anybody.

Best to find a situation which is amicable to everybody. I thought your descriptions were better written than mine for the average user, but ThomasV takes issue with some of the modifications. Fine, I can understand. Lets find those small differences and create something the antagonistic reviewer (me and you in this specific example) and the submitter (ThomasV) both agree on.

Original text:

Electrum is a client that was designed to simplify the use of Bitcoin. Electrum does not download the blockchain and startup times are instant which it does by pooling remote blockchain servers. You do not need to perform regular backups of your wallet as your wallet can be recovered from a secret passphrase which you can memorize or write on a piece of paper.

Newer text:

Electrum's focus is speed, with low resource usage and making wallet backups easy. It operates in conjunction with remote servers that handle the most complicated parts of the Bitcoin system, which is why it's fast. However, by running this client you don't contribute your computers resources to the core network, and the remote servers that help give it good performance have the ability to see all your transactions and tie them together. Whilst you need provide no personal information to use Electrum (as is true for all Bitcoin apps), this means the privacy level is lower than for other clients. Merchants are recommended to use or other p2p clients. Electrum is not quite user friendly yet, making it more suited for tech-saavy individuals currently.

Well I think we can agree that the opening line is more concise and much better:

Electrum's focus is speed, with low resource usage and making wallet backups easy.

Second sentences can both be merged perhaps:

Electrum's focus is speed, with low resource usage and making wallet backups easy. Electrum does not download the blockchain and startup times are instant because it operates in conjunction with remote servers that handle the most complicated parts of the Bitcoin system.

The criticism is good but maybe a bit long, so lets include that but shorten it:

Electrum's focus is speed, with low resource usage and making wallet backups easy. Electrum does not download the blockchain and startup times are instant because it operates in conjunction with remote servers that handle the most complicated parts of the Bitcoin system. However, Electrum clients don't contribute resources to the core network, instead relying on high performance servers. These servers have the ability to infer information about your payment history, meaning the privacy level is lower than for conventional clients. This is a trade-off of the Electrum style technology. But there are benefits too; you do not need to perform regular backups of your wallet as your wallet can be recovered from a secret passphrase which you can memorize or write on a piece of paper. Electrum is not quite user friendly yet, making it more suited for tech-saavy individuals currently, but development is active in tackling those challenges.

[minimalB]

What do you mean by "Electrum is not user friendly"? Are you serious?

Electrum is the only user friendly desktop client.

When i first opened Satoshi client, i thought i got a virus going on.

When i first opened Armory, my comp crashed.

When i first opened Electrum, i was ready to go in 5 seconds!!!


Regarding text... i believe 3 sentences are more than enough for brief info.

I know my opinion doesn't count much, but i had to put it out!

[coretechs]

I can picture less computer savvy people being turned off by Luke's table because they wouldn't know what 1/2 the columns mean and whether they are important.  I personally prefer it, but I agree with the suggestion that it should be on a separate "compare clients" page, or on the same page but below the screenshot & summary descriptions.

People tend to have very short attention spans when they are searching for a download link.  It might be helpful to order the clients by ease of use, starting with the most general/friendly clients and progressing towards the advanced/resource intensive clients.  I think it is safe to assume that advanced users already know what they want, so there is no need to cater to them on a page that is intended for everyone.

[istar]

I had organized the clients into a similar table a few months ago, with something simple designed for the first-time user.

http://lovebitcoins.org/getStarted.html

I wanted to put more emphasis on the mobile clients, because this is much easier and faster for a first-time user to get up and running.  This is especially true whenever I meet someone in person, since they always have their phone, but they never have a computer.

If the newbie likes what they see in the mobile, they can always become more of a power user. 

+1

Only problem with this, is that they are not as secure.
That should be fine if it could be pointed out in a way that doesn´t sound to intimidating.