Sortable/Searchable List of Evaluation Tools

On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Judy Brewer wrote:

> 2. Sortable List of Evaluation Tools
>     A revised draft, incorporating previous EOWG comments, is available:
>     http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/list/test.php
>     Note: database is incomplete, and not up-to-date
>     Questions:
>     - are the searching capabilities intuitive?
>     - is the display of the results clear and simple?

Hi Folks -

Unfortunately I am double booked today, so will not make the
telecon - apologies.

Here are some brief comments anyway on the tool database.

Are the searching capabilities intuitive?

- Most critical problem for me was in the "additional search
  options".  I was completely thrown by the "double negative"
  instruction: "Selecting these features will exclude some
  tools that do not match these criteria."  Am I the only one
  confused by this?

- I suggest the advanced options page still also have the
  "standard" options (i.e., sort order).

- I wonder if it makes sense to be able to search on free text as
  well? (That's the kind of search most people are most familiar
  with...)

Is the display of the results clear and simple?

- The presentation of information for each tool is pretty clear
  and simple.

- I'm not sure about repeating the introduction text on the
  results page (certainly confused me).

- When using "additional search options" I did get the matching
  tools (if any) but was surprised to see that I also then still
  got the complete list of unmatched tools.  I'm not sure of the
  pros and cons of this. I don't see the particular advantage.
  At the very least it has the disadvantage of extra load on the
  server and extra delay in transmission, although this is
  admittedly small (perhaps negligable).

- I'm not sure how to interpret "release date".  I would guess
  the significant date is not so much the date the tool was
  released, as the date the entry in the database was last
  updated?

- The "release dates" seemed to be all the same at the moment,
  but I'm presuming we are not concerned with the actual content
  of the database at the moment...

All for now,

Regards - Barry.

Received on Friday, 7 October 2005 09:54:38 UTC