Archive for April, 2011

Easier to “Get Started” and to give feedback

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

It is easier than ever to get started with SOFA Statistics. A new “Get Started” button has been added to the main form and other buttons have been shifted to better emphasise the most important:

New "Get Started" button

Clicking on the “Get Started” button open a web page with screen shots and step-by-step examples.

It is now easy for first-time users to give their feedback. Was it as useful as they hoped? Is there anything which can be done to improve SOFA? There is a link on the main start form, plus a pop-up option on first exit from SOFA.

Feedback via simple Google Docs survey

The goal is to make SOFA more useful by finding out what worked, and didn’t for users – especially first-time users.

There were two other changes:

  • When importing csv files, SOFA now sets the default for ‘Has header row?’ according to a review of the sample contents.
  • And an Exit control has been added to all forms where appropriate.

Once again, there have been a number of bug fixes:

  • Fixed postgresql quoting error by using single quote values.
  • SOFA now uses the default database when making an initial connection. If connecting to a project fails, SOFA reverts to previous project. Postgresql projects insist on default database if user is not ‘postgres’. Gives useful error if an old project has this problem.
  • Fixed minor bug in Mann-Whitney output exposed whenever labels with %s in them were used.
  • Improved error trapping if error importing wx.lib.iewin.
  • Better font for help text on main form according to platform.
  • CSV importing copes with single-row data.
  • Better font settings for help text on Macs.
  • Fixed display bug in Mac when more than 20 values warning shown (smaller font now).
  • Chart by now filters out data lacking values in chart by variable.

The most important thing for the project is the feedback we will hopefully receive.