Comments on: Teacher! An Ajax Grading App!

By: John McKnight

John McKnight — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

While it is an interesting idea I think that having a demo application for teachers that has a typo in the screenshot is probably a bad thing.

Another problem that I have with it is the gratuitous use of the fade on mouseover. Fades should be used as a visual cue and not just for eye candy and in its current form it is no better than those old fireworks cursors and other useless effects that had been popular in the past.

Still this application can certainly be of great use.

By: lon

lon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

let’s be honest: almost everything about this app sucks.

you don’t often see them as bad as this.

an old url comes to mind:
http://no.no.youdontunderstand.itsallreallybad.com

By: asilver

asilver — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That’s a sweet app! Really easy to use and super fast (maybe they changes something since you tried it).
I like that it gets rid of all the complicated stuff most grading apps force you to do.

By: lon

lon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

no, it’s really bad.

everything jumps around as soon as you mouse over it. it’s very disturbing and makes it hard aiming at something you want.

some texts (like cancel) are almost unreadable because of the color versus background color

you can’t change grades using the keyboard only, you have to use the mouse, making it really slow to use.

i get an error trying to edit a grade:
–
Error
–
A Runtime Error has occurred.
Do you wish to Debug?

Line: 457
Error: ‘effect.colors_base’ is null or not an object
–
Yes No
–

trying to edit a student gives me: nope!

should i go on?

it’s not usable. it’s a pet project of someone who is learning about HTLM and AjaxScript.
nice but nothing more.

By: bruno

bruno — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

First, thanks for mentioning Teacher! on the blog…I wasn’t expecting it to get any attention so early on.

Second, Ion, what browser/platform are you on? I haven’t run into some of the bugs you’re describing in my tests on FF1.5 on Mac or Windows. If you give me some more info it may help me fix the problems.

Third, you can edit grades using the keyboard, you can tab, shift-tab and use the arrow keys to move around the grades table.

Thanks for trying out the application, I think it’s going to be a good tool for a lot people.