Well git was easier than I expected.
Mainly used svn through a gui in the past under windows.
Just diffed "git clone http://github.com/asynclabs/WiShield_user_contrib.git"
with what I had downloaded before as a zip file and no differences.
So there's no issue with the two methods of downloading the source.
If you are wondering I did once find a project with a broken download button from a source repository but not github.
Gordon