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chnm / serendipomatic

http://serendipomatic.org/
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review/revise error messages #102

Closed rlskoeser closed 11 years ago

rlskoeser commented 11 years ago

If a user submits something where we fail to generate any search terms (possibly fixed by the whitespace form handling), I'm redirecting them to the home page and displaying a message:

Whoops! Somehow we didn't come up with any search terms for you

If we query the apis and get no results (not sure how this would happen - hopefully unlikely), I've added a redirect to the home page with this message:

We couldn't find anything for you. Please try again.

Can someone review these, maybe revise to make them fit better with the tone of the site?

mialondon commented 11 years ago

My only comment is that it's nice to give people their next step for addressing the problem, so something like:

On no search terms found: Whoops! Somehow we didn't come up with any search terms for you. Put some different text in the box and we'll give it another go.

On no search results found: Our sources couldn't find anything for the search terms created from your text. Put some different text in the box and we'll give it another go.

The exact text would partly depend on where the lines are placed on the page in relation to the text box.

rlskoeser commented 11 years ago

Thanks, that's great.

I set it up so the error messages show up in the same block where any form validation errors show up (e.g. if a user submits the form with both input boxes empty).

If anyone wants to test this, you can get no search terms by entering all stopwords into the text box (and or if the by) and you can get no search results by putting a nonsense term.

scottkleinman commented 11 years ago

It works for me. As a styling issue, we may want to pad the error message so that it lines up with the Zotero box. If anyone comments in favour, I'll assign this to myself.

On 12 August 2013 18:18, Rebecca Sutton Koeser notifications@github.comwrote:

Thanks, that's great.

I set it up so the error messages show up in the same block where any form validation errors show up (e.g. if a user submits the form with both input boxes empty).

If anyone wants to test this, you can get no search terms by entering all stopwords into the text box (and or if the by) and you can get no search results by putting a nonsense term.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/chnm/serendipomatic/issues/102#issuecomment-22537593 .

Scott Kleinman Professor of English Director, Center for the Digital Humanities California State University, Northridge

rlskoeser commented 11 years ago

Oh, wow, I didn't even notice that. Yeah, it would look a bit nicer if it lined up. Do it if it's easy?

It also didn't occur to me until now - I'm not certain where this error message goes on mobile or narrower screens. I did a quick check now by just resizing the browser window, and it's probably not optimal. Could you also take a quick look at that? (although it's possibly a separate issue)

scottkleinman commented 11 years ago

OK, I'll open this as a new issue and assign it to myself.

On 12 August 2013 18:40, Rebecca Sutton Koeser notifications@github.comwrote:

Oh, wow, I didn't even notice that. Yeah, it would look a bit nicer if it lined up. Do it if it's easy?

It also didn't occur to me until now - I'm not certain where this error message goes on mobile or narrower screens. I did a quick check now by just resizing the browser window, and it's probably not optimal. Could you also take a quick look at that? (although it's possibly a separate issue)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/chnm/serendipomatic/issues/102#issuecomment-22538321 .

Scott Kleinman Professor of English Director, Center for the Digital Humanities California State University, Northridge

rlskoeser commented 11 years ago

Thanks, @scottkleinman. Sounds good.