Re: PiggyBank install feedback

From: David Huynh <dfhuynh_at_csail.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 08:32:38 -0400

Danny,

Thanks for your feedback! Comments below...

Danny Ayers wrote:

>Install (eventually, mostly) ok, setup -
>
>Firefox 1.0.6, Windows 2000 Build 2195 SP4, Java 1.5.0
>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10)
>Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
>
>Last night I tried an install it hung completely, I think just after
>initialization. This morning I had a poke around and discovered there
>was only 11MB available on one of my partitions. The Firefox "Program
>Files" stuff doesn't seem to be on that partition, but there's a good
>chance I've got FF saving its data there (or somesuch). So I made a
>bit of space and tried again - success. I've not played with it yet,
>but everything looks ok so far.
>
>There were one or two usability issues with install: simply giving
>some estimate of the install time on the download page it will take
>would be helpful (it's not instant). The Google Maps signup was a
>little confusing, I'd be tempted to leave that until post-install
>(especially as I'm on dialup and Google Maps expects bandwidth). But
>what was really annoying was that after I'd killed off the (initial,
>failed) install and continued to use Firefox, the install routine kept
>kicking in again - even after I'd clicked Cancel. There was no obvious
>way of getting rid of that. Ok, I suppose it's a bit pessimistic
>covering such angles, but I could imagine that putting someone off
>PiggyBank for life.
>
>
Good point. We can fix that easily.

>A bit more of end-user documentation close to the scrapers would be
>extremely helpful (dc:description?). I landed at a filtered (?)
>scrapers page, no idea what to do next: Save? Persist? Publish? Huh?
>Flipping back I see there are some instructions under "Now What?", but
>in my enthusiasm I'd missed them.
>
>
I think you must have clicked one of those two scraper links (they point
to .N3 files). Piggy Bank automatically parsed the N3 and showed it to
you in Piggy Bank's own view. At this point, you can "Save" whichever
scraper you want and then activate it (saying that you trust its code).

OK, I can see that Save? Persist? Publish? sounds a bit like Abort?
Retry? Failure? :-) We'll do something about it.

>So I tried the two screen scraper links. The instructions say "If
>Piggy Bank doesn't automatically load the data, collect it by clicking
>the data coin icon". Er, I didn't see a data coin, or anything else. I
>don't know whether the data was loaded, whether another Siberian
>forest flattened by a cataclysmic explosion or what... Ah, it doesn't
>look like the scrapers have installed, I don't get a coin for the
>monster.com example, just a little box with a cross in it. (I do see
>the coin with other pages). I'll have a fiddle.
>btw, will most end-users know what scrapers are?
>
>
If you were already seeing the "filtered" scrapers page as you
described, Piggy Bank had already loaded the data and there would not be
any data coin icon.

Any idea of how to communicate the concept of screen scrapers to end-users?

Thanks!

David
Received on Wed Oct 05 2005 - 12:25:33 EDT

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