This question is mainly towards John.
Is there a reason that all the links here go to the indirect download and mirror selection page, https://downloads.sourceforge.net/portableapps/*.paf.exe?download, rather than to the direct redirection to the download (i.e. proper download) http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/portableapps/*.paf.exe?
As I see it, the only advantage to the indirect one is that you get to select a mirror, whereas downloads are a lot easier to start and use with the direct technique (and then you can use the Save as... context menu item).
Maybe I'm biased, as my default mirror works fine. Others may wish to change their default mirrors.
It just seems to me that direct downloads are going to be more useful to more people.
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it's better to allow people to select their mirror, for me anything that isn't voxel crashes on me and doesn't complete the download (this is also true for the updater in the beta test forums)
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
About a third of the time, I get Puzzle as my mirror, and net never fails to deliver zero content. It simply may as well not be there.
I've tried setting the default, I tried reporting the problem.... All that works is selecting a mirror.
If the site started linking straight though, without an option to change mirrors, I'd have to start hacking navigating manually through the sf project download pages, which is really not fun
Personally I think the current way is best - I also occasionally get a duff mirror and have to change it to either Heanet or one of the German ones. As Jimbo says, trawling the project page for it is no fun
There is no difference. They both do the exact same thing when linked from an outside webpage.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
For Chris: Furthermore, I believe the ?download is there only to stop people who want to right-click and save the file. I believe SourceForge dropped the ?download as a requirement a while back.