Feedback categories from PSE alpha trials
By Ed Mitchell 22nd November 2012
The Project Sharing Engine (PSE) alpha widget is out in the wilds, living on the edge, well in the sidebars of Transition Initiatives’ websites, and doing well. We are expecting there to be issues so that we can identify and handle them in a more controlled environment than 12 trial sites.
The feedback seems to break down into approximately four categories – these are listed below with the actual feedback. I think that these are likely to form the groups we break into for the forthcoming alpha webmasters’ meeting in London on Monday 10th December.
This is all great stuff – well done all webmasters! Our next step is to start adding projects through the widgets, getting friends and others in our local areas to try adding them, so that we can see if the widget performs another vital service, and how we can improve it.
Technical
I realise that not many users of Transition sites will be running with !NoScript, but if they do they will find they have clearclick warnings on the PSE full page widget, see the screenshot here: https://wiki.transitionnetwork.org/File:Noscript-clear-click.png This was triggered on this page: http://dev.transitionsheffield.org/projects/
Your widget code includes JavaScript and CSS into the hosting site. I’d make sure that all your CSS ids and classes and JavaScript functions include a “tn-” prefix or similar. You’ve done this with a couple of classes but it’s best if all have this prefix to avoid any clashes…. JIM: We’ve got namespacing on all of the outer wrappers, and our CSS never does anything without these selected… but you’re right, everything (functions, css, ids) should start ‘tn-pse-widget’ or ‘tn_pse_widget’ for optimum interoperability That tweak is definitely one for the beta!
Design
1. The widget is quite long.
2. Could the internal scroll be avoided? (admittedly this avoids might make it even longer). Could it just have buttons to see more projects?
3. It doesnt visually fit in very well with our site. Is there any way the style could be adjusted? Could it be transparent if desired, so that the underlying theme would be more visible?
The widget says near Bungay, when some of the TT projects are in Bungay. Could it read both?
Editorial
4. Could it filter out the group’s own projects, which are probably displayed elsewhere on the same site (at least we have them in a dropdown menu)?
the widget now highlights how out of date our website is as the project i put in does not appear on our own website..
Facilitation
What happens when the project lsited no longer exist and you don’t… have access to them? [project name], for example, is out of business. I was also waiting [ to moderate ] until we sorted general criteria. It seems anyone can post anything through the widget and that puts comms people in a playing god position.
Does this mean, as the host of the local Norwich projects widget, I have to ask [project owner name] to do that so our site kept updated?
Different platforms
I havn’t been able to figure out how to add it to a ning site – can you help? I’ve also added a project but nothing appears except for an invitation to submit projects. I’ve tried adding both the full and and sidebar code with the same result.
I have had a trawl through the Ning support forums and I think with a bit of tinkering it is possible. Ning did remove the ability to add iFrame fro ordinary users but from what I can tell ning creators can still use it, though that isn’t the case in my experience. I came across this and wonder if you could adapt his suggestion into something I could use http://jqueryhelp.ning.com/forum/topics/add-an-iframe-to-a-discussion
You can also read this on the management spreadsheet on google.