This idea would require some help and participation from the other BIONC projects, but how about this:

During the Attach to Project Wizard (as used in BOINC v5.x and later), have a popup dailog box question the user if they would like to connect to the internet to retrieve a list of projects from the BOINC servers.

If yes, then it would get the latest copy of URLs for each project, and present them to the user as menu choices from which a user can select which one(s) they would like to participate with.

Of course, to "future-proof" or as a backup idea, there would still be a way to manually enter the URL (perhaps if the user says "no" to the question of connecting to the internet).

Also, perhaps BOINC could come with a list of URLs as part of it's setup/install routine in case the user doesn't want to connect but doesn't know the URL off the top of their head (or if they just don't want to type all the letters, they could easily select from a list saving them seconds of typing time).

Perhaps this would help make using BOINC as easy as SETI Classic.

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Good in theory, but may clash with the project independant nature of BOINC.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Perhaps, but a little cooperation can go a long way - especially if they want to make it easier for end users and want to encourage more processing power. I think the benefit far outweights the current solution.

Maybe then we'd see less complaints about not knowing how to use BOINC or how to attach to a project.

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I agree here 100 percent with OzzFan1.

And since the list is already on the Boinc homepage, it would require nothing more than Boinc just downloading the list from that homepage.

As to clashing with the project independant nature of BOINC, it is really no different, than the link it already has, to the page with the list of projects.

It would only need to download the list whenever the user wants to add a new project, wich is the time they would be going to the webpage with the project list anyway, so it would make no more load on the server than it already does. Infact, since it could use a raw list, without html, it would be a lot less load on the server and bandwitdh.

There should ofcourse at the same time be the posibily to enter a url manually, and maybe it wouldn't even download the list, unless you click a button to do so, therefore making no more load than necesary.

It would greatly improve the UI and make even more people use it. And there can't ever be too many people offering processing power.