- Joined
- Apr 10, 2000
- Messages
- 3,794
Hi All,
My 3k post
I didn't plan on it though.
It took much longer time than I have planned, but finally I've completed what was planned for 3.0.
User interface was revamped, I managed to get few consulting sessions with pro ui designers, which I hope will prove useful
Major highlights:
A.k.a. column, which apparently was a source of many confusions is gone. Now, all the names are in the same cell, with the name matching search criteria on the top. E.g. if you were searching for the A* names, matching names will float to the top of the cell. Names are sorted. Hopefully that will solve many questions.
If desired, reference names can be hidden from the Settings dialog. When they are hidden, mouseover on the alloy name shows popup with the alloy notes and reference names grouped as standard and proprietary names.
Quick search added. Now the search bar is on top of the table, and clicking search will perform search by name, ignoring all the advanced search parameters. However, if you need more sophisticated search, there is also advanced search button which displays slightly changed and simplified search options, like maker, country, etc.
In addition to old * search wildcard, a new one was added ?. * in the search pattern means any character 0 or more times, and ? means any character once. You can use several ? and * in the search pattern and you can specify multiple patterns as before, separating them by comma. E.g.
All steels starting with M - m* all 2 letter steels starting with m - m? that will return M1-M9, MD, others like that. All steels starting with A and 2 letter steels starting with d - a*,d? alternatively if you want steels anding with let's say number 5 use *5..
Search by maker was added.
Old search dialog was revised and split into two parts. Purely search related options are in the advanced search dialog and view related settings(Standard, Sort, show/hide reference names, etc) are in the Settings dialog.
Column manager was moved into Settings dialog.
Chart view settings, i.e. everything that is in the Settings dialog, plus column layout(which columns are shown and which columns are hidden) can be saved in the cookie. I'd recommend that, to reduce initial loading times.
URL based search was considerably improved. Pretty much everything can be done from URl, I'll skip that here, it'll be in the help.
Directory listing support added. What this means, you can specify alloy groups as a directory in the url, to get speedy access to data. For now there's 4 types of directories standard, technology, country and maker.
It's pretty simple, let's say you'd like to have a list of all CPM steels, all you need to do type http://zknives.com/knives/steels/cpm or if you want to see all knife steels from let's say Carpenter, you type http://zknives.com/knives/steels/carpenter, training / is optional, you can use it or skip it. 2 criteria can be combined, e.g. if we need US made PM steels, then the URL becomes: http://zknives.com/knives/steels/us/pm. Not all criterias make sense to combine, e.g. specifying US and maker from any other country will result in empty table.
Also, using directory mode forces reference names to be hidden by default, but a) they can be shown from the settings dialog, and b) you can set view settings to show the ref. names and that takes priority over the default behavior.
Since 3.0 all of the names are accessible via link.
Graph builder view was also revised. Mainly the way steel reference information is displayed. As mentioned above, any alloy is link accessible now, before only composition names were linkable, now all ~2700 alloy names can be represented as linkable html files.
The only rule is that URL and file systems have limitation on what symbols can be used as file names. Therefore, space in the alloy name becomes _, + becomes |, etc... I'll add detailed description in the help file, but all the links are in the steel chart...
Because of the above, the alloy data file e.g. Seven Star contains single note, just its own, no extras from related alloys.
Reference names are grouped as standard and proprietary alloys and all the names are clickable links. Therefore, you can quickly evaluate all of the alloys in the group.
Almost forgot, at some point online chart was in the lockdown, new alloys were going into 3.0 on my comp, so with 3.0 we have couple hundred more alloy names.
My sincere thanks goes to everyone who helped with the project, by providing data, critics, finding mistakes, suggesting ideas, etc.
P.S. All the javascript, and css files were changed, plus lots of new php code. You do need to clear browser cache or force file refresh properly to get the new functionality working correctly.
My 3k post
I didn't plan on it though.It took much longer time than I have planned, but finally I've completed what was planned for 3.0.
User interface was revamped, I managed to get few consulting sessions with pro ui designers, which I hope will prove useful
Major highlights:
A.k.a. column, which apparently was a source of many confusions is gone. Now, all the names are in the same cell, with the name matching search criteria on the top. E.g. if you were searching for the A* names, matching names will float to the top of the cell. Names are sorted. Hopefully that will solve many questions.
If desired, reference names can be hidden from the Settings dialog. When they are hidden, mouseover on the alloy name shows popup with the alloy notes and reference names grouped as standard and proprietary names.
Quick search added. Now the search bar is on top of the table, and clicking search will perform search by name, ignoring all the advanced search parameters. However, if you need more sophisticated search, there is also advanced search button which displays slightly changed and simplified search options, like maker, country, etc.
In addition to old * search wildcard, a new one was added ?. * in the search pattern means any character 0 or more times, and ? means any character once. You can use several ? and * in the search pattern and you can specify multiple patterns as before, separating them by comma. E.g.
All steels starting with M - m* all 2 letter steels starting with m - m? that will return M1-M9, MD, others like that. All steels starting with A and 2 letter steels starting with d - a*,d? alternatively if you want steels anding with let's say number 5 use *5..
Search by maker was added.
Old search dialog was revised and split into two parts. Purely search related options are in the advanced search dialog and view related settings(Standard, Sort, show/hide reference names, etc) are in the Settings dialog.
Column manager was moved into Settings dialog.
Chart view settings, i.e. everything that is in the Settings dialog, plus column layout(which columns are shown and which columns are hidden) can be saved in the cookie. I'd recommend that, to reduce initial loading times.
URL based search was considerably improved. Pretty much everything can be done from URl, I'll skip that here, it'll be in the help.
Directory listing support added. What this means, you can specify alloy groups as a directory in the url, to get speedy access to data. For now there's 4 types of directories standard, technology, country and maker.
It's pretty simple, let's say you'd like to have a list of all CPM steels, all you need to do type http://zknives.com/knives/steels/cpm or if you want to see all knife steels from let's say Carpenter, you type http://zknives.com/knives/steels/carpenter, training / is optional, you can use it or skip it. 2 criteria can be combined, e.g. if we need US made PM steels, then the URL becomes: http://zknives.com/knives/steels/us/pm. Not all criterias make sense to combine, e.g. specifying US and maker from any other country will result in empty table.
Also, using directory mode forces reference names to be hidden by default, but a) they can be shown from the settings dialog, and b) you can set view settings to show the ref. names and that takes priority over the default behavior.
Since 3.0 all of the names are accessible via link.
Graph builder view was also revised. Mainly the way steel reference information is displayed. As mentioned above, any alloy is link accessible now, before only composition names were linkable, now all ~2700 alloy names can be represented as linkable html files.
The only rule is that URL and file systems have limitation on what symbols can be used as file names. Therefore, space in the alloy name becomes _, + becomes |, etc... I'll add detailed description in the help file, but all the links are in the steel chart...
Because of the above, the alloy data file e.g. Seven Star contains single note, just its own, no extras from related alloys.
Reference names are grouped as standard and proprietary alloys and all the names are clickable links. Therefore, you can quickly evaluate all of the alloys in the group.
Almost forgot, at some point online chart was in the lockdown, new alloys were going into 3.0 on my comp, so with 3.0 we have couple hundred more alloy names.
My sincere thanks goes to everyone who helped with the project, by providing data, critics, finding mistakes, suggesting ideas, etc.
P.S. All the javascript, and css files were changed, plus lots of new php code. You do need to clear browser cache or force file refresh properly to get the new functionality working correctly.
Last edited:
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