EuroBillTracker

avij wrote:Actually, if there's "Gecko" string in the user agent, you could use the new layout. This would most probably cover all the other Mozilla derivatives as well.

Done... is it blue now ?

EuroBillTracker wrote:Done... is it blue now ?

Works fine with NS7pr1, thanks! I can't verify if Mozilla gives the new layout at the moment, but I suppose it works as expected if you added the Gecko identification thing I suggested.

Now, let's get back to the actual topic..

Before to move to the actual topic of the thread, let me confirm it works on Mozilla too

The sample form is great! It works well with NS6.2 and IE6.0 but petrifies NS4.7.
I have just a couple of additional suggestions:

10 or 20 rows would probably do.
I like that the background turns red in case of an invalid printer code or serial. I think it would be a nice enhancement if the background would also turn GREEN if the entries were correct.
Another small improvement would be a tolerance for entering o or O as a zero.
And there should be another GO button ABOVE the form to eliminate the need to scroll down.

Another great improvement would be if a simple textfile could be uploaded (by "experts"). I'm thinking of one bill per line with the entries comma- or space- or tab-separated in a defined order, like this:
5, 2002, t001e3, z1x60x635x7x, creased
20, 2002, m001g3, v0x78x115x4x, fresh
...
This would allow offline preparation of the data, even on a palmtop.

emmem wrote:Well, now that this is all said I have to admit the transpositions are worrying me for some time. If you enter many bills and you type fast, you could easily change the position of 2 digits. E.g. 1324 instead of 1234.

Hmm.. I wouldn't be very worried about that. I don't know about you, but the most common error for me is that I accidentally skip a digit in the serial number, but checking for this error is already in place. I don't think I've swapped numbers any time during my 707-note-long EBT career, or at least I haven't noticed the errors I made Besides, the world won't end if you accidentally enter an incorrect number (and thus lose the ability to track its whereabouts), as you have most probably entered dozens of other notes as well that get tracked.

I was actually somewhat surprised that the serial number doesn't have a method for determining if some of the numbers are swapped. For reference, the check digits that are included in your bank/credit card number make sure the numbers don't get swapped. Yes, there are two check digits in the card number, and they are both calculated somewhat differently.

Up until recently I was hoping that the short code contained some kind of an extra check digit in the last character+digit, but that turned out not to be the case. I recently got 33 brand new 5 EUR bills, and they all shared the same printer code and the serial numbers were sequential. By implication this means that the printer code doesn't include an extra check digit that'd be calculated from the serial number It seems it's really just a batch number..

The printer code can still be used for manual verification done afterwards though -- if you have 50 notes whose serial numbers are adjacent and they all have the same printer code except for one, it may very well be possible that the printer code in one of them is incorrect. This may not apply to all printer codes, though, as there may be regional differences in the way printer codes are used.

micro wrote:The sample form is great! It works well with NS6.2 and IE6.0 but petrifies NS4.7.

I somehow thought it'd kill older Netscape versions.. Although I'm not sure if it's the form that's causing the problem, or is it the general layout for that page. I've personally stopped caring about interoperability with NS4.x when NS6 came out. If someone has problems with their NS4, it's basically their fault for not upgrading the browser as NS4.x series is ancient. I try to write valid HTML+CSS though, so I can correctly blame the browser for not displaying the page properly

micro wrote:10 or 20 rows would probably do.

Perhaps.. 10 may be a bit too little (for me anyways), 20 might be a good compromise.

micro wrote:I like that the background turns red in case of an invalid printer code or serial. I think it would be a nice enhancement if the background would also turn GREEN if the entries were correct.

Hmm, you have a point there. Instead of telling the user that he/she has done something wrong, it'd be better to tell the user that he/she has done something correctly. Let's see..

micro wrote:Another small improvement would be a tolerance for entering o or O as a zero.

Yes, and "I" should be recognized as "one". This is most probably most relevant with printer codes, as people won't necessarily know that the code is a letter, then 3 digits, then a letter and then one final digit.

micro wrote:And there should be another GO button ABOVE the form to eliminate the need to scroll down.

You have another good point there, but adding the GO button above the form looks a bit strange.. I guess I'll move this to my "needs-work" department. At least in this case the "GO" icon should be changed to something more descriptive.

micro wrote:Another great improvement would be if a simple textfile could be uploaded.

Oh, another entry to my "needs-work" department I guess one relatively elegant way of implementing this would be to have some method for transferring the data (either by a large textarea input box like the box I'm writing this message or a file upload) to the server, and after the server has received the data, it'd parse the data and place the values on the "expert input form" for review. After the user has reviewed the parsed data, the user would just press the "GO" button just like before.. Hmm, I'll need to think more about this, perhaps next week. Writing a small Perl CGI script that processes the data wouldn't be that hard to do. I'll be away for a few days, as we Finns have a national holiday coming up.

Anyway, I have made some of those changes, see http://miuku.net/misc/massinsert2.html
Let me know what you think, consider it a prototype... I suppose this simple form is starting to slowly suffer from feature creep

avij wrote:

micro wrote:The sample form is great! It works well with NS6.2 and IE6.0 but petrifies NS4.7.

I somehow thought it'd kill older Netscape versions.. Although I'm not sure if it's the form that's causing the problem, or is it the general layout for that page.

It's the general layout

avij wrote:

micro wrote:I like that the background turns red in case of an invalid printer code or serial. I think it would be a nice enhancement if the background would also turn GREEN if the entries were correct.

Hmm, you have a point there. Instead of telling the user that he/she has done something wrong, it'd be better to tell the user that he/she has done something correctly. Let's see..

Maybe it’s a crazy idea. But when you select a bill the background could be changed to a basic colour of that bill. For instance if you select 5 it would be grey. 10 it would be pink, 20 bleu, 50 beige…

emmem wrote: Maybe it?s a crazy idea. But when you select a bill the background could be changed to a basic colour of that bill. For instance if you select 5 it would be grey. 10 it would be pink, 20 bleu, 50 beige?

Good idea, not crazy! But I think it would be best if just the denomination field (the selectbox) would change its background color (IMHO no problem for JavaScript), not the serial number field.

Thanks for your detailed answer, avij! I was afraid I would bother you with my many suggestions.

avij wrote:

micro wrote:I like that the background turns red in case of an invalid printer code or serial. I think it would be a nice enhancement if the background would also turn GREEN if the entries were correct.

Hmm, you have a point there. Instead of telling the user that he/she has done something wrong, it'd be better to tell the user that he/she has done something correctly. Let's see..

Works great in your new sample page! It is good to have both red&green. Just one little suggestion: The background of a textbox should turn white if it gains focus again.

avij wrote:

micro wrote:And there should be another GO button ABOVE the form to eliminate the need to scroll down.

You have another good point there, but adding the GO button above the form looks a bit strange.. I guess I'll move this to my "needs-work" department. At least in this case the "GO" icon should be changed to something more descriptive.

I think it's not unusual to have a GO button below AND (directly!) above a form. I saw this many times.

avij wrote:

micro wrote:Another great improvement would be if a simple textfile could be uploaded.

Oh, another entry to my "needs-work" department I guess one relatively elegant way of implementing this would be to have some method for transferring the data (either by a large textarea input box like the box I'm writing this message or a file upload) to the server, and after the server has received the data, it'd parse the data and place the values on the "expert input form" for review. After the user has reviewed the parsed data, the user would just press the "GO" button just like before.. Hmm, I'll need to think more about this, perhaps next week. Writing a small Perl CGI script that processes the data wouldn't be that hard to do. I'll be away for a few days, as we Finns have a national holiday coming up.

Today I thought it over. My new idea is to have a textarea and an ENTER button somewhere on the page where the user can simply paste the textfile. No uploading required. JavaScript can then parse the text and fill it into the regular textboxes. I even thought about writing the code for this and for the red-green thing, but you were faster...

I couldn't resist writing that code fragment. The page is located here and contains a textarea where a structured textfile can be pasted. Try this for example (select & copy):

10 2002 r00514 v08886111509 freshly printed
20 2002 poo4f3 x04878598249 creased
5 2002 soo4f3 n00234588277 stained

(I put invalid serial numbers here because valid numbers shouldn't be posted)
After clicking the button the values will be inserted into their boxes.
There's still a bug in it: After clicking the button twice the shortcode boxes get empty, I don't know why.

micro wrote:I couldn't resist writing that code fragment. The page is located here and contains a textarea where a structured textfile can be pasted. Try this for example (select & copy):

10 2002 r00514 v08886111509 freshly printed
20 2002 poo4f3 x04878598249 creased
5 2002 soo4f3 n00234588277 stained

This is great!

IN one word:
FANTASTIC !
great job micro !

Thank you, guys!
I forgot to tell that the delimiters between the text items can be spaces, commas, hyphens, and tabs, so it is no problem to select part of a table in MS Excel and copy&paste it into the textarea.

micro wrote:Thank you, guys!
I forgot to tell that the delimiters between the text items can be spaces, commas, hyphens, and tabs, so it is no problem to select part of a table in MS Excel and copy&paste it into the textarea.

Ok, I'll try to add it to the site this weekend. I really will this time... I have so little time these days
Basically I have to extract the method for storing bills in the database, then I can parse the data sent by the new form and call that new method multiple times, then I can parse the results and display them...
Humm... quite some work...