Remove "Direct download" installation instructions

[MikeMcC399]

Description

What would you like?

1. Remove the section Get Started > Install Cypress > Direct download

2. Alternatively, move the section Direct downloadto the References > Advanced Installation page.

Why is this needed?

1. Direct download is not compatible with Cypress Cloud which is a major focus for the Cypress organization.
2. Judging by lack of issue reports in GitHub and in Discord, "Direct download" is not commonly used.
3. In order to install and run an application, users will generally already have Node.js and a package manager installed. There may be no requirement in practice to be able to run Cypress standalone, without Node.js and a package manager.
4. The section takes up real estate on the "Install Cypress" page and diverts attention from core steps that belong to "Getting Started".
5. When the Cypress binary is run directly, it outputs a warning which links back to the page where "Direct download" is described, so the instructions for "Direct download" (if retained) should not be on the same page as the instructions for regular installation via a package manager, otherwise this is a confusing circular reference:

   It looks like you are running the Cypress binary directly.
   This is not the recommended approach, and Cypress may not work correctly.

   Please install the cypress NPM package and follow the instructions here:

   https://on.cypress.io/installing-cypress

Other

1. The recommendation to install Cypress with npm does not consider other supported package managers - Yarn and pnpm. If the article is retained and moved, this statement should be generalized.
2. Placing the recommendation to install Cypress with npm inside the "Direct download" section is confusing because it is actually recommended not to use direct download.
3. There is no description that running Cypress this way opens Cypress in global mode, or what other functionality is affected (in addition to missing Cypress Cloud), like missing CLI commands:

   Then you can manually unzip and double click. Cypress will run without needing to install any dependencies.

If the section Get Started > Install Cypress > Direct download is not removed and instead moved to References > Advanced Installation, then it would need rewording.

[MikeMcC399]

@jennifer-shehane

If you could give guidelines:

• no change
• removal
• move to advanced installation

then I can submit a PR if necessary.

[jennifer-shehane]

I think we will leave these instructions since we still continue to support this in our product. The usage is pretty low, as we can see percentage downloads hitting those URLs vs npm - I haven't looked in a long time. At the last time I looked it was like > 5% downloads?

I do agree that this is not the primary way we would recommend installing Cypress

[MikeMcC399]

@jennifer-shehane

If I understood you correctly, you want to keep the section "Direct download" on the "Getting started" page and not have it be moved to "Advanced Installation".

Did I get that right?

[jennifer-shehane]

@MikeMcC399 Yah, I'd say leave it for now until we have time in the future to make a clearer decision about our strategy with it.

[MikeMcC399]

@jennifer-shehane

Due to this open issue regarding what to do with "Direct download", I have not touched this section. This means that there is an inconsistency and I don't know whether Cypress.io wants to recommend only npm or whether "Direct download" should recommend installing with one of the supported package managers (npm, Yarn or pnpm). Do you want to leave it like it is or have it changed?