Now you can ask for hints (and a bunch more is fixed):
http://teamalgebra.com/
Very slow to load, over 20 seconds. Sometimes it gets stuck and just
stops loading in a dysfunctional state and a reload is required to get
it to "work".
Freestyle section:
Seems dysfunctional and very slow. Selecting "Simplify" and entering:
y = 2x + 3x
does not seem to do anything useful. The delete key does nothing.
Pressing return after finishing typing does nothing. Entering "==" as
suggested in the typing tutorial does nothing. Clicking "Hint" does
nothing.
I have no idea whether the application is supposed to simplify the
function or if I am expected to enter the simplification and it will
check if I'm right. I couldn't do either to find out.
Typing tutorial section:
When instructions on the screen are followed precisely, things go as
planned (more or less, if you have a lot of patience and wait
diligently for the display to update). Any deviation can have
unpredictable results.
The UI is awful. Apart from being very slow (glacial) and jerky when
keys are pressed, it doesn't work as one might expect:
1. The delete key doesn't do anything
2. Selecting multiple characters and pressing backspace should delete
the selected characters - it doesn't.
3. Shift+left arrow should select one or more characters to the left
of the cursor - it doesn't.
4. Inside a text field, the cursor should be able to be positioned
using the mouse, it can't
5. Pressing the tab key 3 or 4 times results in the cursor jumping
around more or less randomly between fields. Text may be entered into
any field, or different ones. The random jerkiness continues for some
time, minutes at least.
Other sections don't have any useful content yet.
Overall, it rates somewhere between dysfunctional and unusable.
For the record, I used Firefox 3.6.6 on Windows XP.
An OT question: what place does automatic parenthesis insertion have
in an algebra tutorial? Shouldn't students be learning where to put
them themselves?
I like -3x > 15 because then it offers two hints, one about dividing on
both sides and one about flipping the inequality.
Where? When? How?
That is the qooxdoo JS library driven by a Lisp server app running
AllegroServe, all with Cells Inside(tm), running on an AWS 64-bit instance.
So if I want a slow, dysfunctional application I should use those
technologies?
Don't mind the whacky color scheme, that is just leftover debuggery to
help me sort out the qooxdoo layout manager. It's pretty powerful hence
sometimes surprising.
On the contrary, I think Qooxdoo is a significant part of your
problem. Have you tried a minimalist approach, using HTML and CSS as
much as possible and keeping scripting to an absolute minimum? How
about an approach where the user types into a field and can see the
resulting formatted expression in a separate part of the page?
Creating an entire UI in javascript is rarely a good idea, that is why
frameworks like Qooxdoo are almost certain to fail when applied to
applications on the web.
--http://
www.stuckonalgebra.com
"The best Algebra tutorial program I have seen... in a class by itself."
Macworld
Perhaps you should ask them to review your web version.
