April 2, 2008 at 6:45 pm (bug fixes, features, releases)
We’ve changed the code so that duration events (those with both a start and an end date) should only show as a discrete dot for the start date on the timeline instead of a bar that spans the distance between the start and end dates. The start and end dates are still reflected in the pop-up window.
The Modified and Created dates for events now include the time in addition to the date.
March 25, 2008 at 10:15 am (bug fixes, features, pictures)
Well, we changed the color for the “what’s new” from green to red. Green was very friendly, very appealing — but difficult to see in the lower band, since it was too close to the blue. Red is admittedly less friendly, but shows up very nicely on the lower band.
Also, the Ostermonster has fixed the problem with double quotes. We can now use double quotes in the title, source, and more info fields without losing information.
February 25, 2008 at 5:25 pm (bug fixes, to fix)
… if you don’t have all the necessary fields filled out first. Ugh.
February 25, 2008 at 12:54 pm (Testing, bug fixes, bugs, to fix)
More bugs have cropped up in the last week, which is to be expected now that we have 21 different students trying to use the timeline, instead of just 4.
The title field does not like double quotes. In fact, it dislikes them so much it just eats everything that comes after the double quote. Since lots of people are using double quotes to express the title of movies or books, this is a problem.
Note, however, that it doesn’t eat the quotes until you attempt to revise the post. The initial post will go up correctly. When you edit it, something happens in the process of retranslating the database information to the editing form.
February 17, 2008 at 12:50 am (bug fixes, features, releases)
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:
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?
February 12, 2008 at 10:44 pm (Testing, bug fixes)
So, when someone asked me today what would happen if they entered “January 0, 1832″ instead of “January 1, 1832″ (the second being our current convention for indicating a date that is only accurate to the year)… I said I didn’t know. And suggested they try it.
The problem with creative beta testers, however, is that they just aren’t content with running one test at a time.
So. We now know that putting in a 0 date takes you to 1905. We’ve been taken to 1905 before, and never knew why. So this is progress.
We also know that embedding image links directly into the description text works, although in this case I would add that the first time I looked at the window, only the first kitten showed up. I had to click on the second link to get it to appear; now that I have, it comes up again.
Something about this post has also eliminated the little blue dot marking the point on the timeline — the title appears, but no dot.
Then we come to the broken image link, and another mysterious link, which when you click on it, sends you HERE:
The address on this link would inspire suspicion in many a soul less jaded. So we go and investigate the source code for the post, and discover the hidden message behind it all — here:
I haven’t actually figured out how many different test posts it will take to unravel the issues discovered here, and even once I do, it’s not going to help with this kitten problem.
February 9, 2008 at 10:59 pm (bug fixes, features)
I think we’ve let the wysiwyg goal for the “new entry” form distract us from some basic form etiquette.
Here’s one example. Text in red represents something useful we could add to the form. In fact, indicating what is REQUIRED would probably be more useful than indicating what is OPTIONAL, because many of the fields that are not labeled “optional” are, in fact, optional, meaning that if you leave it blank, nothing bad will happen to your post.
Plus, couldn’t we add documentation text underneath the submit buttons, potentially linked to the form through anchors? I just so happen to have some text, hot off the press:
Title: If you don’t put in a title, it won’t crash… but your event will be nothing but a dot in space, with no identifying information. HTML in the title field (<i></i> for titles for example) will display correctly on the timeline, but the tags will be visible in the pop-up window. Someday this will be fixed.
Description: This field is most effective for concisely expressed information. Please do not paste in large blocks of text. Between 50 and 150 words is ideal; over 250 begins to be unmanageable.
You may use html in the description field. We will soon have a wysiwyg editor window here, so that formatting will be the same as in a word processor. In the mean time, if you wish to force a line break, type <br>; if you wish to force a double space between paragraphs or kinds of information, type <p>.
Begin Date: This field is required. You must enter a month, a day, and a year. If you do not know the month or the day, create a fake month and day after the example. We will be looking into ways of distinguishing through the display mechanism dates that are truly exact, and dates that are exact only to the year. At this time, however, the timeline requires an exact date, whether or not it’s real. If you always use January 1 as the fake date, we will be able to tell more easily which ones fall in this category when we’ve found a solution.
Image: “Enter a URL” does not resize at this time, so the results from using this field are unpredictable, and sometimes ugly. It is much preferable that you upload a file; however, the system will only accept jpeg/jpg. No gifs, no pngs please.
More info: Enter text or url(s). This field will accept multiple URLs if they are separated by a vertical pipe | .
Source(s): Strongly recommended. Enter text or url(s). This field will accept multiple URLs if they are separated by a vertical pipe |
January 18, 2008 at 10:16 pm (Testing, bug fixes, features, to fix)
NIIICE!!
Reactions:
It looks like the last modified/date added is doing something odd — I just modified something, reloaded, these two are still identical (and read yesterday, which I don’t remember whether or not that part is true)
Ok, it’s even weirder than I thought. I just modified Symphonie fantastique (1830) and now it says that I both created it and modified it. It should be Student X, as creator. And the date is still the 16th.
How hard would it be to have the dates read Dec 2, 1834, instead of 12/2/1834 ? Especially since in French, normally, it would be day/month/year, I think this might be clearer (that we aren’t using the french thing even though the topics are all French)
edit icon looks good
title is what size font?
Sweet. This is really coming together
January 18, 2008 at 8:40 pm (bug fixes, features, releases)
January 16, 2008 at 5:56 pm (Testing, bug fixes)
Whew. Now we can finally take out the garbage. So to speak. Delete and cancel are working, so 3 of the 4 duplicate posts on the American Civil War are OUTTA HERE. And that’s just the beginning.
