More on the License Agreement Page

[dodgly]

Just some more thoughts/feature suggestions on that bad but up thar in da subjecto.

Maybe the "Cancel" button could be recaptioned "Disagree" and the "Next" button be re-captioned "Agree >".

Further it'd be nice to have an option on the LicenseText or LicenseData (I think LicenseText makes most sense) to require the end-user to scroll to the bottom of the license agreement and/or sit there for xyz time to be able to proceed (and thus disable the "Next >" or "Agree >" button until they do).

I propose:

LicenseDate "whatever.txt" forcescroll 120

Where "force" is to forcescroll is a directive that they have to scroll to the bottom of the license agreement and the 120 specifies that they have to sit there 120 seconds before the button will be enabled. Granted...this may/will piss people (end users that is) off but I think it should at least be an option to the developer.

That's my two lira worth. If that was even worth a lira.

--Lyle E. Dodge
lyle@lyledodge.com

[mcgarrah]

I worked on a product that required the users to at
least look at the entire licence agreement before
they could agree to it.

We forced you to scroll to the end then the "Agree"
button would become enabled. I hated it, the users
hated it, we all hated it, but the lawyers made us
do it.

We caught significant crap for this. A timer will
only be worse.

my 2 cents

[polaughlin]

I don't see why you would catch significant crap for that. How hard is it to scroll down a textbox? Anyway, it's not like it's effective at all. Users just have to scroll down and press the button; there's nothing that forces them to read the license. It's their fault when they break the agreement because they didn't read it.

A timer, I'm sure, would catch you crap. I know I wouldn't want to have to sit and wait before I could install software. We all know that most users would go get a cup of coffee during that time and not read the license anyway.

My conclusion is that there is no need for either of these features. If you really want them bad, just add them to the software yourself or get someone else to add it for you. This is one of the reasons why it's open source...

[mcgarrah]

The legal folks decided we needed to force the
user to at least view the entire licence (even
if only for a microsecond). That is why we forced
the scrolling. Microsoft makes you scroll through
their licence (blue screen text) during the install
of Windows NT 4.0.

I noticed that this is scrolling is not required in
Windows 2000.

I'm not for or against the scrolling feature. I am
definitely against the timer. I'd hate it.