Feedback, please

[gsnde]

Good morning.

Several of my reference pages have become way too large (military aircraft = 1009 entries, AI = 2921 entries, MAIW = 268 entries) to handle them as flat files any further. If you have a low speed internet connection or use a not-so-powerful mobile device this is really killing the performance. Therefore I am moving the content to SQL (which I have avoided until now because it also means that I need to redo all the tools I use to generate the content).

This is how things will look in future - the example being the MAIW page (naturally ):

It is still work in progress (grid font size is wrong, the icons for obsolete packages without download are not yet different etc.), but you will see the concept.

How do you like it?

[Joecoastie]

Looks good to me. I feel for you. I went through 'flat file to SQL' transition years ago at work. As I remember it took quite a bit to get my head around it.

[gsnde]

Thank you very much for the feedback, Joe.

The grid is a commercial product I bought for this purpose and it is extremely easy to use. I am comfortable with SQL, too. What I feared was how to maintain the data. Until now I generate the flat file html code out of Excel, and copy it into the web.

I did not want to add any more tasks to it, like running sql imports on a regular base. Now I finally figured out that there is an SQL Excel Addon and also an SQL-ODBC driver that I can use to update the SQL tables directly.

[Firebird]

Martin,
I like the look of it and I know that it's a work in progress so I know that it currently doesn't work reliably so I won't comment on that.

[gsnde]

Please do comment, Steve. It helps me to find things not working and was my reason for asking.

[gsnde]

I have fixed all that I am aware of. Some more comments would be appreciated.

Visit Page...

Thanks again, the page is live.

[ronniegj]

This is what I see: Couldn't execute query. Table 'c227owlsnest_ai.maiw' doesn't exist - select distinct country as k, country as v from maiw order by country .... Beyond that I just want to say that I continue to be amazed that you do this valuable work for the community. I'm sure it is a great deal of work, and very time consuming. High praise to you for all you do. Ron

[gsnde]

I was messing around a bit, Ronnie

It should work now, and also the AI Reference is updated.

Can you confirm?

[Stewart Pearson]

Hi Martin,

AI reference page working okay, but I am also receiving the "Couldn't execute query" on the other one.

[ronniegj]

Martin - the AI Reference link fine and looks fine once there, however, the other link is as before. Ron

[Firebird]

Martin,
Will do, once the 'Couldn't execute query. Table 'c227owlsnest_ai.maiw' doesn't exist - select distinct country as k, country as v from maiw order by country' error is resolved. I will check to see if your latest work has already fixed the issue I happened to test upon.

[gsnde]

I have fixed the query error.

[Stewart Pearson]

I have fixed the query error.

You certainly have. Looks great and works great.

Thanks a lot Martin, much appreciated.

[ronniegj]

Looks good and works good for me as well. Thanks again Martin. Ron

[gsnde]

Is somebody still using IE8? I have reason to believe that the grid does not show in IE8.

And while we are at it - is anyone using IE7 or IE9 and can tell me if it works or not?

Thanks a lot!

[Don H]

Martin,
I haven't been in in awhile, so am behind in checking. The new pages seem to be working fine, at least the ones I checked. IE11

On the missing AI Vote page, I was wondering if it would be possible to make it possible to vote for more than one aircraft at a time. There are so many on the list, it takes a long time just to vote for a half dozen aircraft. I think you would get many more honest votes for much wanted aircraft that way. To control vote stacking, only allow one vote per day, per aircraft. Just a suggestion.

[Joecoastie]

I've searched around on the new page a bit and all seem to work fine. Firefox 33.1

[gsnde]

Martin,
I haven't been in in awhile, so am behind in checking. The new pages seem to be working fine, at least the ones I checked. IE11

On the missing AI Vote page, I was wondering if it would be possible to make it possible to vote for more than one aircraft at a time. There are so many on the list, it takes a long time just to vote for a half dozen aircraft. I think you would get many more honest votes for much wanted aircraft that way. To control vote stacking, only allow one vote per day, per aircraft. Just a suggestion.

Hi Don,

The replacement of the voting script with something more suitable is on my list for quiet some time. It is also a pain to maintain (changing to 'in developent' and 'now available').
After completion of the flatfile2sql task I will start looking for a replacement.

[bismarck]

Martin, not working with IE8.
Ok with Google Chrome.

Giorgio

P.S.
Italian Air Force Tornado V.1.0 can be deleted from the list

[Firebird]

OK Martin, I am using Firefox latest.

In the Aircraft box I typed 'f-4'
The result I got was 1 of 4 pages totalling 99 results the top one was 267 the 27th Stormo.
I then added an 'e' to make 'f-4e' and got 2 responses, 244 and 190.

I then removed the 'e' again to leave 'f-4'. This produced 6 responses, which I believe to be correct.
I then removed the 'f-4' and all 268 responses returned.

I then typed in 'f-4' and I got a total of 64 responses over 3 pages with 262 being the top one.

It seems that currently it can be a bit flaky under certain conditions. I swear that this was the first test I tried.

The only other info I think maybe relevant is that I never pressed enter after adding or removing the search characters, but as it starts updating immediately I don't think it should be necessary.
Are you able to reproduce?