interested in testing a coin web site?

[rrdenarius]

DM me if you are interested in helping test a coin web site. I spent an hour last week, via zoom, with a systems student testing (is it debugging if you find no errors?) the site shown below.

The Syrios Project (uh.edu)

[DCCR]

I won't have time to test it but I had a poke about and noticed a problem:

 

Go to this page:
https://syrios.uh.edu/site-map

And click on "Let me Explore" at the bottom
https://syrios.uh.edu/explore

"The requested URL was not found on this server."

It's the same URL as on the "Let Me Explore" button on the front page.  If you click on the "Let Me Explore" button on the front page it takes you to https://syrios.uh.edu/explore. If you refresh the page it goes to "The requested URL was not found on this server."

 

This was done with firefox.  I haven't tested any other browsers

 

[Prieure de Sion]

All I write is not personal. I don’t want make your site bad! It’s only constructive critic. 🙂 

The first one I see - what template you use? What hosting? So or so - your website don’t use responsive design. In times of Smartphone and Tablets - normally - that’s a no go. So many visitors use tablets at their free time to browse websites. 
 

Take a look here at this example. There are so many text in so many lines - every word is on a new line. So it’s not possible to read this text on a mobile device. 
 

So I mean - first - responsive Design is to do with prio one.

 

[rNumis]

You have some work to do. This screenshot is on my phone. Same comment...it needs to be responsive. I use bootstrap on my website, but I'm sure there are plenty of other solutions.

Cheers,

Steve

[shanxi]

Here I get e.g. "404 not found" for Meadows or a "WorldCAT not found" for Butcher

 

 

 

Here (https://syrios.uh.edu/explore)  a "404 not found" for all links except Home

 

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by shanxi

[Kaleun96]

Works pretty well on desktop/large screens and it's a fun and interesting way to learn about coins. Though I personally think the home page might be too long and the constant moving and revealing of elements becomes a bit too much but that's just a personal preference thing.

As the others mentioned, the site is not very responsive so the experience is quite poor on small screens. It's easy to test this yourself during development on a large screen by right click --> inspect element and then clicking on the little screen size icon in the top left corner of the tool panel (highlighted blue in the screenshot below, next to "Elements | Console | Sources" etc). You can then play around with how the site appears on different devices.

 

Of course some content just won't display well on mobile at all such as the Tableau map since it might not be possible to rearrange the options/tool panel to be below the map rather than next to it. In cases like that it might be better to not display it at all or to force desktop mode.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Kaleun96

[Prieure de Sion]

So I looked at the page again on the desktop (Mac with Safari and Chrome). I stress again, I do NOT want to badmouth the website! This is just constructive criticism to help!

Firstly. I am very interested in the content! What you "offer" is very interesting and I would love to read through it! That's good - the content is not boring - but very interesting.

But.

1. I would like to read the whole thing in the evening in peace on the couch on the tablet. But I already mentioned that the responsive design is missing.

2. but also on the desktop - what I don't like is that the texts and images are often pulled so far apart and I have to scroll down for a long time for each small text.

3. and the last thing I notice. As always, a site is not professional because it has 1000 effects. The image comes from the left, the text from the right, a paragraph pushes up from the bottom. And that's with every text module. 

a) Many effects = a lot can also not work. If users deactivate effects, it can be bad for your page. If browsers do not support all techniques - that can be bad. Remember - a lot of technology = a lot of things can't work and then it can have weird effects or look weird.

b) It sucks! But that is a matter of taste. But your page is INFORMATIVE. It is about INFORMATION. Serious information. If there are constantly some pictures or texts floating in - once, ok, twice, well, three times - ok it's good now please. It's like a Power Point presentation. An effect in between to lighten the mood, ok. But all the time. It distracts from the presentation. It annoys some people.

Those are my first impressions. But again - I mean this constructively, not maliciously! Because again - the content - that would really interest me! And when the page is finished - I'll be happy to read it with interest!

[rrdenarius]

Thanks for your feedback. I made an error when I said The Syrios Project would be tested. I helped test Syrios last year. It is not complete, but not being tested. 

 

The web site to be tested is FLAME. FLAME shows coin hoard locations on a map and lists items found. The site can sort data and allows downloading, see below, to a spreadsheet. A systems student called me by Zoom and asked me to test buttons (links) and look for stuff. 

 

I sent the same note, as above, to lots of folks. The coordinating professor sent me the following note, oops.

 

Hi,

Thanks for this! And for all your recruiting. That saves us for FLAME (what we will be doing testing on). 

And please let your friend know we are working hard to address these issues, but we always appreciate the feedback. After all, this site is for the public! The current live site is a rough draft, but we hope to launch our enhanced prototype this fall (which should address some of the scalability problems). 

[Glebe]

Quote

 

Maybe it's because I'm getting on a bit but the first thing that struck me on the Syrios home page was the general text size - it's way too small for me to read easily  and it doesn't respond to zoom - zoom just blows up images but has no effect on the text.

As a more general comment it seems to me that sites designed to be "responsive", i.e, to adapt to different devices, are often almost unusable on traditional computers. I'm thinking of one prominent auction house in particular which redesigned its website for smaller devices  and is now very hard to navigate on a traditional desktop/laptop.

But perhaps someone can can point me to an auction site that works well on the various device types. 

Ross G.