Well! When David said, "very, very soon" to me, he meant it! So, I've had a chance to look over the changes so far, and I'll offer my feedback on what is up there now.
First off, the positive:
The biggest improvement IMO is that the site is now much, much faster and more responsive! No more waiting forever for that flash whirly-ma-gig just so you can see a simple page. It is actually possible to stay on the site and navigate to where you want to go without becoming frustrated/bored/mummified. The site is snappy now -- and congrats on moving way from flash into HTML/CSS, which actually works effectively! Good job!
Also very nice to the update is that you can actually do effective searches! It is very nice to be able to sort the master lists and categories by downloads, rating and date, especially. The "filtering" feature works fine, although I believe it could be combined effectively with the broader and more comprehensive "Advanced Search" feature. Don't you?
In addition, it's nice to get
back the capability to have the ratings attatched with the reviews! It helps to see who rated what and why. Thank you. The loss of (old) individual star rating info is unfortunate, but I'll live with it. Also, a new feature -- you can add ratings and reviews without having to open another page! Yay!
Other nice things include getting
back 300x200 previews on the description pages, the ability to contact the contributor via e-mail (although the interface for this needs tweaking **see below**), favorites and alerts. These are a few starting steps in making the Exchange interactive and user friendly.
Now for areas which still need fixing/improvement:
When I do a search, some weird things happen! First of all, the results seem to be very random! For instance, if I search for an author or name of a contribution, the results are not ordered alphabetically, by date, by rating, downloads, or any other discernible method! Why not??? Also, the search results are not sortable by these methods like everything else! It makes it difficult to find what you want or see things in an orderly manner when you get more than 2 results from your search. This needs to be fixed/changed.
Keeping on the subject of search... the "Publish Date" feature in the "Advanced Search" needs some attention. The options available are simply not sufficient. The maximum value you can search for is "1 year". Anything older than that simply cannot be searched for with the Publish Date feature. Given that there are many submissions on the Exchange from 1999, 2000, etc., this needs to be changed! There should be a "More than 1 year ago" option, or even more specific, a year-by-year option.
The "Show All Reviews" option on the pages needs to be implemented better IMO. As it is, it shows 5 reviews by default, and clicking "Show all Reviews" then shows 10 reviews, with arrows to view the next 10, etc. I believe that if you have a link on a page that says "Show all Reviews" it should actually
show all reviews! It's still to hard to see them all. Alternatively,
or in addition, the default contribution page should show 10 reviews by default, with arrows already in place to see the next 10 reviews.
The preview images on the list pages are still quite miniscule (sp?). It would certainly be nice to have these even just a little bigger (50-100%). However, I realize that this poses another problem - horizontal page space. Let me just say that an 800x600 optimized layout for this type of a site seems rather small, don't you think? Especially on the list pages, content is "long and skinny". I realize that the entire Adobe site is built around an 800x600 layout, and this probably makes things difficult, but 1024x768 could sure make this thing nicer! (BTW - Why IS Adobe still optimized for 800x600?? You CAN'T tell me that there are people out there buying CS3 and using 800x600 resolution! Note: cnet.com, Yahoo.com, etc.)
One thing that I'm disappointed not to see here (and I hope we'll see it soon) is a contributor listing and contributor profiles. The "old" Exchange had a contributor listing. It would be nice to have that back, with sortable options for "most contributions", "highest rated", "most downloaded", most d/ls per contribution" just to name a few. Also, a contributor profile page would be really nice. A personal page where users could see information such as contributors' website, favorite uploads, hobbies, interests, "about myself", etc., etc.
Speaking of contributors' websites... I've looked for a place to add that to my uploads, and I can't find it ANYWHERE! Some people have it, but how do I add it? I would like the option to add it globally to all my uploads (this would make it user-friendly).
The "Email Author" link currently brings up a new window with a small form. This window desperately needs just a little bit of CSS love applied to it. The text is left justified with no spacing from the edge of the window, and the form boxes stretch the entire way across. Give this baby a little formatting! :-)
On the individual contribution pages, the "Download" box currently contains some basic information about the contribution. I believe it should also contain the "Compatible Products" info, as this is something very basic that people look for, and it is too hard to find on the pages as is (Also, is the "Language" option necessary? And can I enter "actionscript" or "HTML" as needed? :-P) The entire "Additional Extension information" section might be able to be done away with and the information melded into other areas of the page. Just an idea there.
This may be a little pet peeve of mine... but we used to have a little feature on the old Exchange called "Downloads per Day" that kept a running list of the most popular new submissions. It was an easy way to tell what the best new stuff was. I'd like to have that back.
I did a test to try and update one of my old submissions with a new "Preview" URL. The submission is still "pending" in my "Uploads" list (which, BTW, would be nice to have ordered sensibly and sortable), however it is still "live" on site and available for download. In addition, the new URL is also live! Now, personally, I think this is GREAT! I don't have to wait on some "approval" process to change something that has already been approved! On the updates, even if the old file was still live until the approval of the update was done, that would be nice. However, I'm wondering where the discrepancy is, since my "uploads" list says it is still awaiting approval.
On this note, I want to mention my last "negative" observation of the new Exchange. This "BETA" (and thank you for calling it that, BTW) went live several days ago, and there still have been no new submissions approved. Why not??? I still maintain that there needs to be someone approving these things
DAILY (at least every business day)!!! Once a month will ABSOLUTELY NEVER DO! I don't know what it takes on the business end to allocate someone's time to make this happen, but if we're going to have an Exchange, it needs to happen. Daily approvals keep people coming back. Monthly approval makes people forget.
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Anyway, in conclusion... it's good to see the updates. Several key areas were addressed, and the Exchange is at least usable again. On the other side of the coin, I'm glad this is still in "BETA" stage, as there are many improvements that still can/need to be made. Keep up the hard work, and keep in touch!
