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numerix
Mar '15

The new design has some additional information, but there is also room for improvements ...

The problem number seems to be no longer visible (or I didn't find it ...). Please restore those numbers again.
It is helpful for archiving and finding problems.

The status page is confusing, not as clear as it was. The old design of the status page may have been old fashioned, but it was clear, readable, important information could be grasped in short time. All that is lost.

Same for the problem's status page and problem's rank list.

The comments below problemsets: For me the date of a comment is very important whether to read a comment or not (as I will very probably have read it before if it is an older one). Now it is displayed very small and lightgray - no good decision.

New feature: The problems set by a user are now displayed at the bottom of the user page. Good!
But: If I look at my list of set problems, there are some (public) problems that do not appear in that list, e.g. POCALC1 appears, POCALC2 does not.

  • created

    Mar '15

  • last reply

    Jul '15
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francky
Mar '15

It's very nice to see changes. Thanks for that.

I too see some troubles. I've no doubt that they will be fixed.

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Nice feature : the requirements for vote.

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+1 with numerix for the date of comments : way to pale gray and too small.
For my poor eyes, it's unreadable ; really.

=(edit - fixed, thanks to kokosek)
The problem description is no longer visible here : spoj.com/problems/MMINPAID/#comments11
As it is a two languages description, it must be the same for problem of the same kind.

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I have the permanent message "You filled 25% of your profile, maybe you want to add some more?"
I don't want to give more infos, and wish that tip to disappear, it remains and it is very annoying for me.
How to delete that ?

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I saw the "tag" feature for problems.
Is there only some 'own tags', or is there too some 'EB tags' too ?
I didn't try anything yet about that.

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I didn't find the link for all comments. It would be nice to see it again.
I have it in my bookmarks and is still valid : spoj.com/comments/all/3

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I didn't see the RSS link : feeds.feedburner.com/SphereOnlin ... format=xml1
It is still functional.

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In the status page, it seems only some level of zoom gives correct layout.
The LANG column could be larger as it is responsible of most of line splitting.
I think all C*** and PY**** (at least) should be displayed on one line.

(edit : the level of zoom have different behavior with Firefox or Opera web-browser, quite curious)
It could be fine if we could have some theme, eg for advanced users, TLE is better than 'Time Limit Exceed'.
Is save some space for more relevant info

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+1 with numerix for the ID_number of a problem.
It is helpful too to sort problems in reverse of date of publication.
(edit : you can use spoj.com/problems/classical/sort=-165
it seems to work)

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spoj.com/ranks/users/FR/5
Here we can see that there's some trouble with unicode characters. (é, î, ×, ...)
I saw too in some descriptions of problems that some unicode characters are not well displayed.

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+1 with numerix for the problems of psetters at the bottom of user profile.
There's an issue : for me I have only 14 problems displayed, but I've set way much problems.

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In my profile I've set "Website / blog" info, as some other users,
but I can't see where this link is visible.

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There's maybe an issue with hidden comments.
EB members should be able to see them, but I can only see the gravatar.

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I've checked 'Show email to others', but I think it doesn't work ; any other to confirm ?

kopringo
Mar '15

Hi Numerix and Francky,

Thank you for all your suggestions. We will fix all the issues in a few days.

kokosek
Mar '15

I've already fixed MMINPAID. I don't think it had anything to do with the new layout.

ftomi
Mar '15

Guys, you have the best online judge system... But this webdesign is a step back. First I thought that you were hacked. Or maybe you put back an old design from the nineties for a nostalgic day or something. The old page was very functional, i.e. it had a good design. (functional = good design) Now I have to scroll for information, the layout is a mess, not pleasant to look at.. The branding colors are gone, it looks like some cheap website with a cheap template...

You obviously can code. Why don't you open a javascript API for the website, then announce a contest for those people who can make good web-design. (Not me) This would keep the website very geeky... and probably you ended up with some kick ass webdesign FOR FREE. Meaning clean design for function without frippery that actually does not look broken nor in the browser nor on mobile) Somebody might end up putting an android app or IOs client together, who knows...

anyway, some error list:
- Broken problem description: spoj.com/problems/WHEN/5
- Annoying "please fill up your profile" bubble
- Activity over last year heat map is cool, but less important than list of problems solved. Definitely less important than points and world rank that was very prominent before.
- Gravatar support is cool, but don't make thousands of profile pages ugly for those people who don't have a profile picture. (Again a good webdesigner could solve this)
- Icons next to links are useless, and cheap looking (sorry). I'm sure some webdesigner could put good use of icons, if necessary (e.g. on mobile version), but this looks like, "hey, ma, look at this I can do icons!" (sorry again)

I really don't understand why this webdesign... actually you can do good webdesign on your other websites, e.g. on ideone.com/

I am trying to be constructive, hope you appreciate it... change is good, but this is not a good change...

hendrik
Mar '15

It was possible to export single problem descriptions or export them all. From time to time I used that.

francky
Mar '15

STATEMENTS 'end when' <ENTER> STATEMENTS := STA..."/> STATEMENTS 'end when' <ENTER> STATEMENTS := STA..."/>

Moreover, we can see that some latex marks are not active, as $x$.

kokosek
Mar '15

Oh. I didn't see it because it was... above SPOJ logo in the header.
Fixed. The reason was using blockquote tag.

I can't fix Latex though. It will be added someday.

tjandra_sof
Mar '15

The new design is really cool 8)

  • there are new useful info (old SPOJ didn't show this info):
    ___> on user profile page: join date, location, activity, pie chart, avatar, about, public problem list, etc]
    ___> on problem list: problem quality, problem difficulty, problem tag
    ___> on main page: latest problems, TOP Coders, problem & submissions statistic
    ___> on rank page: nice country flag icon

BUT there are still imperfect

  • there are some missing info (old design show this info): [Edit: I just found, spoj.com/SPOJ/3 which use old design, so all missing info below can be found there]
    ___> on user profile page: Institution, Motto
    ___> on problem list: problem number missing. [Edit: it seems that this issue has been fixed]
    ___> on submission history: new submission showed with dark green color and old submission showed with light green color on old design. I think this is useful info that missing on new design.
    ___> rss link is missing too. [Edit: it seems that this issue has been fixed]

  • some feature are buggy:
    __> the "public problem created by user" list is incomplete, for example on my profile (spoj.com/users/tjandra2) SWAPHRD listed but not SWAP_ESY.
    ___> "activity over the last year" is incomplete too, I've submit many submission to SPOJ on february, but it says no submission. For example, I solved SMALLM on 20th february, but it's not detected on that feature.
    __> "TOP Coders" table on main page is incorrect. For example, it show that "Hrant Hovhannisyan" ([spoj.com/users/hhrant](http://www.spoj.com/users/h_hrant)) solved 160 problem last week, but after I go to his/her submission history, I saw last submission is on mid 2014, so how he/she become TOP Coders on last week?
    ___> there are many <?> sign on problem description, so I think unicode character not encoded properly.
    ___> problems that use dynamic content not showed properly, user must select the language first to show problem description, old design show english by deafult without selecting it.
    ___> hidden comments not displayed properly (as francky said). Although I can see it using element inspector (ctrl+shift+C), but it's not efficient way to see the hidden comments.

AND there are some room for improvement (this is just my suggestion):
___> Vote requirement is good for preventing newbie to not vote and rate the problem, but I suggest to add weighted system, so if less experienced user vote/rate the problem, it only affect small portion on that problem.
___> It will be good too if comment can be voted up or down, so we knew good or bad (spam?) comments more easily.
___> Mark problem as favorite, this is different than TODO problems, and it will be good if each user has "favorite problem" list without bookmarking it on its own browser.
___> It would be nice if point growth over time is showed on profile page.

numerix
Mar '15

Great, the SPOJ colors are back: green and orange! Good decision.

Some suggestions for further improvements of the status page:
- font size should be increased. It IS readable, but a bit larger would be better
- to save horizontal space (and thus can increase font size without having the width increased) the entries in the RESULT column could be AC, WA, TLE etc. instead.
- especially the font in the LANGUAGE column is too small

Another point that could be discussed:
Perhaps it would be enough or even better to display the problem code instead of the problem name?
As (AFAIK) problem code is limited to 8 characters that will also reduce width and could result in larger font size.

mehmetinal
Mar '15

In the status pages, all results appear in black. Is that temporary? In the first version of the new design, foreground text colors were green for ac, orange for wa, red for rte and tle. Also there were icons beside the message. I think it was better with colors and icons.

leppyr64
Mar '15

I do most of my SPOJ from an iphone. There used to be an option to disable the rich text editor on submissions. I can't scroll in the rich editor on my iphone.

hendrik
Mar '15

1.) The layout of the status site has changed. But to be honest the first impression was kinda ugly. Compared to how it looked. Can still be seen here spoj.com/SHORTEN/status/5
2.) I think the tagging is already spoiling a little. Isn't it already part of the task to find out which area it belongs to?
3.) There is a mismatch in the user ranking. My current world rank is 664 but I am listed on 642.
4.) I would have appreciated if you had worked on quality criteria for the input files. I have seen many people including myself struggling with the format.
5.) And then is there an obvious need to support 5 different PYTH versions?
6.) There are two world leaders: xilinx and arena?
7.) Check this: spoj.com/status/TEST/3 Where is the error?

In general users are often asked to test their stuff offline back home before they submit. You haven't followed that advise. frowning(

11 days later
gripp
Mar '15

Well, unfortunately I must agree with some fellas...

The old design was functional. It was also "old fashioned", but it was functional. And I prefer old fashioned things that work than new things that do not work. In the end, I believe that everything will be working. But if I have not known SPOJ before, my first impression when visiting the website would be: "it looks like some cheap website with a cheap template". Also, it seems the new design have not been properly tested before go to production.
The old design do not attract people by the design itself, but people keep using it by functionality. Maybe (maybe!) the new design will keep new people away from joining.

I am not trying to say to keep the old design or do not change. As it was said, "you can actually do good webdesign on your other websites, e.g. on ideone.com/". But the choices for the new SPOJ design were not good.

numerix
Mar '15

Now some time has passed since the new layout has been introduced. In the first days some minor changes had been made, maybe initiated by that thread.
But I didn't notice any layout-improvements for at least a week, now. It seems that SPOJ admins or whoever is responsible for that are satisfied with the actual state and that the actual state will be the final state (at least for a longer time).

I don't know, if the new design looks "cheap" as some users posted. Maybe. But one fact, that also has been mentioned by others, is: It is not functional!
And that's what I expect from a good website, especially one like SPOJ. I do not use (and like) SPOJ, because I want my aesthetic sensibilities to be satisfied.
What I want and expect - and I think that's what most SPOJ users want - is:
- [color=#008000][b]ergonomic layout[/b][/color], i.e. enough contrast and readable fonts to grasp the needed information in a minimum of time
- [color=#008000][b]usability[/b][/color], i.e. find what I'm searching for and do what I want to do in a minimum of time and intuitively

The old SPOJ layout satisfied most of these two important aspects, the new one does not.

Reading a problem description has become strenuous because of small, difficult to read fonts with a lack of contrast. I did not solve a new problem since the new layout was introduced. And one reason for that is: Reading the problem pages is too strenuous - independend from its content.
Looking at the status page - I do that from time to time, just looking what happens - is strenuous. Looking at the old layout, a few seconds where enough just to get all information I was interested in: Who, what problem, what runtime, what language? Looking at the new layout, it is more strenuous and takes somewhat longer. So I do not like looking at the status page any more.

And, last, but not least, there are still inconsistencies with the marking colors for older AC submissions. The old color scheme was clear and functional:
dark green for new AC submissions, lighter green for older AC submissions orange for all others. Now older submissions sometimes appear in dark green, but mostly without extra background color just with a lightgray background.

And: The "see all comments" link is sill missing - Francky pointed that out in that thread.

So, I still have hope, that the web designers are still working. The target should (must!) be: function first, design follows.

1 month later
simes
May '15

A few more buggetes...

  • I've tried to add my own tags, but some won't add for no apparent reason. Is it because these tags already exist for another user? e.g. I can't add the tags "greedy" or "dp".
  • I sometimes get an empty tag "#" added - how can I delete it?
  • After a successful submission, there's a typo in the share popup "reddig" should be "reddit". Can I disable this popup? I'm not a user of social media.
  • the reduced saturation of the green background for older accepted solutions either isn't working as it did or is just buggy. In my submission history a solution accepted yesterday is dark green, but a solution accepted the day before yesterday is light gray - there's no gradual fading as there was. On the problem status page, the green saturation just seems buggy (see spoj.com/status/MARTIAN/ for example, why is accepted submission 14182298 in grey when the accepted solutions both before and after it are dark green?)
  • Generally, when paging through items on other sites, "<" and ">" mean previous and next, and "<<" and ">>" mean first and last. This is confusing when paging Spoj comments and history, where "<" means first, and ">" means last. Can we make them consistent with what has almost become a standard?
  • +1 for the option to remove the rich-text editor on submission, and I don't need nor want the "paste your code here" template. It's just something I always have to remove before I paste in my solution.
  • +1 to remove the "you have filled x% of your profile icon" How much does a user have to complete before it goes away?
  • +1 to display problem numbers again.