EuroBillTracker

I for one would like to have an ability to enter several bills at a time, instead of entering them one at a time and then reaching for the mouse to set the focus back to the right field after the first note is entered. A simple body onload="form.my_denomination.focus()" or something similar would fix this, after this modification I wouldn't really have to use my mouse at all. Considering that I may enter some 200 bills at a time, even this would be a nice improvement

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 -- note that the data entered won't be transferred to EBT, it's dumped to a CGI script that echoes back everything that's sent to it.

Some noteworthy items:

There is a "realtime" typo checking for short code and serial number, try entering an incorrect number and you'll see what I mean. This is especially useful when entering tons of bills at a time -- if there was no checking while entering the note, you would be seriously annoyed if you had to find that mistyped note from your stack of bills after EBT complained that the number was incorrect. This feature needs JavaScript, though.

Comments are copied onto the next notes as well, but can still be changed individually if need arises. Same thing happens for note denominations and for the year.

The year is somewhat redundant at this time, so it could be replaced with a hidden field until 2003. I put it there just for testing the thing.

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

one word : wonderful
I will definatly use this.

I need to write the code to handle it though which is going to be non-trivial because of all the error handling

Oh ! goodie... you even did the REGEXP !!

Ok, I still can't promise on a date because I have tons of things to do (in particular, batch inserting 700 bills for a user... yippy !) but this is definatly at the top of my list thanks to your help

The only drawback to this I see is that it will become much easier to insert lots of crap in the database because users can find "valid" serial numbers on each try and look at the javascript code to figure it out. Hummm... what is everyone's opinion ?

EuroBillTracker wrote: The only drawback to this I see is that it will become much easier to insert lots of crap in the database because users can find "valid" serial numbers on each try and look at the javascript code to figure it out. Hummm... what is everyone's opinion ?

Finding valid serial numbers is a piece of cake, even without help from such tools. If, for example, Y00000000001 is valid, then so are Y00000000019,
Y00000000028, etc; if Y12345678901 is valid, then so are all transpositions such as Y21345678901, Y13245678901 etc. I am sure this is old news to all users of the site especially if they have been following the forums - no need to check javacode to find valid serial numbers!
So I say go ahead and use this

Maybe you shouldn't give the ability to use such a form to all users by default. Only to users who are given the apropriate user rights should be able to do this.

Don't know if that is technically possible. And of course, someone needs to handle the request for such rights, but i think this is something you can let a few selected (and trusted) users do, just like editing the hit list

I think it's very usefull...
And just inventing serial numbers is also possible whitout that form !
And besides, the chance of a hit with a false serial is just as little as just inserting real bills...

I noticed that the design works for Netscape/Mozilla too
(Mozilla 0.9.9 on a Linux box).
And avij, I study computer science too (and there are others around this forum )

smh wrote:Maybe you shouldn't give the ability to use such a form to all users by default. Only to users who are given the apropriate user rights should be able to do this.

Don't know if that is technically possible. And of course, someone needs to handle the request for such rights, but i think this is something you can let a few selected (and trusted) users do, just like editing the hit list

Yup, I agree, but I think the main idea is very useful! It will save a lot of time!
But, in case of a computer crash, you've to put in all the banknotes again...

hmmmz
I don't know about you, but in my case my computer crashes mostly when I do strange things (trying to open too much windows at once, playing 5 avi files simultaneous, etc)
When just typing serial numbers in a html form, I don't see any reason for a computer to crash....
(well, except if you use WinME )

Drachenwald wrote:Finding valid serial numbers is a piece of cake, even without help from such tools. If, for example, Y00000000001 is valid, then so are Y00000000019,
Y00000000028, etc; if Y12345678901 is valid, then so are all transpositions such as Y21345678901, Y13245678901 etc. I am sure this is old news to all users of the site especially if they have been following the forums - no need to check javacode to find valid serial numbers!
So I say go ahead and use this

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.

Were I work some of my colleagues have to enter long serials (of cars). To prevent them for making too many mistakes they need to enter the serial twice. Once in order and once inverted. E.g. 123456789 and 987654321.

Maybe we could make an extra form available for people who want to prevent themselves from making such mistakes.

Some random thoughts..

EuroBillTracker wrote:one word : wonderful
I will definatly use this.

EuroBillTracker wrote:I need to write the code to handle it though which is going to be non-trivial because of all the error handling

Yea, I know it won't be that easy, take your time. However, I think people using that "advanced" entry form should be pretty familiar with the system, so the error messages could be somewhat shorter than usual. I was thinking something along these lines for the results page:
I do not know exactly what kind of error messages EBT can issue, but for the most part, if it gives an error message (like "already entered") there's really nothing the user can do and retrying won't do any good. The JavaScript checks should help preventing some of the invalid serial numbers etc, but in case someone doesn't have JavaScript enabled the system should check the serial numbers anyway. In that case it could put those invalid entries to the top of the new input form (highlighting the invalid parts) and remove the notes from the input form that were ok or already entered.

As you should have noticed, I put quite a lot of input rows on that page (50 to be exact). Other euro tracking sites (which shall remain nameless) that allow more than one note to be entered at a time seem to restrict the number of notes to 5 or so. They have most probably limited the number because of possible typos in the serial numbers, but as we soon have the realtime typo checking, we don't have to restrict ourselves to those tiny note amounts.

EuroBillTracker wrote:Oh ! goodie... you even did the REGEXP !!

I was actually quite relieved to notice that JavaScript does indeed support regex, it made the checks somewhat simpler. Considering that my primary scripting language is Perl, this simple regex was no big deal

EuroBillTracker wrote:The only drawback to this I see is that it will become much easier to insert lots of crap in the database because users can find "valid" serial numbers on each try and look at the javascript code to figure it out. Hummm... what is everyone's opinion ?

Well, if some people want to abuse the system, they will, regardless of the input format they're provided. As others have pointed out, generating mathematically correct serial numbers is trivial, and the information for calculating the check digit is already widely available. As most people do use the system with legitimate notes, I wouldn't like to restrict the use of this new form just because there are some people who do not play by the rules.

smh wrote:Maybe you shouldn't give the ability to use such a form to all users by default. Only to users who are given the apropriate user rights should be able to do this.

I somewhat agree, as the result page after entering the notes might be a bit confusing for the newbies. I'd suggest giving access to this expert input form after the user has entered, say, 15 notes using the regular method. After the user has entered those 15 notes with the usual form, he/she is most probably quite familiar with the system and knows how the system works in principle. I'd like to see a link like "If you're adding several notes at a time, please consider using the expert input form" on the New Note page after the 15 notes have been reached. I'd say this automatic method would be easier for the webmaster, and at the same time it'd prevent the complete newbies from confusing themselves with a potentially confusing input form. I don't want to replace the existing input form with this form, as the basic form is most probably easier for the newbies. But the expert users, they should be given access to this new form in addition to the old regular input form.

pinguino79 wrote:I noticed that the design works for Netscape/Mozilla too
(Mozilla 0.9.9 on a Linux box).

Yes, the page is basically the same that is displayed when someone requests the EBT front page with MSIE. I can (somewhat) understand why EBT outputs a different page for older Netscape versions as they are severely broken when it comes to CSS support etc, but seeing that EBT outputs that same Netscape version of the page for modern Netscape 6/7 & Mozilla browsers is somewhat insulting ..

Lot's of interesting stuff as all other messages in this thread

avij wrote: but seeing that EBT outputs that same Netscape version of the page for modern Netscape 6/7 & Mozilla browsers is somewhat insulting ..

Huh ??? Something is broken. Last I checked, my user agent string check worked correctly for NS6 and displayed the blue theme !!

EuroBillTracker wrote:Lot's of interesting stuff as all other messages in this thread

avij wrote: but seeing that EBT outputs that same Netscape version of the page for modern Netscape 6/7 & Mozilla browsers is somewhat insulting ..

Huh ??? Something is broken. Last I checked, my user agent string check worked correctly for NS6 and displayed the blue theme !!

It doesn't work with Opera, that I sometimes use. The screen is still purple.

Olivier wrote:It doesn't work with Opera, that I sometimes use. The screen is still purple.

I’m using opera too. When using EBT I set my options to identify as MSIE 5.0. In opera 6.x it’s easy to do. Just press F12 and choose in the bottom list.

The only thing that’s not work 100% on EBT is the “About this site” topic (A propos in french). The blue bars are not proportional. This is the only drawback of opera I know of.

emmem wrote:

Olivier wrote:It doesn't work with Opera, that I sometimes use. The screen is still purple.

I’m using opera too. When using EBT I set my options to identify as MSIE 5.0. In opera 6.x it’s easy to do. Just press F12 and choose in the bottom list.

Great!! Thank you!

This is no longer related to entering the bills, but what the heck..

EuroBillTracker wrote:Huh ??? Something is broken. Last I checked, my user agent string check worked correctly for NS6 and displayed the blue theme !!

Ok, it might work for NS6, but not for NS7 (the preview version). My NS7 preview release 1 has this user agent text: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.0rc2) Gecko/20020512 Netscape/7.0b1" and the last time I used Mozilla (latest nightly build) at work on my Linux desktop, it displayed the purple Netscape theme as well. 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.