Should there be a Warning Banner?
Yes, everywhere on the site!
 87%  [ 27 ]
Yes, but only in the downloads section.
 3%  [ 1 ]
No, there should not be any banner anywhere.
 9%  [ 3 ]
Total Votes : 31

boricj wrote:
Now that the summer vacation is nearing its end, I don't see any warning or mention of this on Cemetech's front page. I guess we'll have a whole bunch of disgruntled students who will learn that ASM/C is gone the hard way.

You might want to do something about that, Cemetech's admins. Because by now it should be painfully obvious that Texas Instruments is not going to back off on ASM/C removal and every single calculator website that I know of (TI-Planet, CodeWalrus, ticalc.org, Omnimaga) has either a banner or a news post about it with high visibility.

I'm sure this is implemented because I know the Cemetech admins understand how important this is. Therefore there must be some bug preventing anyone from seeing it. Wink
Yes, this must be done. My friend updated the OS on his TI-nSpire earlier as soon as he got it, and I know others who just get the latest OS without looking into it and reading about it, just because they think it must be better. It is certainly imperative that people put up warnings wherever they can, and tell other people, so that they know ahead of time and don't learn the hard way.
Of course we should have a banner but Cemetech doesn't actually host the file in question (unlike tiplanet) so I wouldn't think its quite as important.
TIny_Hacker wrote:
Yes, this must be done. My friend updated the OS on his TI-nSpire earlier as soon as he got it, and I know others who just get the latest OS without looking into it and reading about it, just because they think it must be better. It is certainly imperative that people put up warnings wherever they can, and tell other people, so that they know ahead of time and don't learn the hard way.

The banner wouldn't warn against the TI-Nspire OS though...
Cemetech acts in many ways as an unofficial arm of TI. I doubt they'd do anything to warn users not to upgrade their OS.
mr womp womp wrote:
Of course we should have a banner but Cemetech doesn't actually host the file in question (unlike tiplanet) so I wouldn't think its quite as important.

Sorry, this has nothing to do with hosting the OS or not.
Maybe you misunderstood us, we aren't showing a banner because we're hosting the OS 5.6 file.
The banner has strictly nothing to do with the hosting, there is a specific warning on our OS 5.6 page, and another one when attempting to download it.

In this back to school period, users are likely to learn about the OS update outside of Cemetech / TI-Planet (banners on ti.com, TI posts on twitter, teacher, ...), especially when we don't news about it everyday. So a major part of our community is in immediate threat.
In my opinion, it's very important to inform as widely as possible in this situation.
On TI-Planet, we thought a banner was needed for this never-seen situation. We never did anything like this in the past, not even for Ndless (on the difference, Nspire owners who already use or know about Ndless usually don't update - this is not the same thing at all with CE owners using asm programs, they've been used to updating without any bad consequence for years).

Note the goal of the TI-Planet banner isn't to prevent CE users from updating their OS, it's in no way worded like this :
TI-Planet wrote:
WARNING ! For those who have a TI-83 Premium CE or a TI-84 Plus CE (Python Edition or not), think very carefully before updating to OS 5.5/5.6.
While there are lots of Python-related improvements, this version removes ASM support. Most games, and some programs, will not work anymore.

The goal is to inform users of the consequences. Users deserve at least this kind of respect.
You'll have to update anyway if Python is needed (since there is no 3rd party Python asm program yet) and of course if your hardware supports the official Python app.

I don't know if it was because of what was coming, but months ago, long before we got OS 5.5.0 or learned about its Python features, TI asked us to promote the upcoming OS update, very important for exams security.
I also have contacts with several online retailers selling graphing calculators: they asked for the same thing to some of them, and some of them are currently showing a huge banner/button on their home page linking to https://education.ti.com/en/software/update/84-ce-software-update or https://education.ti.com/fr/software/update/83-ce-software-update , so that you're going to update as soon as you receive your brand new calculator.
They may have asked for the same thing to Cemetech admins too, this wouldn't surprise me at all.
So we agree, there should be a banner Laughing
Of course we can't prevent people from updating but the least we can do is advise them.
Added a poll to get some actual numbers!
What actual improvements are there on 5.6? My black CE with 5.6 installed finally broke today, for some reason...............
If you have a TI-84 Plus CE-T Python Edition, the Python 5.5.2 app.

If you have a TI-84 Plus CE-T or TI-84 Plus CE, nothing.
Just new 5.5.0 versions of the SciTools, Periodic and PlySmlt2 apps that you can perfectly install separately.
Bio_Hazard1282_rPi3 wrote:
What actual improvements are there on 5.6?

It "prioritizes learning," meaning they got rid of those deity-forsaken games that students definitely never play on their phones and helps prevent the day-dreaming and imagination that has plagued teachers of bored students since the advent of schooling, and "minimize[s] any security risks," meaning that all possible exploits will be extensively attacked and the developers of benign programs will have absolutely no incentive to discourage people from releasing programs explicitly written to help cheaters.
Hey, don't forget about these great features ("recently added"), as listed by TI's website:
education.ti.com wrote:
  • Graphing piecewise functions in a familiar form
  • TI-Basic editor improvements, including cut/copy/paste and syntax improvements
  • TI-Innovatorâ„¢ Rover Support

...all of which have actually existed since version 5.3.0, which was released about three years ago (except for TI-Innovator support, which has existed even longer).

Oddly enough, not mentioned at all is the ability to disable the numeric solver in exam mode, which (as far as I know) is the only change other than the removal of assembly (for a non-Python calculator).
Also, a lot of the warnings state that ASM/C compatibility is lost in the upgrade, but do not forget that ICE will also be lost.
TIny_Hacker wrote:
Also, a lot of the warnings state that ASM/C compatibility is lost in the upgrade, but do not forget that ICE will also be lost.


Until exploits are found of coarse Smile
TIny_Hacker wrote:
Also, a lot of the warnings state that ASM/C compatibility is lost in the upgrade, but do not forget that ICE will also be lost.

Well of course, since that's what its written in... The compiled programs are also ASM/C so those obviously won't work either.
If we keep this thread at the top of the news posts, it's already a banner.

#laziness
You know, something like that, that you just can't miss.



I'll let someone else decide on a potentially more appropriate color, although if it's not eye-catching it's useless.
I think that works well, because it can be seen from all parts of the website (the forums, SourceCoder, jsTIfied, archives). I think the warning should follow more along the lines of the one on CodeWalrus, because it makes sure that you will not miss the point.
CodeWalrus wrote:
WARNING: DO NOT UPGRADE your TI-83 Premium CE or TI-84 Plus CE to OS 5.5.1 and higher. It removes all compatibility with most games and removes ASM/C programming! DOWNGRADING IS IMPOSSIBLE. BE WARNED! Likewise, do NOT update your TI-Nspire CX past OS 4.5.0, else using Ndless and ASM/C programs will be impossible.
Adriweb wrote:
You know, something like that, that you just can't miss.



I'll let someone else decide on a potentially more appropriate color, although if it's not eye-catching it's useless.


I am definitely a fan of this display style. However, this hasn't really crossed our minds. I'll bump this on the admin side. Smile
PT_ has already prototyped something effective of this kind - currently waiting on figuring out how we can let our users dismiss it if they've read it and don't want to see it any more.
KermMartian wrote:
PT_ has already prototyped something effective of this kind - currently waiting on figuring out how we can let our users dismiss it if they've read it and don't want to see it any more.


Ah, that's what the message was about. I stand corrected, this did come across our minds Razz
  
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