[tor-bugs] #8205 [Vidalia]: Stop this usability hell while using bridges (at least give more hints)

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#8205: Stop this usability hell while using bridges (at least give more hints)
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 Reporter:  cypherpunks                 |          Owner:  chiiph
     Type:  enhancement                 |         Status:  new   
 Priority:  normal                      |      Milestone:        
Component:  Vidalia                     |        Version:        
 Keywords:  Vidalia BridgeDB usability  |         Parent:        
   Points:                              |   Actualpoints:        
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 1. What I am trying to do:

 Going to https://bridges.torproject.org/ and building-up a basic layer of
 anger while solving the captcha (so far everything is alright) in order to
 get bridge addresses for Vidalia and Orbot to surf on the web using a tor
 bridge.

 2. What actually happens:

 I'm copying and pasting the whole line starting with "bridge" - because
 that's what seems to be most intuitive - of course it doesn't work. But
 it's not explained on bridges.torproject.org (or in the automated mail)
 that this is the wrong thing to do, nor is it explained in Vidalia.

 Vidalia gives a hint:

 > > [Warning] We were supposed to connect to bridge '!12.345.67.890:1234'
 using pluggable transport 'bridge', but we can't find a pluggable
 transport proxy supporting 'bridge'. This can happen if you haven't
 provided a !ClientTransportPlugin line, or if your pluggable transport
 proxy stopped running.

 While it's nice of Vidalia giving a hint why it fails to connect, this one
 is not easy enough to understand for beginners and people shouldn't even
 come to a point where they need to look into the message log.

 Orbot shows a WARNing message in its log and tries to connect to the tor
 network without using this bridge.

 3. It gets worse:

 Suppose someone needs an obfs2 bridge and goes to
 https://bridges.torproject.org/?transport=obfs2

 He's even more likely to go mad: How on earth should the poor soul know
 that he has to write

 obfs2 !12.345.67.890:1235

 without "bridge", but with "obfs2" prior the "!ip:port" part when using
 Vidalia?

 Orbot seems to handle this in a better way as there are checkboxes,
 whether you want to use a bridge at all and whether this is an obfuscated
 bridge or not. And there's the hint "IP address and port of bridges" at
 the box where people have to write nothing more than "!ip:port". This
 seems to be a solution that's more obviously understandable.

 4. It gets even worse:

 In my experience it can easily happen that a setting in Vidalia isn't
 applied immediately (haven't tested when this happens exactly). So suppose
 someone is trying to figure out how the syntax of using different types of
 bridges with Vidalia looks like - such a person might get completely
 confused. Additional fun: Mix in errors such as mistyping a symbol,
 blocked ports and bridges which are offline.

 5. Possible solutions:

 I don't have a clue what's the best way to uniformly (regarding Vidalia,
 Orbot etc. as well as regarding new pluggable transports) solve this
 problem to make Tor more user-friendly. Surely it would be eased a lot by
 just writing some explanations in Vidalia or on bridges.torproject.org and
 into the automated mails.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8205>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online
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