> > Overall, its great! I do wish more people would use the > wiki abilities > > of piclist.com, but... > > The last time I tried it I had a difficult time, and just > haven't looked at its editing features in two years. It has improved vastly in the forms that allow you to add comments to the pages. It inserts formatting via buttons or ctrl keys (e.g. ctrl-B starts, ends or wraps text in HTML bold tags) and even has a spell check. I'm in the process of adding a live preview so people will see what their post will look like as they type it. The editor for changing entire pages is not great, but does work. I use it every day. Eventually, I intend to make it look like this one: http://syntaxhighlighting.blogspot.com/2006/08/real-time-syntax-highlighting .html But I also want an area that is contentEditable http://www.contenteditable.com/ I already have that, more or less in the WYSIWYG editor. And I want an automatic update between the two: http://htmledit.squarefree.com/ So that the end result will be WordPerfect with reveal codes on. > The > problems I see with it today are that searching is still very > slow (if it's faster to search your pages using google then > there's little point to having your own search engine - > Wikipedia has this problem) In your case I don't think > google gets every page, but I've never done a comparision of > your search engine against google's for pages on the site. There is no good solution to this that I have been able to find. The search is actually pretty fast, but it is limited to allow only a few searches per minute to keep my poor little server from frying. A separate search server is probably the answer... $$$ > When I go to http://www.piclist.com it takes 9 seconds on > this connection (a 3Mbps dual T1, with only two users). When > I go to http://ubasics.com/home/ it takes 2 seconds, and that > includes the redirection to http://ubasics.com/home/. On my friends /dial up/ connection at 56k, the piclist.com home page takes about 3 seconds to display. I think what you are seeing is DNS delay. Try loading the page and then refreshing it. > I wouldn't have done more than a page or two on techref if > the edit - preview - edit cycle was going to be greater than > 15 seconds. If you are going to do more than a few pages, I recommend you author offline and upload. The same is true of any site. Wikipedia is slow enough that I will often not update because I am not willing to take the time. That is why all the pages on piclist.com have that form on the bottom. You don't have to log in, you don't have to register, or wait or anything to add a comment to any page. It is so freaking quick... There is no reason not to use it. Why edit the entire page every time? Just make a comment. The page editors (or myself) will edit that comment in as needed. E.g. just a few seconds ago, I got an email that a link was bad on the page about sending email via SMTP. I checked it, found the updated link, editing the page, and removed the comment after thanking the poster. > The only two other things that kept hitting me when I went to > piclist.com in the past were: > 1) sign in was cumbersome, wouldn't keep me signed in, and I > kept getting errors of a dubious nature. I think the main > problem was I couldn't figure out how to assign my own > password, and had to use some long numeric password that was given. It's a pass code. You don't need to remember it or the password if you will accept a cookie with your member ID. It AUTOMATICALLY logs you in when you click on the login button. If you will be away from the site for months on end, you just save the link with your passcode (which was sent in the registration email) to your favorites and then go there when you want back on. Why do people want to use their own, easy to dictionary attack, hard to remember passwords? Let the damn computer take care of it for you. > 2) The style, layout, and organization of the site are not > comfortable for me. I can find what I'm looking for only > after looking through a lot of stuff (much like you found on > my site). This is a usability problem that shows our sites > are designed by and for us, and there are likely things we > could do that would make it more universal. But it's pretty > subjective. Cross linking and editing the pages is an art and requires much work. It is also subjective and hard to translate from one person to another. It may also be that I'm not good at it because I hear this complaint quite often. That is one reason why I started the editor program where others can come and take over pages, then edit them to their hearts content. David has done wonders with some parts of the site. > Now that everything is in, I'm considering the style and > layout of the website. I'm no usability expert, but I know > that everyone is now trained to expect a navigation bar on > the left. My wiki site needs to be cleaned up (too much text > on the bottom and top), and made as simple as possible. Huh? Could you give me an example of that? Actually, don't bother. I have issues with conformance. > Now that I think about it, when I go to http://piclist.com I > literally have to force myself to read the page line by line > to find what I'm looking for. There's too much clutter, too > many text styles and various forms of emphasis. If I want to > go looking for pic algorithms I don't know what to click > other than search. The text doesn't flow naturally, and > there's no index so I can skim the page itself and drill down > to the paragraph I need. Well then, give me some suggestions... Oh... > Of course, the next thing you'll tell me is, "Give me some > suggestions!" So I suppose I'll put my money where my mouth > is while it's still wagging. Here is a layout that, for me, > is a bit easier to read and find what I need. If I really > wanted to work on it I'd change the style and layout a bit > more (specifically the top and bottom navigation and > 'utility' areas). I really only focussed on the central content: > > http://ubasics.com/piclist Ok, I like it, and I've updated piclist.com with more or less that. I added back in a few things and changed a bit around to include information that I think is critical. Let me know if you like it better now. > I'll take it down within a week. > > No wonder it took 9 seconds for the page to finish loading, though. > You're shoving over 160KB of stuff to the client, then > forcing it to run over 40KB of javascript, and that's just on > the home page. That would be fine on a 45Mbps connection, > but if I remember correctly you're running on a much slower > line. With the number of users you have, I imagine it's > mostly just data downloading time. Of course, I can't talk > since my homepage is forcing well over 1MB to the client, but > even then it's only taking 4 seconds here. Could also be > affected by geography. Let's see... My server is somewhere > in central Florida right on an internet backbone (OC-3 > connection). I'm using a shared hosting service, but I > suspect my site isn't as hard on the database and computer as > yours is. A lot of that is one time only. You won't see that as you move through the site. The bulk of the JS is off in separate includes and more will be moved there in the future. > I hope I don't sound critical - in the past when people have > mentioned difficulty you've been quick to request more > information, so I hope you find this helpful rather than annoying. Very. I do appreciate the feedback, thanks. I hope the new home page is more to your liking, and that I've answered a few of your concerns with regard to passwords (we don't use them) page edit time (just comment) and the page editors. --- James. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist