Entering several bills at a time

byrnefm · Post by **byrnefm** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 10:20 am

I just had a look at avij's proposed layout - I agree too - it looks great! It will particularly help ease the load on the eurobilltracker server as the forms will only be submitted when all the bills are entered - meaning a faster site too!

EuroBillTracker · Post by **EuroBillTracker** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 1:32 pm

byrnefm wrote:I just had a look at avij's proposed layout - I agree too - it looks great! It will particularly help ease the load on the eurobilltracker server as the forms will only be submitted when all the bills are entered - meaning a faster site too!

This is actually quite true

One thing I'm sort of worried about is that people may enter lots of bills with a single zip/city/country when it shoul dbe different but oh well...

byrnefm · Post by **byrnefm** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 2:56 pm

Maybe someone can suggest a way of optimizing the proposed new page layout even further (without too severely cluttering the screen

)?

micro · Post by **micro** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 10:06 pm

EuroBillTracker wrote: One thing I'm sort of worried about is that people may enter lots of bills with a single zip/city/country when it shoul dbe different but oh well...

Maybe, if they came home from traveling. Maybe a hint on the page could prevent them of doing so.

After adjusting the layout a little, the page looks a bit better again. I also put some dummy help text in. But I couldn't find the bug that makes the shortcode disappear

, maybe Avji can help as it might be in his code. But I found out that the bug appears only with Netscape 6, not IE

. The page is here: http://microcoins.yoll.net/temp/index.html.

bhoeyb · Post by **bhoeyb** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 12:05 am

Yep, I don't know anything about designing but it looks OK! Nice work.

EuroBillTracker · Post by **EuroBillTracker** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 9:31 am

micro wrote: After adjusting the layout a little, the page looks a bit better again. I also put some dummy help text in. But I couldn't find the bug that makes the shortcode disappear , maybe Avji can help as it might be in his code. But I found out that the bug appears only with Netscape 6, not IE . The page is here: http://microcoins.yoll.net/temp/index.html.

Did you notice that each line is no longer aligned ? And there is more space between the form elements...

Another thing, for the copy&past thing, we can't make the separator a space or a hyphen since some city names use those !

micro · Post by **micro** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 1:43 pm

EuroBillTracker wrote: Did you notice that each line is no longer aligned ? And there is more space between the form elements...

I don't see that in my browsers. I think the layout is up to you, the sample page was just a suggestion.

Another thing, for the copy&past thing, we can't make the separator a space or a hyphen since some city names use those !

But the city name won't be pasted in the textarea, am I right? The delimiters work only for what is pasted in the textarea. In case you want to change the delimiters just search for function tokenize in the sourcecode. There is is a String variable "delimiters" with all the delimiter characters.

EuroBillTracker · Post by **EuroBillTracker** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 5:57 pm

micro wrote:
Another thing, for the copy&past thing, we can't make the separator a space or a hyphen since some city names use those !
But the city name won't be pasted in the textarea, am I right? The delimiters work only for what is pasted in the textarea. In case you want to change the delimiters just search for function tokenize in the sourcecode. There is is a String variable "delimiters" with all the delimiter characters.

Ok... I'm tired these days !!

micro · Post by **micro** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 11:44 am

EuroBillTracker wrote: Ok... I'm tired these days !!

So am I, yeszzzzzzzzz zz.......

avij · Post by **avij** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 8:24 pm

I'm back again from my short holiday, I'll have a look at the suggestions that you've written. Hold on a moment...

Edwin · Post by **Edwin** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 9:25 pm

avij wrote:However, there's always room for improvement I spent this evening designing an easy-to-use form for entering dozens of bills at a time. You can see that form at http://miuku.net/misc/massinsert.html

Any comments? JavaScript is not my native language, so you may want to double-check the code. It works fine with MSIE6 and NS7, your mileage may vary. I'd be happy if some of that code was incorporated to EBT

I've just looked at your site, and that of Micro, and must say that I really liked this, and hope they will end up in EBT.

EuroBillTracker · Post by **EuroBillTracker** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 8:18 am

Edwin wrote: I've just looked at your site, and that of Micro, and must say that I really liked this, and hope they will end up in EBT.

I've started... it's just going to take a while to do all the error handling cleanly... oh dear...
I'll defintaly have it done during my vacation in july so expect to see it mid july for sure

avij · Post by **avij** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 11:11 pm

EuroBillTracker wrote:it's just going to take a while to do all the error handling cleanly... oh dear...

One thing I'm sort of worried about is that people may enter lots of bills with a single zip/city/country

Oh, take your time -- it's just a hobby after all

You're right about the single zip code problem. I have added some extra text on the page for guiding people to use the form correctly, I hope it lessens the problem somewhat.

I have made some of the corrections people have suggested, please have a look at http://miuku.net/misc/massinsert3.html and tell me what you think.

List of changes include (in HTML source code order)

some new CSS classes for various note colours
there's a body onLoad handler that sets the focus to the first row and validates all the data that's currently on the form in case of a reload -- otherwise the field backgrounds would sometimes be white instead of the correct colour
the denomination fields are now coloured according to the colour of the actual bill
the excellent offline list code has been stolen from micro (with minor tweaks)
offline list thingy checks for duplicate serial numbers and won't overwrite existing form entries
offline list thingy jumps to the top of form after the notes have been TRANSFERred for further validation by the user
some help texts have been blatantly stolen from micro as well
there are now two submit ("GO") buttons on the page, along with some description. I removed the warning that "the notes won't be sent anywhere" but it was just a cosmetic change -- they are still not sent anywhere.
checked that the page conforms to HTML 4.01 transitional using validator.w3.org

micro wrote:I think it's not unusual to have a GO button below AND (directly!) above a form.

Not unusual, but sometimes it causes some confusion ("hey, what's the difference between this submit button and the other?"). I came across this problem when I wrote a similar two-submit-button page for our intranet.

micro wrote:JavaScript can then parse the text and fill it into the regular textboxes.

I'm somewhat concerned that this feature won't work without JavaScript -- the other JS on that page isn't strictly required. But I suppose JavaScript is an acceptable solution to this problem.

micro wrote:The page is located here and contains a ..

Congratulations, the first page you posted managed to BSOD my NT4+MSIE6 machine at home

Repeatedly -- I tried this again after my computer had rebooted, and it promptly crashed again. NS7 worked fine though. Crashing my computer is quite an achievement, considering that the last time I saw a BSOD on this machine was about two and a half years ago. F-Secure antivirus was most probably part of the problem. The second page you posted worked fine, though.

micro wrote:After clicking the button twice the shortcode boxes get empty, I don't know why.

I can't seem to reproduce the problem, works fine with my MSIE6 and NS7pr1

I have changed some of the code while doing the other modifications, see if your browser screws up this time. Some of the earlier NS6 versions were somewhat buggy, it might be a bug in NS.

emmem · Post by **emmem** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 11:35 pm

I noticed the feature for changing the background color in a form element was not implemented in Opera (even not in the latest version 6.03).

I was planing to adapt the massinsert code to insert some small pictures behind every field. But other matters grabbed my attention.

The idea is to preload 3 pictures (or maybe some more for the bills). One for when nothing is entered (?) one for a valid entry (v) and one for an erroneous entry (x). When validating the form every image could then be changed to the according picture.

avij · Post by **avij** » Tue Jun 25, 2002 12:03 am

emmem wrote:I was planing to adapt the massinsert code to insert some small pictures behind every field.

That sounds, um, a bit strange. I suppose it'd work, but I'd rather bug the Opera authors to fix their software instead

EuroBillTracker

Entering several bills at a time

Re: Entering several bills at a time

Re: Entering several bills at a time

Re: Entering several bills at a time