Download buttons only support one download file per operating system

[ned-deily]

For all current releases, we provide a choice of binary installer downloads for Windows and for OS X. Currently, both provide 64-bit and 32-bit installers appropriate for different O/S release versions and architectures. The Downloads page and pop-over give no indication of this; the 3.x.x and 2.x.x buttons only download one variant for each OS, which may be unusable on the downloader's system. Only if you click through to the specific release page are you notified that there are multiple options. Perhaps the pop-over buttons should just go to the OS-specific release pages rather than making possibly incorrect assumptions.

[birkenfeld]

I guess for OS X the majority will now need the 64-bit installer, but for Windows I don't know how many users might need 64-bit.

[frankwiles]

This was fixed long ago, just not closed.

[ned-deily]

I can't speak for the Windows installers but the problem has not been fixed for the OS X installers. If I click on a download OS X installer button (Py2 or Py3) from an OS X 10.5 system, a 10.6+ installer is downloaded rather than the necessary 10.5+ installer.

[frankwiles]

Apologies, I missed the "button" aspect in the ticket title and thought it was an older issue regarding the Download pages themselves only supporting one file per os per release.

Unfortunately I don't think we can reliably tell the difference, from browser user agent, of which to "prefer" for a user if we even want to go that route. I do know however that the "one click" install was important to the Board, so I don't think they'll be very open to adjusting it to just taking the user to the release page. @VanL thoughts?

[ned-deily]

I understand the attractiveness of having a "one click" download but, on the other hand, it's hardly user-friendly to present a button with no context that downloads something that is useless, which is certainly the case with the OS X installers (I can't speak to the technical issues of which of the two Windows installers a user should use). I don't have time at the moment to look further into the details but I would think some guesses could be made from user agents (for example, from the version of Safari if that is the browser in use) and, when no inferences are possible, presenting a pop-up with a choice of the two installers.

[berkerpeksag]

This was also reported in #1044. Client side detection is easy, the tricky part is to find the correct installer based on the user agent. See #1044 (comment) for details.

[dscotese]

Regardless of how sophisticated the detection code is, since versions are created for different architectures, the download button should be very specific as to its GUESS and explicitly tell the user what they are downloading. I assumed it was right, but had it said "32-bit" I would have known it was wrong. I downloaded and installed it twice before realizing that I was downloading the wrong version.