Suggestion: Simplify Installer

denlinkd

I teach many, many Zotero workshops each semester, to hundreds of new users every year. One thing that seems to be a consistent hang-up for many Mac users is the need to drag the installer to the Applications folder. Many users overlook this and simply double-click the installer, not realizing that they haven't actually installed the software yet.

Other applications go with a simple "double click to install" process; I think this would alleviate lots of confusion if it's possible.

dstillman

There's no "installer". We do what most Mac software does: have a disk image with 1) the application, 2) an alias of the Applications folder, and 3) some text that says to drag the one to the other. Programs with actual installers are the exception, and they generally only use one when they're making more widespread changes to the system that require an installer (pref panes, background services, menu bars, etc.). Unfortunately those programs include the large suites like Office or Creative Cloud that people are most familiar with, but they're still the exception in the wider Mac ecosystem.

I would agree with you that many Mac users have trouble with this (in general, not for Zotero specifically), but it's really just how you generally install things on a Mac (Mac App Store aside), and people kind of need to learn that. It's not really appropriate for individual programs to do something nonstandard, and that would include adding an installer — which, for all you know, might add things across your system without your knowledge — when it's unnecessary.

Zotero does show a warning with more explicit instructions if you start it from the disk image, but that prompt gives the option of ignoring it, which it possibly shouldn't, since some functionality is broken that way. Some programs also go a step further and offer to automatically copy the application to Applications when launched from the disk image. We can't do that currently for technical reasons, but I think it's a good practice, and it'll hopefully be possible for us down the line.

The other option, which some programs do, is to distribute the program as a ZIP with just the .app inside. The advantage of that is that people can just double-click the ZIP and then double-click the extracted app. The downside is that the same people who don't understand disk images will likely leave the extracted application in their downloads folder instead of moving it to Applications where it belongs and possibly end up with multiple copies or versions. I'm not sure that's much of an improvement, so my inclination would just be to offer to automatically move the application to Applications if it's launched from the disk image once we're able to do that in a future version.

denlinkd

Thanks for the explanation! This makes sense.

bwiernik

Given the relative frequency of problems reported stemming from running the app from the disk image, I think making the prompt non-ignorable would be good.