Gary Zellerbach's Weblog

OK, so things took a bit longer than we expected, and we hit a few bumps in the road, but our new download system is now fully operational and humming along! Just this week we finished moving all sun.com downloads onto it, and we're extremely pleased to reach this milestone.

To help introduce the new system (and also get newcomers and experienced users alike downloading as quickly, easily, and successfully as possible), please check out our new demo video. It features a walk through of the Solaris OS download experience, as well as helpful tips on using Sun Download Manager. The video takes less than five minutes.

I hope you enjoy the video, and more importantly, that you benefit from the enhancements we've made to downloading from Sun. As always, your suggestions for further improvement are welcome. You can leave me a comment, or if you encounter any questions or issues, please let our customer support team know. Thanks!

Comments:

Well, downloading does feel a little faster for me. However, I've lost some very important functionality... I used to be able to just cut the link out of the d/l page and paste it into a shell command line using e.g. wget (actually I use the NetBSD-derived ftp client but that's not the point).

Now, the links no longer work when executed outside of the browser context. Since Sun Download Manager sucks big-time IMHO, I now need to download everything from within the browser with much pointery-clickery in file selectors etc. Sigh. I wish the good old download days were back...

Posted by Volker A. Brandt on April 19, 2008 at 05:35 PM PDT #

Hi Volker,

Thanks for your comment. I'm glad to hear the new site feels a bit faster to you. Regarding wget, we are aware of this issue -- we've heard it from numerous people. This limitation is a consequence of how we integrated the new download system with our Sun Online Account system.

We have been investigating and I want to note the following:
1) We think the wget issue is affecting only those products requiring registration/login before download. Many of our downloads are "anonymous" (no login required) and should still work with wget.
2) For login-required products, we are testing a simple shell script that would allow users to continue to use wget in many cases. More testing is required though before we release it, but hopefully it'll be within a week or two.
3) This issue has been filed in our bug/enhancement tracking system, and we will pursue engineering resources to fix this issue permanently in a future release.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Gary

Posted by Gary Zellerbach on April 21, 2008 at 02:20 PM PDT #

Hello Gary!

Hmmm... I don't remember any anonymous d/l recently. It seems that all current products need a login (which is fine really, except for that wget problem). Do you have an example of an "anonymous download" offering?

However, that "simple shell script" sounds promising! I'd very much like to try it... :-)

Regards -- Volker

Posted by Volker A. Brandt on April 22, 2008 at 12:05 AM PDT #

Hi Volker,

Most of the Java SE downloads are anonymous. You can find good examples here:
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

Regarding the script, if you would like to "beta" test it for us, that would be great! Please contact me directly so I have your email address and can send you a copy when we're ready. You can email me directly at gary dot zellerbach at sun dot com.

Thanks,
Gary

Posted by Gary Zellerbach on April 22, 2008 at 08:20 AM PDT #

The video looks like it's just what some users need. Very helpful & non-threatening. :)

Posted by Anthony Bryan on April 22, 2008 at 01:36 PM PDT #

Congratulations on the new and improved download service! Not a bad video, either, but I am obviously biased. ;)

Posted by Lou Ordorica on April 22, 2008 at 07:18 PM PDT #



Gary Zellerbach's Weblog Focus on Electronic Software Distribution (ESD)