Not sure where to post about recent changes to the site

[Barleduq]

I have a huge pile of addons, and so I like to think I wander through here pretty frequently. But I don't read the forums, so I probably missed things.

Recently (like, since 6.1 went live and my 'addons to be updated' exploded) I've noticed that the download process now brings me to another page, with "Download starting..." and (if I scroll down) a list of recent/hot/popular addons. Unfortunately, this page never finishes loading. It sits there, with my "i'm loading!" spinner spinning, forever - long past the finish of the download. Hitting my back button to get off it - to get back to the main addon page - does nothing. The name of the addon at the top of the section that says Downloading now... (with the ... constantly redrawing) does not link me anywhere. I have to find the (very small) text showing the path to get back there. (I've asked, before, if that line could be made larger to make it easier to see, but as that was years ago and nothing happened, I assume that's not happening at all.)

This is pretty much *EXACTLY* the behavior that drove me AWAY from Curse, and to here. It's happening all over the site. I just posted a thread in the "Search/Identify Addons" board, and that page is *still* spinning, trying to finish loading, long after I have the visual result of posting it. This page, right now where I'm typing, also has the spinner going, indicating downloading still happening with no visible result.

It wedges my browser, plugs up resources - I'm using 30% of the cpu and all I have open is this browser window with 5 tabs, 3 to pages on here that I've killed the loading on, and the two I've mentioned.

is there some setting I can use *for this site* (as it's pretty much the only one doing this) to make this stop? Is there something that you, the site operaters, can change, or fix? Is it supposed to do this? I'm not complaining about ads - the ads are loading fine, thank you, especially the (at least) three that are for scam work at home websites, but that's another discussion. But I can't afford a Zam membership at the moment, and so I cope with the ads.

I wonder if it has to do with the Minion updater. Which I can't use, cause it's not supported for Linux. Which is why I'm here, and not at Curse - because *this* site was thankfully lacking the dancing bears and animation that brings my older but still completely capable computer to its knees.

[bsmorgan]

Originally Posted by Barleduq I've noticed that the download process now brings me to another page, with "Download starting..." Unfortunately, this page never finishes loading. It sits there, with my "i'm loading!" spinner spinning, forever - long past the finish of the download.

You are not the only one that is having this problem and it is very annoying.

[Seerah]

I've moved your thread to the site forums.

This new downloading page loads right away for me. Where are you located? Do you have any browser plugins enabled? Is there something specific that it seems to get hung up on? The ellipsis (...) is animated on that page and does not change - is that why you are thinking it's not finished loading, or is there another reason?

[Dolby]

You are getting the download but the download page it self never finishes loading? Does it look like anything is missing? Does your browser say wait its waiting to download? What browser are you using?

Using chrome, firefox and safari I personally havent encountered this issue. So I would greatly appreciate any information you can provide.

The reason for the download page is so we can better collect download stats for a feature we are working on for addon authors. Part of that is we will be showing much more robust download statistics and starting something else I really can't talk much about yet. We still have a lot of work to do but that is the main reason for the download landing page.

In response to your Minion comment... Minion should work on Linux, I haven't tried it my self yet (need to setup a linux VM that has a UI) its just requires java8 and if you have that installed on your linux flavor it "should" run. You can download a java only version here: http://cdn.mmoui.com/minion/Minion2.1.3pl1-beta.zip just extract and run the Minion-jfx.jar

java -jar Minion-jfx.jar

Edit: Just tried it on Elementray OS (had that installed on my VM, its a Ubuntu fork made to look like OSX). I had to install JRE8 from Oracle but it works just fine for me. I didn't have wow installed in the VM but I was able to add the game addon directory manually by pressing the "add game" button. If I get some free time soon I'll setup a Ubuntu dev environment and create a .deb package, then Java wouldn't be required to be installed as it will be included inside the JVM inside the deb.

[Barleduq]

Originally Posted by Dolby In response to your Minion comment... Minion should work on Linux, I haven't tried it my self yet (need to setup a linux VM that has a UI) its just requires java8 and if you have that installed on your linux flavor it "should" run. You can download a java only version here: http://cdn.mmoui.com/minion/Minion2.1.3pl1-beta.zip just extract and run the Minion-jfx.jar java -jar Minion-jfx.jar .

Is the Minion-jfx.jar file supposed to be executable? Copy-pasting your command from your post, I got "Error: Unable to access jarfile Minion-jfx.jar"

I had extracted it into my home directory, no sub directory, and tried to run the command from a terminal window while in my top level home directory. The permissions show -rw-r--r--.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Barleduq Recently (like, since 6.1 went live and my 'addons to be updated' exploded) I've noticed that the download process now brings me to another page, with "Download starting..." and (if I scroll down) a list of recent/hot/popular addons.

I hadn't noticed this yet since 99% of my addons are updated through the Curse Client, but I just went and downloaded an addon to see what you're talking about. While the "downloading" page works fine for me, it's still quite annoying. I don't understand how wasting my time (both to load the page and click "back" an additional time) to make me download the file from a separate page gives you "better" download stats than just letting me download the file from the page I'm already on.

I also avoid downloading addons from Curse.com (I'd rather go to the addon's "development" page on CurseForge or WowAce if it's not on WoWInterface) because of the annoying interstitial page -- which, by the way, isn't even displayed if I'm logged into Curse.com, though that fact doesn't reduce its annoyingness much since Curse.com almost never actually remembers my login session.

TLDR: New download interstitial page: 0/10 would not recommend.

[Dolby]

Originally Posted by Phanx I hadn't noticed this yet since 99% of my addons are updated through the Curse Client, but I just went and downloaded an addon to see what you're talking about. While the "downloading" page works fine for me, it's still quite annoying. I don't understand how wasting my time (both to load the page and click "back" an additional time) to make me download the file from a separate page gives you "better" download stats than just letting me download the file from the page I'm already on.

It allows us to use google analytic events to capture download statistics. Now sure there are some people that block GA or JS altogether but they are a less that 1% minority on our site. I am now working on pulling that data via GAPI and using chartjs to display it in a nice format. Utilizing this instead of building our own system and needing a beefy & expensive mysql server(s) or a mongodb shard(s). Now true we could use the onclick stuff but that gets a little messy as you already know with the minion.gg download button.

This also allows us to serve the CDN link directly with out using a redirect to record the download hit. Before the download was redirected to the CDN url. With the old system we couldn't serve the CDN link directly with out using some redirect because there would be no way to record the download hit since you're downloading a cached file from a server close to you. Now our CDN has those stats but their data isn't all that great or fast, its only provided for billing purposes really.

Now these stats probably aren't all that important to authors right now other than the novelty/curiosity but we are working on something where you'll want to see this data for other reasons.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Dolby It allows us to use google analytics and events to capture download statistics. Now sure there are some people that block GA or JS altogether but they are a less that 1% minority on our site. I am now working on pulling that data via GAPI and using chartjs to display it in a nice format. Utilizing this instead of building our own system and needing a beefy & expensive mysql server(s) or a mongodb shard(s). Now true we could use the onclick stuff but that gets a little messy as you already know with the minion.gg download button.

But how does using a separate page capture different/better statistics than using the same page? That's the part I don't get. What stats are you tracking other than "how many people downloaded the file"? (Also, as an addon author, I can't even imagine any other stats I could possibly care about.) Why can't you use the techniques used by the large majority of other websites that don't require me to go sit on a useless extra page to download a file? Presumably at least some number of them are capturing "download statistics". And the Minion download button works fine now that you check that the thing you want to ping actually exists before blocking the normal click event.

[Dolby]

Originally Posted by Phanx But how does using a separate page capture different/better statistics than using the same page? That's the part I don't get. What stats are you tracking other than "how many people downloaded the file"? (Also, as an addon author, I can't even imagine any other stats I could possibly care about.) Why can't you use the techniques used by the large majority of other websites that don't require me to go sit on a useless extra page to download a file? Presumably at least some number of them are capturing "download statistics". And the Minion download button works fine now that you check that the thing you want to ping actually exists before blocking the normal click event.

Most other large websites have a download landing page...

Its for recording downloads stats on a daily basis. Right now you just have a total, to get something broken out into daily stats / uniques cheaply we went with GA.

[Phanx]

Well, regardless of the rationale, it's extremely annoying, to the point where I probably won't bother the addons I use that are only on WoWInterface unless they actually break. Hopefully you can figure out a less annoying way to keep track of "how many people downloaded this file" in the future.