Feedback for repo.openpandora.org


porg

Active Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2008
Messages
792
Location
Vienna, Austria
Hello Milkshake!


Through the IRC, I heard, that you are maintaining http://repo.openpandora.org/


I have some feedback and suggestions for you.


As other IRC users showed interest in feedback concerning the repo as well, I decided to post this publicly.


Praise:


Your repository is well designed (both aesthetically and structurally)! Thanks for your efforts! I like it a lot!


My suggestions for improvement:


- The repo site itself should have a contact/feedback page, so that feedback is possible, without the efforts of first asking in the IRC or at the boards, whom to contact regarding the repo ;-)


- Possibility to change the password or to erase the account.


- Possibility to have a private and a public rating. Purpose: In a public rating I try to be a bit more "objective", rate the quality of the game, rather than my personal taste. A private rating would help me, to remember which games I already tested/played, and how I liked them, and my rating there would be more blunt.


- In app listings much functionality shall directly available by properly using the link space, so that you can apply actions like download, rate, etc on multiple items really quickly.


1) version number -> direct link to the PND file, starts the download right away


2) rating stars -> directly rates the game (like in a iTunes song listing) via AJAX so that no page reload occurs


3) Icon -> opens the "more info" and already opens the first screenshot (if available)


4) Everything else (the whole row including title, category, background color, etc) -> More info.


Regards, porg
 
First of all thank you for your feedback.


Ill reply to what I can think of at the moment.

- The repo site itself should have a contact/feedback page, so that feedback is possible, without the efforts of first asking in the IRC or at the boards, whom to contact regarding the repo ;-)

Yes I should add a footer to the site really with the links to contact myself and provide and "about us" section.

- Possibility to change the password or to erase the account.
It is already possible to change your passord via the "my account" section followed my clicking on "my details".


And an option to delete your account would also be a good idea :)

- Possibility to have a private and a public rating. Purpose: In a public rating I try to be a bit more "objective", rate the quality of the game, rather than my personal taste. A private rating would help me, to remember which games I already tested/played, and how I liked them, and my rating there would be more blunt.
I dont really know what to think about this, it has some logic to it but its not a feature I can see being used all that much.

2) rating stars -> directly rates the game (like in a iTunes song listing) via AJAX so that no page reload occurs
#2 Is an idea I wanted to implament but havent got round to yet.

Regards, porg

Thanks.
 
Whilst we're at it, I'll throw in a thought that struck me the other day.


When a pnd is uploaded, you/the repo site pokes around inside it and parses pxml and stuff, yes? That ought to mean that you could fairly easily copy stuff out of it, too? What I'm getting at is this: Several times I have thought that it would be very useful indeed to be able to look at the documentation for a particular app, online - Either because I am somehow online and wants to check something (particular formats for rom files, or dependencies, or file structure), or because I am about to download a pnd but wants to know more.


Would it be possible to extract the documentation files, and have access to them from a convenient link on the apps download page?
 
Whilst we're at it, I'll throw in a thought that struck me the other day.


When a pnd is uploaded, you/the repo site pokes around inside it and parses pxml and stuff, yes? That ought to mean that you could fairly easily copy stuff out of it, too? What I'm getting at is this: Several times I have thought that it would be very useful indeed to be able to look at the documentation for a particular app, online - Either because I am somehow online and wants to check something (particular formats for rom files, or dependencies, or file structure), or because I am about to download a pnd but wants to know more.


Would it be possible to extract the documentation files, and have access to them from a convenient link on the apps download page?
Hi Moxie, this has been disscussed before and it was decided that it would be better if we did not do this due to the complexity of how many different formats the documentation could be.


for example:


the documentation could be in HTML format, this is itself is not a problem however the page that is linked to in the PXML may be dependant on other pages inside the PND.


The way HTML works the PXML would only need to point to 1 page which in tern would open other pages as required or needed via HTML or jS or whatever without the need for the PXML to know these other pages even exist.


So you can see in that scenario that there is no way of knowing if there are any dependancys without first extracting the main page first then parsing the HTML file and looking for links etc which would then just get all complicated and messy.


If there were strict rules on documentation like only allowing the use of text files as ducumentation it would be a simple process to just extract that file and provide it as a download.


So in the end I provided a additional info option which allows 1500 chars (currently) for the dev to provide any info he wants to the end user: i.e.


links to support forums.


links to videos.


even basic instructions.


hope I was able to explain in a manner that is easily understood.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
- Possibility to have a private and a public rating. Purpose: In a public rating I try to be a bit more "objective", rate the quality of the game, rather than my personal taste. A private rating would help me, to remember which games I already tested/played, and how I liked them, and my rating there would be more blunt.
I dont really know what to think about this, it has some logic to it but its not a feature I can see being used all that much.
I think such a personal rating is better managed client-side (e.g. in Tempel's PNDstore).
 
2) rating stars -> directly rates the game (like in a iTunes song listing) via AJAX so that no page reload occurs

Ok I have no ajaxified the star rating system so it will work without reloading the page.


I plan on doing the same for comments too.
 
I was updating PCSX today and encountered a few things (Firefox 3.6, the version my distro provides me):


- logging in shows no feedback, I basically enter my info and click 'Submit' and nothing happens. Reloading the page shows I'm logged in so it worked, but hasn't displayed anything.


- in 'My Apps' page you can click 'disable' to disable an app, however if one is already disabled, there is 'enable' button which doesn't work, it just says "you just disabled your app" instead of enabling it back.
 
@notaz I had some console.log() bits in the jS which I forgot to comment out, i know that can cause issues for firefox unless u have firebug installed, so i commented them out, this should fix the loggin in part.


2nd part once you have been given the message you can then click "back" which takes you back to your "my applications" page this lets you enable it again, or alternatively you can visit the app page whilst logged in and enable/disable it from there.
 
@notaz I had some console.log() bits in the jS which I forgot to comment out, i know that can cause issues for firefox unless u have firebug installed, so i commented them out, this should fix the loggin in part.
Tried it now (after clearing cache) and it still won't work.

2nd part once you have been given the message you can then click "back" which takes you back to your "my applications" page this lets you enable it again, or alternatively you can visit the app page whilst logged in and enable/disable it from there.
Right, what I was reporting was that 'enable' didn't work from the app page, but tried it now and it works, so maybe I misread the message last time or something.
 
Ok I have introduced Ajax comment system too. please test


@notaz


Ok over the last few hours I have been testing some stuff so console.log() was re-nabled again sorry, I have commented out all the console.log() bits again and tested it on firefox and it works ok now at least here on the standard install of firefox.
 
Possibility to change the password or to erase the account.
It is already possible to change your passord via the "my account" section followed my clicking on "my details".


And an option to delete your account would also be a good idea :)

Within "My account" I cannot find "my details" or thelike.


The only available options are:


My Downloads | My Apps | Upload/Update App
 
2) rating stars -> directly rates the game (like in a iTunes song listing) via AJAX so that no page reload occurs

Ok I have no ajaxified the star rating system so it will work without reloading the page.


I plan on doing the same for comments too.

Fine that you ajaxified the star rating system for the detail page of an app! That's a good start.


Nevertheless, what I meant is that you can directly consecutively rate any app(s) within app listings (generated by filters/categories/search-terms).
 
Within "My account" I cannot find "my details" or thelike.


The only available options are:


My Downloads | My Apps | Upload/Update App
congratulations you found a bug ;) which I have now fixed and you should now be able to change your password and email address.
 
congratulations you found a bug
wink.gif
which I have now fixed and you should now be able to change your password and email address.
Works now, yes!


And I noticed a button "Mark all apps as viewed". Is this part of a general feature, to know which apps you already read about, and which are "new" to you? Because this would be great, this was the thought behind my request for a private rating, in order to know, which software you already read about / tested.
 
And I noticed a button "Mark all apps as viewed". Is this part of a general feature, to know which apps you already read about, and which are "new" to you? Because this would be great, this was the thought behind my request for a private rating, in order to know, which software you already read about / tested.

basically if you have cookies enabled it lets you know what apps are new/updated since you last visited and it keeps showing you they are new/updated untill you either view the app or mark all as viewed.


you should also notice if you view an app you already rated it tells you what you rated.
 
Milkshake: I really need to get 'round to helping you out aesthetically with the repo. :)


I imagine a lot of people are going to have particularly strong feelings on the subject of appearance, however... but if we do it cleverly enough then multiple themes shouldn't be very difficult.


From a more technical perspective, I believe I've found a bug in your "Top Rated" listings; it could just be a matter of preference. However, rating is a function of Average Rating and Number Of Ratings, and not just the average rating on its lonesome.


At the moment you have:


5 stars - 9 ratings


5 stars - 8 ratings


5 stars - 9 ratings


5 stars - 42 ratings


The 5 stars and 42 ratings should be at the top.


I can't remember what algorithm I usually use for this sort of nonsense, but it's not too complicated.


It gets even more complex when you have 5 stars - 1 rating, and 4.5 stars - 500 ratings... aaarrggh!


This looks good: http://www.thebroth.com/blog/118/bayesian-rating


Except you're not using + and - votes, so the star rating ( avg ) would take its place.
 
i thought i had perfected the mysql comment to order them according to:


min rating (needs at least 4 votes i belive) - important (all apps with less than 4 votes = light blue stars)


actual rating - important


number of votes - important


alphabetically - at this point not really that important


but will have another look tonight when I get home.


funny enough I have been sketching some ideas out at work on a peice of paper about possible new visual directions which would get the best out of modern web standards i.e. ajax etc


if your still interested in a helping with the look of the repo that would be great :p


and writing some psudo code too for other stuff i want to add i.e.


autocomplete search box like google's one


comment notifications (rather than just emails)


monthly download statistics so I could then do stuff like most downloaded app of the month etc.


oh Gadgetoid btw did you receive my email I sent a week or so ago?


also thinking about adding stuff like facebook, twitter and google plus social stuff.


dont know how far I should go into the social side of it though.
 
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