Usability problem, running through SSH

[ghost]

I'm talking about the main menu action "2: Take me to the swirl course repository!"

I run swirl accesing my server, accessing it with SSH. Everything works fine, except that swirl tries to "open my browser" and just does nothing! This won't work.

In this specific kind of situation, it may be easier to just give us the URL of the page, instead of trying to open it. Or even better: ask the user if he want the browser to be launched, but don't make it possible to hide the URL from us, no secrets expected. :)

Could this be improved? It may be very easy to fix, whatever option I described is chosen.

[WilCrofter]

I'm sure we could do something along those lines.

I'm curious about your setup. I assume plots are appearing, so you are not just ssh'ing into a headless server and running R and swirl in a terminal. I assume the server is running X and you are exporting through the ssh tunnel?

[ncarchedi]

Before a user has installed a course, we do give them the url, but we don't afterwards.

First time:

| To begin, you must install a course. I can install a course for you
| from the internet, or I can send you to a web page
| (https://github.com/swirldev/swirl_courses) which will provide course
| options and directions for installing courses yourself. (If you are
| not connected to the internet, type 0 to exit.)

1: R Programming: The basics of programming in R
2: Regression Models: The basics of regression modeling in R
3: Don't install anything for me. I'll do it myself.

Selection: 

Afterwards:

| Please choose a course, or type 0 to exit swirl.

1: R Programming
2: Take me to the swirl course repository!

Selection: 

I can add a little more info to the latter, so that the user doesn't find himself in your situation.

[ghost]

I'm curious about your setup. I assume plots are appearing, so you are not just
ssh'ing into a headless server and running R and swirl in a terminal. I assume the
server is running X and you are exporting through the ssh tunnel?

Yes, it is a headless server. And I use PNG output to see a plot.