Imrpoved Search for PUDL's Open Dictionary

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 9, 2004

Hello Stephen!
I have some nice news. A hearing woman, from Hawaii, called me today
for technical support, so I asked her to visit the PUDL site...to test
the dictionary, while we were on the phone together. And it is
funny...I remembered the way it was before.....I expected that
pull-down menu you had before, which was sooo simple! I hadn't had the
chance to really look at your changes yet..please excuse me for that!

But this is good feedback, because we both entered your site as
beginners ...I didn't realize that we could click on words below the
search area...I assumed we had to type a search word, so I told her to
do that....

She typed the word HELLO, and then the signs for HELLO did not appear
immediately, but instead we had to click on the word HELLO a second
time...Without my telling her to click the second time, I am not sure
she would have known what to do...but that is partly because she is new
to computers...

So I wonder...Your idea to give people a way to upload signs is
wonderful, but has it made it harder for the unskilled user? Or perhaps
because there are soo many signs now, that the simplistic pull-down
menu might become too long? I guess I am saying that I liked the
pull-down menu...Is there a way to have an "easy" page and more
advanced search page? The easy page could be just as you had it before
we gave you our feedback - ha!

I will continue to give you feedback (grin), once I am finished with
several projects of my own...

Thank you, Stephen, and to all others on the List, who are contributing
to SignWriting daily!

Val ;-)

PS. Oh! Guess what...the Hawaiian lady visited Jerry and Tini's Song
Site and loved it!!


--------------------


On Mar 8, 2004, at 4:24 PM, Stephen Slevinski wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I have improved the searching on PUDL's Open Dictionary.  You can
> search for
> signs that start with or contain specific characters.
> http://www.pudl.info/dictionary/search.php
>
> The searching is case sensitive.
> So signs that start with "A"
> http://www.pudl.info/dictionary/search.php?search=A&type=start
>
> are different than signs that start with "a"
> http://www.pudl.info/dictionary/search.php?search=a&type=start
>
> I have also included versions in the display, so if you pull up the
> sign
> "help", you will see all 33 versions.
> http://www.pudl.info/dictionary/search.php?
> sign=help&search=h&type=start
>
> The dictionary will also display the definition and source for any
> sign that
> has that information entered.  Currently none of the signs have either.
>
> FYI,
> -Stephen Slevinski
> www.pudl.info
>
> PS - LF has the high score for Black Jack Run: 35 points in 35 seconds.
> NICE!
>