This update is all about making life easier on the testers. There are enough bugs to worry about without having to follow strict input guidelines to avoid making the system go boom.
The summary list of what’s new:
- The form is reorganized a bit, hopefully for the better
- Required fields have more prominent labels
- Fields with temperamental formatting, like dates, now have formatting examples
- Form validation. No, not telling the form it’s clever or handsome, but rather telling you that you’ve left a required field blank before it will let you post. Or that you didn’t enter a valid date. And so on.
- Trying to upload something other than a JPG file for the image no longer causes the system to go into fits. It also doesn’t create pesky “phantom” entries that are both there and not, and impossible to delete without rolling up one’s sleeves and getting into the database.
And now… screenshots!
Improved(?) form
Before the update, the edit screen looked like this:
Editors note: One of our testers is chronicling the rise and fall (and possible rise again) of Britney Spears.
Not very inspiring, is it?
Now, behold the new edit form:
Isn’t that much better? All the required fields are more prominent, fields are laid out a little more cleanly, and we now have text hints for filling out certain fields.
But it gets better:
Form validation! No longer will leaving out the require Begin Date field simply post and then crash. You now must provide not just a value, but a valid date for this field. (P.S. I’m not sure whose crazy idea it was to try Jan 0, 2001, but we don’t have a validation check for non-existent dates yet. Soon to come) We can also see that the instructor-required Source field was not filled out when this was originally entered. Granted, it should have never been able to get through in the first place (programmer error), but this person must now provide a source if they want to ever edit this entry. I suggest “Intuition”.
The Incredible Exploding Image Upload
At present, the image upload function can only handle processing JPG photos. It does some processing, like creating thumbnails on the fly, that will require some extra work to handle PNG and GIF images. We will get there at some point.
Prior to the update, you were able to upload an file other than the accepted JPG and cause a nasty error where the timeline event would be half saved, but missing some key info, resulting in a “phantom” entry that showed no poster name and could not be deleted through the standard interface.
What’s worse is that the user would see something like this:
We’re now checking for this error, avoiding the phantom entry, and giving the user some clue as to what went went wrong. Also, they get a chance to try again.
Hopefully this will ease some of the pain of those testing the system in its early stages.
Thoughts? Comments?
