Jon A. Cruz escribió:
Personally, I find the web interfaces the opposite for me. They slow things down, get in the way, and even are bad for slow connections.
And as far as "archaic Netiquette" rules go... that's just a misconception. For example, I'd used the POV-Ray newsgroups at least since 1998. That was a good example of an art-based project with good organization of binaries of different types, with threads and robust discussions for each. There are many others, but having personally seen this problem solved eight years ago makes me fairly sure it can be solved today. :-)
My question would be: How was the artwork shared amongst the users and at the same time ensuring "bandwidth" awareness? With a web interface this is fairly easy (see the policies over at Fedoraforum), as you can simply attach the image(s) and in the message all you will see is a small thumbnail, should you click the thumbnail you will see the full image in all its grandure, at your bandwidth's expense, so from viewing the thread the image won't "get in your way".
One thing, though about web forums, is that they tend to be abused in regards to signatures and avatars, but that can be regulated as well... I'm curious on how an NNTP would work, with a web interface for the images. However I've had some recurring problems with the screenshots at the main site: More often than not, they take AGES to download and I'm on broad band (1mbit!), however some of them do download quite fast... This problem of "consistency" can be a show stopper (just a quick thought, though)
Also... even long before that there were many *.binaries newsgroup all over the 'Net. All that's needed is a little organization and communication, not new tech.
I can agree to that, but certainly having a central site where the screenshots could be uploaded instead of attached, with a compelling web interface to be browsed and maybe indexed into a *SQL database, would be cool too (which is pretty much trivial to implement with forums software)... I wonder if a wiki could be adapted to do that?
Anyway, as far as the technical end of things goes.... it's often just as easy to have a "web forum" front end on a private newsgroup. But what I've seen is that the newsgroup interface is often more convenient. However, the web interface is often handy for the casual poster or "drive-by" newbie. My experience is about that as with webmail versus a mail or messaging client. Webmail interfaces are OK, and often do most of what I want, but for my heavy use I'll pick a "real" mail client whenever possible. Even Netscape 4.x was a good newsgroup client.
Actually I got used to a real Mail client application with Netscape 2 and later with Netscape 3 (&NS-3 Gold), before that I did not used e-mail, pine was a pain to use, IMO (and was the only thing available from my school at the time). I keep on using Mozilla as my mail client to date, as I use TB... Will have to start using Evolution, though (mozilla based too, thank the gods!) for my office computer, as it offers some required options for a corporate environment that TB just can't... And I won't install SunBird, tried it and did not like it, maybe when it matures a bit more and integrates TB in it (keeping TB as a separate entity for those only seeking a mail client, of course!). As for Webmail, I've come to find Google's gmail interface quite compelling (maybe because I'm quite used to web forums and it offers pretty much the same functionality), even though I access my gmail account with TB and seldom use the webmail interface ('cept when I'm not using my computer).
Bottom line, I'd be happy with either approach, as long as at least three things could be attained:
* Ease of use. Especially for those inexperienced users with news services, which I'd expect quite a bit of users not to be acquainted with the service. * Ease of image sharing. After all we're talking about graphics software here! * No HTML messages restriction (which nowadays seems to be a bit pointless, especially for a graphically oriented project)
One question, tough... This would be a dedicated news:// sever, right? Not (necessarily) accessible through Usenet (my ISP does not provide Usenet access :( )