Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

Your family members would use a command line app ?

If they knew about it, sure. All it would take is a 3 step (after initial download) instructional with some screenshots:

1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl

2. Shift+Right click -> Open command window here

3. Type 'youtube-dl <space>' and paste url[0], then enter

As I said it really is a discoverability problem, one that the organiser of the world's information is neither incentivised nor really expected to address.

[0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now

I happen to be on a fresh copy of Windows 7 right now, so I'm going to try it. I expect to encounter at least several steps where a nontechnical user would be totally lost or frustrated.

1. Download Python 2.7 and install. Encountered error where the installer stopped with no indication that it had completed or failed. Tried to install again and it messed up the original installer which was hiding in the background and it failed.

2. Downloaded the YouTube-dl.exe. Running it does nothing. Youtube-dl gives no instructions on how to install.

3. Reading the documentation of youtube-dl, installation instruction is just "place it in their home directory or any other location on their PATH."

4. Google about PATH variables and home directories... I wouldn't expect a nontechnical user to get past this step.

5. Add C:\Python27 to the Path variable.

6. Drop youtube-dl.exe into C:\Python27.

7. Start Powershell. Doubt a nontechnical user would know how to do this, but whatever.

8. Figure out how to format a command to youtube-dl. Reading through the documentation is kind of confusing at first, but I will just copy a command from this HN thread.

9. Paste "youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 dQw4w9WgXcQ" into powershell. As you mentioned yourself, something a nontechnical user would have trouble doing since control-v is disabled.

10. "ERROR: ffprobe or avprobe not found. Please install one." So Google how to install ffprobe.

11. First link links to another page, which has a long 14 step guide asking me to figure out how to install PHP before I even start, so I'm just giving up here, 30 minutes in.

Sadly I didn't even get to the "it's working but I don't know where it's saving the files to" issue.

"We also provide a Windows executable that includes Python."

I read this as not having to install python for it to work.

I think some powershell commands that have required arguments start interactively prompting the user for values for those arguments if they aren't specified on the command line. That would probably work:

1. Download youtube-dl.exe

2. double-click

3. youtube-dl.exe notices the lack of url as argument and prompts:

URL:

4. paste URL and hit enter

5. Progress bar of download (?)

That may be correct, but the download page explicitly says "Remember youtube-dl requires Python version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+ to work." and links to python's website. I tried renaming Python.exe and it still worked, so I have no idea what's up with it.

youtube-dl.exe does not need a separate Python installation.

I think you missed the point; the point is: it says it does. Houshalter even quoted it.

Yes, your software's download page is part of the user experience also.

For 9, I would just go with youtube-dl -f 140 (or 141 in some cases). No reason for lossy->lossy conversion.

Hmm I don't see any documentation for that format code.

I chose mp3 because it's the only format my ipod accepts. The formats it downloads by default won't play, even if they might be higher quality.

youtube-dl -F VIDEO_URL will give you a list of formats in YouTube, that you can choose using the -f option. DASH streams contain only video or only audio normally.

It strikes me that with Microsoft working with Canonical to bring an Ubuntu like command line to Windows that it probably includes something like apt. This doesn't completely address your larger point but it probably would make the process easier.

Yes it seems to me that the problem with open source projects on Windows is they all expect the user to figure out their often complicated installation procedure (and then the installation of all their dependencies...)

1. This would occur with a GUI as well.

Can't comment on the rest as we have yet to get Python installed.

> 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl

Already too complicated for my parents. I have shown my mother how to open her downloads folder for over a decade and she still can't do it. Sigh.

[0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now

Just gotta remember the old "Alt-Space, E, P" shortcut sequence. And Alt-Space, E, K for selecting/copying.

What's wrong with right-click?

Forces you to take your hands off the keyboard.

Shift-Insert, man.

This is about 2 steps longer than most family member capabilities.

Always the same argument, and still wrong. It depends 100% on the desirability of the expected result. I have seen a non-IT guy do an incredibly complex serie of super user operations on his PC just to install CS. He was very motivated. But if you asked him to install Chrome in place of IE he would even understand what it meant.

Same: many people still use peer-to-peer software to download movies, mostly porn. I guess it is better now but for a long time you had to do some port forwarding -- yes, port forwarding -- on your home router to get bearable download speed. Nowadays it still seem very difficult to get the proper non English subtitles for movies, but it is very attractive so people do it despite all the "steps".

So, please, let's stop this "Family memebers are below-two-clicks stupid" mantra. It is false. The truths is: they usually do not care enough for the second click. When they do care enough, typing a command line is very feasible.

OK then you definitely haven't met my family members, who routinely can't log in because they have the caps-lock on.

He is saying that they can't login when the caps-lock is on because they don't care enough. I think he is right. Even old people are able to do complex stuff, but only if they care.

I agree. I think it's important to keep track of who cares about the user's task too. As you say, if the user cares about a task, they'll jump through many hoops to get it done. Especially when money is involved (e.g. finding cracked copy of XYZ to avoid paying license fee)

When someone else wants the user to do a task, e.g. a business wants users to install and use its software, then it's definitely better to assume that users will give up at minor annoyances or complications. Again, especially when money is involved; i.e. it should be as easy as possible for people to give you money.

I think this nails it.

They want to learn email? They do.

They want to learn to use FaceBook? They do.

If they really wanted to learn to download YouTube videos (Ideally using youtube-dl), they would.

> I guess it is better now but for a long time you had to do some port forwarding

Nothing has changed for me. Did I miss something ?

Back when I was at LimeWire, circa 2005, we attempted to use UPnP to have LW configure port forwarding for you. Though, maybe some router vendors consider UPnP a security risk these days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com