Hi dougal/pakt
Thanks for getting back, Ive just noticed something supurb about 2.14r, more than one application can access the sound at one time! This means that at last I can listen to music with gxine while using meebo and actually hear when people message me! I dont need to remember to close gxine when I want to hear the audio from other apps either! I actually thought this was a limitation with puppy linux, but it seems not!
@ Pakt
The best place to try the full screen feature of flash is good old youtube (the icon in the bottom right of the video switches it to full screen...not very clear). The latest flash also contains some bugfixes that caused firefox not to crash as often, but this issue doesnt seem to effect seamonkey.
I have tried you Cups 0.3 package you prepared sometime back with 2.14r and it works perfectly. I know the later versions of puppy included cups by default (without any driver packages...whats the use!), but Im not sure that this would be a good idea. Puppy's RAM based archetecture is great for speed, but its a shame that certain packages like CUPS cannot be loaded from disk (or cd) as needed while keeping the base and common apps in memory. The non-cups printer setup in puppy 2.xx/1.xx I have only had limited success with, it seems very difficult to use for the uninitiated compared to CUPS.
@ Dougal
Thanks for answering all my points. The one about seamonkey I think is important, because how I have noticed people using the computers at the cybercafe is that, when they want to go off on a new search, instead of opening a new tab, they will minimise the current browser window and start a new session by clicking on the desktop icon. This is probably becuase most people are still used to to using the less-than-perfect internet explorer for their browsing which has only just got with it and started using tabs from version 7. I realise that memory requirements need to be a consideration in a cut-down disto like puppy. In any case, I do believe that click the browser icon should do something when clicked. Previous puppies put up a message saying "Please open a new browser window from the currently running mozilla", which was less than perfect but it at least gave the user some feedback. Is there a way of starting a new browser window from the existing memory footprint when the seamonkey start icon is clicked a second time?
With gxine, I have realised this is a problem. Puppy up until version 2.02 could not play videos full screen (it just used to crash!), and the 3.xx series has reverted to this incapability also. There must be a way of fixing it though? Perhaps Barry would know?
With regards cd writing, I have always found graveman to be the most user friendly, its biggest drawback was that it needed a large temporary storage space to create the cd before it could be burnt, and this needed to be on a linux formatted space. This can be limited when running in a pup_save.2fs file on a windows partition (the configuration used by most people trying puppy for the first time). I think grafburn uses the same method. It is also difficult with grafburn to select a mixture of audio tracks to make cd from (you must make a .toc file?). People hate have to relearn things, so if they are going to move over from windoze to puppy the learning curve needs to be as shallow as possible.
Thanks for updating the mime-types, puppy is very compatable with most window file types, but this wouldnt be apparent because they do not open when clicked. Less skilled users I notice tend to open a file by clicking the file, wheras more skilled users open the application first, then use the file menu to open it! Something I have found very useful with ecopup/the cybercafe is a .exe file handler! People will insist on downloading install_messenger.exe and other windows programs and clicking on them. In normal puppy nothing happens, at which point the user thinks "broken". I know this should be a no-brainer, but to most of the world it really isnt. The .exe file handler in ecopup is a simple bash script that puts up a message explaining about windows and linux compatibility and points the user towards the various software installers.
The browser in 3.xx is Netsurf (sorry I couldnt remember the name). I agree dillo is fine for viewing help pages, but it was pretty useless for actually browsing. I have been using skipstone for a while with 2.14 and can confirm it works, I got mine [url=
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 91&t=25821]here[url]. Apparently it is already included in the latest muppy? Ive found it very fast, on my 800mhz/256mb system, seamonkey takes around three seconds to load from memory, and skipstone around one when loading from the pup_save.2fs file, so who knows how quick it will be if included in the pup_214r.sfs file and loaded from memory. Apparently it uses the same backend as seamonkey (gecko 1.8?) which it lifts from the already installed seamonkey, so is very compatable with a lot of sites.
One last thing I will mention is that the internet connection wizard is very hard to find on themenu, this is one of the first things that new users will be needing. Most people (at least in the UK) use an ethernet cable to connect to the web. There is an entry in the menu's under internet>internet connection that I can see most people trying when they cannot connect with seamonkey (windows autoconnects with dhcp os they wouldnt intuitively realise that they need to run the connection wizard first. However the internet>internet connection list of menu items does not include a link to the ethernet connection wizard. I realise there is an icon on the desktop for this, but by the time the user has clicked the seamonkey icon, this will be obscured by the browser window. Perhaps it can be included here. I think overall the internet connection wizard could be made a lot more user friendly. We are planning an internet connection check on seamonkey(and other apps requiring a connection) for the CE edition.
Overall I am very impressed with the 2.14r version, it is the best puppy yet in terms of what the average new linux user wants, and I can appreciate the time you must have spent in smoothing out the rough edges. Many thanks for all of your hard work. so far.