I need help

I need help. Okay, okay. I hear ya. Regular readers have been thinking that for ages.But I do need some help from you guys. Nothing too serious or difficult.

I’ve been lumped with doing a paper on the usability of Web 2.0 applications. In this context, Web 2.0 means Blogger, WordPress, Flikr, Feedburner etc. Get the idea? Tom Raftery has a good list here.

I would really appreciate it if you could leave your views as comments, or mail me if you wish, at primalsneeze at topmail dot ie.

The kind of thing I’m interested in (but anything goes - I’m leaving it up to you) is how easy/difficult do you find these tools to use. I am more interested in hearing from non-techies, but also welcome feedback from fellow geeks too.

For example:

I don’t like WordPress.com because I can’t use javascript. I had a javascript stat collector on Blogger and I miss it now.

I find Google Reader great because I don’t have to trawl though my favourite blogs to see what’s new.

I was able to being using Flikr immediately. It was so obvious what to do I didn’t need to learn anything new.

I’d love to have a banner on my site just like so-and-so has. But I can’t figure out how to do it. The help pages are no good.

I’d love to have a fancy animation on my site just like so-and-so has. But I don’t want to have to learn new stuff like messing with CSS or javascript (whatever they are).

Any input would be a great help to me. Depending on the feedback, I may be able to build a hints and tips page. I suspect some folks will read comments and say wow, I didn’t know you could do that!

Update>> In response to a comment and some mails received:

I have a personal deadline of April 25 for this. But as it is something I am interested in professionally, I would still love to receive feedback after that. Indefinitely.

If you wish to remain anonymous, use that option when posting your comment.

This paper is not for publication. It cannot be made public without my, and the sources’ (your) consent. No blogger’s details will be used. I will follow a format along the lines of many said they had problems with blah-blah while one said they found blah-blah easy to use because ….

<<End Update

Post info

This entry was written by Primal Sneeze and posted on April 18, 2007 at 4:51 am and filed under:
Blogs, Internet, Tech stuff.
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. |

Email This Post |

Print This Post

18 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

I would help if I coud but…

I don’t know what you call the things I am having problems with.

I wish I was as good as Grandad.
Reply

1. Grannymar on April 18th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Deadline?
Reply

2. Eolaí on April 18th, 2007 at 9:33 am
The javascript thing on wordpress definitely irks me, though I’m nowhere near as stats-obsessed as I used to be. I just rely on the minimal stats provided by WP. I can understand why they did it, to avoid the potential bugs, etc, but they really ought to be working on something to sort that out.
Reply

3. kav on April 18th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Grannymar - That’s feedback in itself. Hopefully there will be enough feedback from this to warrant a hints & tips page which might benefit you.

Eolaí - Deadline for my paper: This day week. But I will welcome feedback indefintely for professional interest.

Kav - Thanks. Fear of XSS attacks mainly, I suppose, but some other reservations too. I will post some workarounds if you wish.
Reply

4. Primal Sneeze on April 18th, 2007 at 10:08 am
My wordpress site is hosted by yahoo and I cannot upload photos onto the site directly from my desk-top. it’s probably possible but I’m too much of a dumb-ass to know how. I figured out that I needed filezilla to transfer photos to the remote server but tha’s as far as I’ve got. Flikr works beautifully though. It couldn’t be easier, I love it. The few photos I have uploaded to my blog were done in a few clicks with Flickr, God bless them: the blogger’s friend.

I have all this open-source functionality with Wordpress that I can’t use because I don’t even know what they’re going on about in the help-fora. It’s gobbledygook to me, Dutch. I’m useless.

For my very basic needs though, Wordpress is probably more than I need but, hell, I can’t be bothered switching now.

I would like to know how to put one of these wee copyright logos on my page. ‘Cos it’ll make me look important if I have one of them.
Reply

5. problemchildbride on April 18th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Thanks, Sam. I may have a workaround for Yahoo!’s preference for Filezilla. And a copyright © notice should be straightforward too. I’d have to try both out myself first before publishing advice. I’m funny that way ;o)

All Commenters & e-mailers - I really appreciate this. Very helpful. More than you realise. It looks like there will be enough material for an on-going hints & tips page.
Reply

6. Primal Sneeze on April 18th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Sorry old chap, I’d like to help, but I am a complete and utter useless article when it comes to this sort of thing. I’m not sure I even understand half of what you’re talking about. It might as well be in Swahili.
Reply

7. fatmammycat on April 19th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I don’t know why Grannymar mentioned my name?

I got my pal Ron to set me up with my own server, with Wordpress on it. This has the advantage that I can unscrew the back and play around with it [having removed the mains plug first, of course].

I find Wordpress extremely easy to use. However, I find the lack of a help section rather frustrating. WTF is all that about “Optional Excerpt” and “Custom Fields”? I’m not asking for an answer BTW, but I’d like to know where I’d find an answer!
Reply

8. Grandad on April 19th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Hi PS !

I am writing in connection with your request and in connection with Google’s ‘Blogspot’ platform .

Google recently ‘tweaked’ the ‘Blogspot’ templet and , in the process , disabled access to hundreds of blogs and practically ignored the many requests for assistance from the blog owners concerned . Their ‘Help Page’ was flooded for days by those owners with continued and constant requests for help with the many problems associated with the ‘tweaking’ but the ‘Blogger Support Team’ were less than capable (or interested?) in replying to those people with proper and/or useful information . In the end , those on the ‘Help Forum’ more-or-less helped each other , with the ‘Blogger Support Team’ chipping-in occasionally half way through the thread with ‘advice’ .

Never again ! If we were starting to ‘Blog’ now , we would not leave ourselves dependant on any ‘outside’ platform , Blogger or otherwise .

Slán go fóill anois ,

Sharon .
Reply

10. Sharon O' Suillibhan. on April 19th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I’ve put a link to your request on my blog, Primalsneeze, as I have been using Blogger for a year and would like to be able to get the best out of the experience. If I can come up with some coherent insights I’ll post them there, as it’s worth sharing experiences of how the various systems work.

I like Blogger now, but have to admit that I had to work very hard to get used to it. I had no programming experience whatsoever when I started, but have been helped by posters in chat rooms over time. Dave A in Kiwirant was especially helpful. Now I can past bits of code into the Bloger template with more or less success.

Thanks for opening up an interesting subject.

Regards,

M Buckley
Reply

11. M Buckley on April 19th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I’d be interested in the workarounds alright, Sneezy. I know you can use a html version of statcounter, but it’s basically useless, as it doesn’t give you any of the juicy info.
Reply

12. kav on April 19th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Thanks folks.

No time to reply in detail right now. I’m doing the thing again for a couple of weeks.

All - Yes, the help, or lack of, is a big problem. In most cases, this information has been written by techies for techies, not the non-techie users who are in the majority.

Sam - Is a HTML img src= tag possible? i.e. Link to the image rather than upload it. And is a copyright notice in a text widget enough or do you want it in the footer?

Sharon - That’s terrible! Proper testing should have been done prior to roll-out.

Kav - Just two small tips for WordPress stats:
To view stats for a particular day, append &enddate=07-04-16 to the end of the URL in the address bar. American date format.
If viewing Top Posts, summarized for the last 30 days, and you want to see them for 60 days, manually enter 60 in the address. e.g. page=stats&view=postviews&numdays=60&summarize
Both of these can be combined to view the top posts for 60 days prior to 16 April. Any use to you?
Reply

13. Primal Sneeze on April 20th, 2007 at 5:03 am
I spotted some Web 2.0 or AJAXY stuff going on with the Hibernian.ie car insurance quotation screen. Pretty nifty. Insurance is normally a bit of a pain with all the jargon, and this kinda makes it a little easier.
Reply

14. Just John on April 20th, 2007 at 8:52 am
I love Blogger and can’t understand why so many people are switching to Wordpress. I’ve had very few problems with it and find the system easy to use and my template easily editable. Okay, every so often an editing feature goes down (like uploading pictures, for example) and quite often the problem isn’t fixed until after the weekend. Presumably this is because the Blogger team don’t work weekends. But apart from that I’m happy.
Reply

15. Annie Rhiannon on April 23rd, 2007 at 11:21 am
Thanks, I will try that. The thing I miss the most is the “where people came from to find my blog” kind of info that statcounter and whatchamacallit excel at.
Reply

16. kav on April 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 pm
M Buckley - You’re comment was interpreted as spam initially. I had to dig it out of the heap. Sorry about that. Hence the late reply.

That you have been helped by posters in chat rooms over time is what I’m interested in. If these companies market themselves as plug-and-play, there should not be a need for fora.

Just John - It’s Java Server Pages actually. But, you’re right in that it is Web 2.0. Good site. Better than many insurance sites. Could be better though. btw: Thanks for pointing it out as my own renewal is imminent.

Annie - You have hit on a very important issue: Blogger meets your needs (with a little help from Bjarni). Usability can be subjective. Others need more - more features - hence the move to WordPress. WordPress too has it’s failings. It is always a matter of finding the closest fit.

Kav - Does the Referrer list not provide that information? You could also use the flat HTML yoke from Statcounter to view a pictorial map of visitors. Okay, this is messy, but you could do the edit the URL thing for the Referrer stats, copy & paste into a spreadsheet, and sort by URL.

Sam (again) - I am experimenting and will have your copyright thing for you in a day or two. I know what to do already, but I just want to test it properly myself before passing it on.
Reply

17. Primal Sneeze on April 23rd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Primal Sneeze wrote:

“That you have been helped by posters in chat rooms over time is what I’m interested in. If these companies market themselves as plug-and-play, there should not be a need for fora.”

Thanks, again, for the feedback, PM.

It would have to be explained how computer illiterate I was
when I started off. I have, in the past been accused of being a spybot, my writing style in chat rooms was so impersonal and peremptory… mostly caused by the fact that every new button caused a form of panic attack that is best kept to myself.

Things are much better now, though my computer continues to be a source of worry. Last night the screen went totally black for hours, but this morning it rose with the lark and went back to normal. Hence my answer to your query has been posted on my blog, as promised.

Shall look forward to seeing your paper on web 2.0 applications.

Regards,

M Buckley
Reply

18. M Buckley on April 23rd, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Hmm, yeah, okay. Actually I do get rather a lot of help from Bjarni. I can do most of it myself now, but I wouldn’t have been able to a few months back without guidance.
Reply

19. Annie Rhiannon on April 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am

One Trackback

By Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 Usability - Feedback? on April 19, 2007 at 4:06 pm

[...] Sneeze is looking for some feedback on Web 2.0 Usability. I’ve been lumped with doing a paper on the usability of Web 2.0 applications. In this context, [...]
Reply