downloads-examples

Downloads examples

Contributors

• Denis Defreyne
• Andy Mabbett

Examples

Mozilla Firefox

• Extension (single instance) e.g. NoScript
  • Extension version history (multiple instances of one app) e.g. NoScript history

iusethis

• Download page, e.g. http://osx.iusethis.com/app/peek-a-boo
  • No version history or release notes
  • Does not list older downloads
• Appcast, e.g. http://osx.iusethis.com/appcast/igtd
  • Every download page has a related appcast RSS feed (with autodiscovery)

iusethis provides RSS appcasts with Sparkle extensions. For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule"
     xmlns:iusethis="http://osx.iusethis.com/ns/rss"
     xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
     xmlns:sparkle="http://www.andymatuschak.org/xml-namespaces/sparkle"
     version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Appcast for iGTD</title>
    <link>http://osx.iusethis.com/app/igtd</link>
    <description>version history with a sparkle via iusethis.com</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <iusethis:universal>1</iusethis:universal>
    <iusethis:homepage>http://bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/</iusethis:homepage>
    <iusethis:developer>bartek:bargiel</iusethis:developer>
    <iusethis:usecount>517</iusethis:usecount>
    <iusethis:tags>GTD productivity get things done</iusethis:tags>
    <sparkle:appLicense>Freeware</sparkle:appLicense>
    <item>
      <title>iGTD 1.4.5.5</title>
      <link>http://osx.iusethis.com/app/versions/7961#ver_35136</link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p>... appcast description goes here ...</p>]]></description>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">35136</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:31:55 -0000</pubDate>
      <enclosure url="http://bargiel.home.pl/downloads/iGTD.dmg" type="application/octet-stream"/>
      <sparkle:shortVersionString>1.4.5.5</sparkle:shortVersionString>
    </item>
    <!-- ... more appcast items go here .. -->
  </channel>
</rss>

Some notes about the RSS appcast:

• sparkle:appLicense is a mystery to me. I have no idea where this comes from, why it is there, or how it's used. Even Google doesn't know about it.
• sparkle:shortVersionString seems to be used instead of sparkle:version, and I'm not sure why.

VersionTracker

• Download page, e.g. http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/3410
  • Does not have a direct download link, but a link to a separate page that starts the download
  • Has a version history section
  • Does not list older downloads
  • Has a system requirements section

MySQL Downloads

• Download page, e.g. http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html
  • Very big page with downloads with different applications, architectures, OSes, etc
  • Does not list older downloads
  • No version history or release notes

MacUpdate

• Download page, e.g. http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/10225/yum
  • Has a version history section
  • Does not list older downloads
  • Has a direct download link
  • Has a system requirements section

Related pages

• downloads
• downloads-brainstorming
• downloads-formats