[SPTUsers] User feedback

[Edward Almasy]

   Thanks for the extensive feedback -- it is appreciated.  I'll address
   some of the items below.


On Mon, Apr 07, at 11:26:40PM, Arbit 1202 wrote:
> 2. After "Update", may as well submit directly -
> anyway can see the changes in the modification screen.
> Else, can have separate buttons for "Preview" and
> "Submit".

   Adding Preview support is something we've talked about and may implement,
   but it does come after a number of other things on the list.  The "OK for
   Viewing" flag can be used to delay updated records from becoming public
   until they've been vetted.


> Home Page
> ---------
> 1. Can we optionally remove announcements?

   When you go in to edit an announcement, there's a "Delete" button that
   allows it to be removed.


> 2. Regarding "new resources". How is "new" defined? If
> added in say last x days, then how do we see the next
> bunch? As of now, can see only the 5 (or whatever is
> set by admin) latest resources. Would like a
> "next"/previous link.

   Paging through the recent resources list (i.e. Next/Previous) is something
   we will definitely be adding.


> 1. Search in forums?

   This may come as a by-product of some other proposed development, but I
   can't give you a likelihood on it at this time.


> 2. Ability to search by rating?

   This is something we will definitely be adding.


> 5. Printer friendly version of full resource page

   This is something we will probably add.


> Adding resources
> ----------------
> 1. Mostly as given in my earlier mail in March.
> Overall, would be nice to be able to enter resources
> (particularly multiple creator names), with fewer clicks.

   Reducing the effort needed to add and edit resources will be one of our
   primary goals for SPT-related work over this next year.


> 1. Home page takes 3.5-4 seconds to generate, while
> search takes less (2sec odd). Is this happening to
> anyone else also or should I delve into my database
> setup?

   This seems quite slow to me, unless you've entered an *extraordinary*
   number of resources and/or are using very old hardware.  Are you running
   on a Windows-based platform?  We are only running SPT on Linux and OS X
   here at Scout, so I don't have any info on Windows performance.

   For reference, I just did some quick tests, and on a Red Hat 7.3 box
   that's a couple of years old (866 MHz Pentium III, 512 MB of RAM) and
   with 15,000 resources loaded, front page generation takes about 0.6
   seconds and keyword search times are around 0.015 seconds.  (I should
   add that this box also has a number of other things running on it, and
   had a process load of around 1.7 when I generated the above figures.)
   Page generation time with a full list of search results hovered around
   1.1 seconds.


> 1. Can we see full tree at one time, instead of having
> to click on each category to see sub categories
> eg, the browse resources page would look something like
> Architecture -- History -- Canada
> Architecture -- Technical
> and clicking on any node would open the relevant page.

   We don't have any plan to implement this type of interface, mostly
   because it's not practical beyond a (relatively) small taxonomy, but if
   you have someone who can do a bit of PHP programming it would be easy
   to do by reworking the browse page HTML.

   Ed



-- 
   Edward Almasy                                     ealmasy at scout.wisc.edu
   Research Director                                   1308 W Dayton Street
   Internet Scout Project                                  Madison WI 53706
   Computer Sciences Department                        608-262-6606 (voice)
   University of Wisconsin - Madison                     608-265-9296 (fax)