[Tails-ux] Terminology for the web assistant: installation m…

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Autore: sajolida
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To: Tails user experience & user interface design
Vecchi argomenti: [Tails-ux] Terminology for the web assistant: introduction
Oggetto: [Tails-ux] Terminology for the web assistant: installation media
Please make sure you've read the introduction to this discussion before
answering this email:

    https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-ux/2015-April/000370.html


People can install Tails on either:

- a DVD
- a USB stick
- a SD card

We usually treat USB sticks and SD cards alike because they have similar
properties (fully read-write) and thus follow the same documentation.
In the past we've been repeatedly saying "USB stick or SD card" when we
wanted to talk about one or the other.

See for example: https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/media

I've always found that saying "USB stick or SD card" was long and boring
but until now I stuck to it.

Now that we work on the web assistant, which has a different way of
presenting things that will look more like an web app than a
conventional technical documentation, I thought it was the time to
reconsider this long terminology and ask you whether you think we could
use something shorter.

For example, would it work to say "Flash media" or "Flash memory". Do
people know what that is? Or sometimes say "flash media (USB stick or
SD card)" and then some other times only "flash media"?

Doing this would have the advantage of being backward compatible with
the documentation that we already have. If we decided to change "USB
sticks" and "SD cards" for something else, maybe parts of our
documentation (and possibly our software) will have to be updated. It
will be painful but doable.

Note that we're also something talking about "Tails device" in general
to talk about anything that can boot Tails (DVD, USB stick, or SD
card).

Regarding the actions on those media, we've used:

- "burn" for DVDs
- "copy onto" or "install onto" for USB sticks and SD cards

Does this work?

Does it also make sense to differentiate "copy onto" or "install onto"
for USB sticks and SD cards? I thought about saying for example:

  - "Copy the ISO image onto your USB stick", because the result is not
    a "real" Tails (see the other thread on that topic)
  - "Install Tails onto your USB stick", when using, for example, Tails
    Installer, which creates a full-feature Tails.