Since SDN was launched last year, its downloads area has grown significantly. This growth is fantastic for SDN and it's community as a whole, as it also means that the downloads area is gaining more interest and, indeed, more breadth and depth of content.
However, as the list of downloadable items has grown, users' effort in finding the right download item had also grown. Until recently, there was no consistent way to search for the downloads except for scrolling through the long list. And from a behind-the-scenes-SDN perspective, I can also comment that managing this long download list was also rather difficult and often subject to mistakes.
It was time to remove the fat (and extra scrolling!) and organize the downloads in a way that enabled better overview of all content and allowed for further growth and richness of content.
To do this, we reused a nice litte XML template that one of our SDN team members in Israel had developed as a basis for the downloads catalog. And so, with a little cut here, and an enhancement there to the template, the new SDN Download catalog was ready for its debut.
What you see now in the SDN Download catalog is a much leaner presentation style, without all the scrolling:
- Downloads are organized by their type and then by related SDN developer area. In some cases, you will find the download assigned to multiple developer areas or types as applicable.
- Each download item has an abstract with a short description and any relevant information that was submitted about installation and use. The abstract icon to the left of the download title is a toggle to display and hide the information.
- Download abstracts are now searchable as SDN Content. Type in the keyword "download" to find a list of all download abstracts or "download" and other keywords to find a specific item.
- When you click on the download icon to the left of the abstract icon, you'll usually reach a license agreement or disclaimer that you must accept to get the actual download.
This is certainly not the last cosmetic alteration of the SDN Download area. As the download area grows further and more items are added, there may also be a need to better organize and manage the content with a new system. Until that time, I hope you like the enhancements we've just released and perhaps you are even encouraged to send us your comments.
If you are interested in submitting items for the SDN Downloads area, use the Submit Content link at the top of your SDN window.
