Notes on the 11-12 August 2009 LIGO Workshop at Notre Dame

General Overview

• The users liked the system, but also struggled in some places.

Big Issues

• Survey/test code is wonky - Phong is working on resolving this
• The teachers seemed highly confused about using and navigating the logbook
  • The pencil and magnifying-glass icons are not understood to be hyperlinks
  • The instructions at the top of the page are ignored - users go directly to the content
  • Flow of commenting is unintuitive
  • Refresh button if student posts a new logbook or comment?

General Issues

• Still some problems with IE and CSS
  • kiwi.php needs some work (lots of dead space)
  • Probably elsewhere as well

Bluestone

• Legend on the plots is too small and hard to read in PNG mode. Most people can't view (E)PS or SVG.
  • Make a PDF version?
• Logging in from the Bluestone side (to post a plot) does not then log into the e-Lab side.
• Pen color selection should be automagic
• The "save plot as" button and textfield should be separated out and re-ordered. Users click "save plot" before they type something in!
• The log-scale checkbox doesn't seem to work reliably.
• Going back to Data Selection clears out the user's previous settings

Forum Issues

• Users had some trouble finding their profile editing link
• The links on the top/bottom forum navbar sometimes send users to admin-only sections
• Need a faster way to access the forum
• 60-minute edit window is not good for workshops when people go on break

Student Side

• Teachers would like a link to the teacher pages from the student pages (for users logged in as teacher only!)
• Displaying a plot from the logbook does not hide the top/side menus

Plot/Poster Search

• Ideally case-insensitive
• If the field is blank should default to "all" (does this in Cosmic's data search)