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SociafyQ - Measure & Monitor YOUR Social Network


dhcrusoe

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Hey all,

 

Yet another release I'd love to share with the community for feedback - you've been awesome through great times, and through the bad times (well, inventions that ran into a giant brick wall).

 

This time, the invention is called SociafyQ (which needs a better name, I hear). The service, http://sociafyq.com/ci/spublic, is designed to collect (monitor) and graph growth and/or change in social networks important to you. It collects NONE of your private password or login information.

 

This includes services like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn with other social sites to come. Data monitoring typically includes group size and message output, views, etc, and monitoring is on a 24 or 48-hour basis.

 

I've created a test account for y'all:

 

user: phpfreaks

pass: tester

 

http://sociafyq.com/ci/spublic

 

Questions:

 

1. Any good name ideas?

2. What additional services and metrics would be useful to you?

3. What features would be most useful? We're working on a Widget for Dashboard, Yahoo Widgets and more, and are integrating alerts and faster data refreshes.

 

Thanks for your thoughts & cheers,

--Dave

 

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When I try to login with u:"phpfreaks" p:"tester" it says:

 

Error: Your password was incorrect.

 

Sorry about that! There should be an exclamation point at the end of the pass -- tester!

 

I'll edit the original post, if I can, to update. Thanks for reporting it

 

Updated:  Rats, I can't modify (no permissions). Moderator, would you kindly update the password field in that post? Many thanks!

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If you think text is important enough to warrant a font-size of 60px, then why not use a <h1> so the search machine think it's important as well?

(though given the text in it it would you little good).

 

Guess you weren't expecting visitors with a resolution of 1920x1200? Footer is repeating in a way that doesn't leave a very professional impression.

74df3133523896.gif

I'd make the 'mainmenu' an <ul><li><a href=''></a></li></ul> construction instead of a div with links seperated by the pipe character |

Your logo is a div instead of an image, so no alt text to set, so for example blind users will never hear it from their 'special' browser.

http://sociafyq.com/ci/spublic/about would be good to have alt text with something like "a graph displaying a steady growth in the number of followers", though that might be a bit hard with graphs that are created on the fly, at least give it alt='' as your page has no chance of validating atm.

Same about page, links on the left should again be an unordered list instead of a div with a bunch of hrefs.

On the bright side, the about page does have a bunch of nice h2's, but where's the h1 preceding them? Should probably be the text you get there with the blue background.

 

http://sociafyq.com/ci/forum/ had me fooled for a second, I thought nice.. someone uses labels for a change as clicking the text did check the checkbox was dissapointed when I let firebug inspect it though, it is a label which is good.. it however has not have a for attribute.. should set a for attribute pointing to the id/name of the corresponding form element.

As a personal preference I also prefer my forums at 100% width as I'd like to use all my screenspace and it looks cramped as it is atm.

 

You got a nice lightweight page, but it can be lighter according to smushit as it states a saving of 9.04% can be accomplished. I say it can be slightly better even if you reduce those background repeating images to 1 pixel width. (Worse for 'low power' machines as they got more calculating to do.. but personally I'd can't say I've even seen telephones have problems with it. (and certainly not with such a small amount)

 

Another personal preference of mine is to have the logo at the top link back to the homepage as it's a common way to get there and a lot of people expect it do so.

 

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Hey Axeia,

 

Man, those are awesome comments. I've gotta a start on them (great advice on the headings!) and will keep working on some of the others - alt tags, better menu structures, etc.

 

It's taken us a lot to get to where we are - the engine that builds the data took a lot of work! - and so the accessibility issues are the important (critical!) last mile.

 

Can certainly expand the forums a bit, too -- was trying to keep the general width / height thing in check, but I see what you mean about cramped-ness...

 

Over all, we're hopeful - with some more work! - that it's a valuable free (and low-cost paid, because ripping people off isn't cool, but we do need to pay for the bandwidth somehow!) service for social people :o)

 

Cheers!

--Dave

 

 

 

If you think text is important enough to warrant a font-size of 60px, then why not use a <h1> so the search machine think it's important as well?

(though given the text in it it would you little good).

 

Guess you weren't expecting visitors with a resolution of 1920x1200? Footer is repeating in a way that doesn't leave a very professional impression.

74df3133523896.gif

I'd make the 'mainmenu' an <ul><li><a href=''></a></li></ul> construction instead of a div with links seperated by the pipe character |

Your logo is a div instead of an image, so no alt text to set, so for example blind users will never hear it from their 'special' browser.

http://sociafyq.com/ci/spublic/about would be good to have alt text with something like "a graph displaying a steady growth in the number of followers", though that might be a bit hard with graphs that are created on the fly, at least give it alt='' as your page has no chance of validating atm.

Same about page, links on the left should again be an unordered list instead of a div with a bunch of hrefs.

On the bright side, the about page does have a bunch of nice h2's, but where's the h1 preceding them? Should probably be the text you get there with the blue background.

 

http://sociafyq.com/ci/forum/ had me fooled for a second, I thought nice.. someone uses labels for a change as clicking the text did check the checkbox was dissapointed when I let firebug inspect it though, it is a label which is good.. it however has not have a for attribute.. should set a for attribute pointing to the id/name of the corresponding form element.

As a personal preference I also prefer my forums at 100% width as I'd like to use all my screenspace and it looks cramped as it is atm.

 

You got a nice lightweight page, but it can be lighter according to smushit as it states a saving of 9.04% can be accomplished. I say it can be slightly better even if you reduce those background repeating images to 1 pixel width. (Worse for 'low power' machines as they got more calculating to do.. but personally I'd can't say I've even seen telephones have problems with it. (and certainly not with such a small amount)

 

Another personal preference of mine is to have the logo at the top link back to the homepage as it's a common way to get there and a lot of people expect it do so.

 

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Good to see you taking critique well, I'm suprised by how well people handle it on these boards as I tend to 'talk down' pretty much any site that's posted here.

Was expecting a 'get real, stop whining' response by now :)

 

If you really care about accessibility you could take a look at the longdesc attribute along with alt text for images, bound to be a lot of work though... but I quite like those kind of challenges.

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Accepting critique was a hard thing to learn, but really important - learned in photography classes, of all places.

 

It's a matter of knowing when critique is correct, and/or when it's simply inflammatory (not factual or correct). Yours was definitely spot-on, and I appreciate the work you did to find it out :o)

 

--Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good to see you taking critique well, I'm suprised by how well people handle it on these boards as I tend to 'talk down' pretty much any site that's posted here.

Was expecting a 'get real, stop whining' response by now :)

 

If you really care about accessibility you could take a look at the longdesc attribute along with alt text for images, bound to be a lot of work though... but I quite like those kind of challenges.

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  • 2 months later...

Good to see you taking critique well, I'm suprised by how well people handle it on these boards as I tend to 'talk down' pretty much any site that's posted here.

Was expecting a 'get real, stop whining' response by now :)

 

If you really care about accessibility you could take a look at the longdesc attribute along with alt text for images, bound to be a lot of work though... but I quite like those kind of challenges.

 

Hi, I'm Daniel the coder behind www.sociafyq.com.

I just accidentally :-[ came across this thread and I had to register since I felt a need to respond to your post.

All your comments have been addressed (some with just a question back - the rest have been implemented).

Here's a comment on each one of yours from the current moment point of view:

1."If you think text is important enough to warrant a font-size of 60px, then why not use a <h1> "

> has been done by dave

2. "Guess you weren't expecting visitors with a resolution of 1920x1200? Footer is repeating..."

> Yeah, I fixed that when I got me a wide mon and saw the problem :)

3. "'d make the 'mainmenu' an <ul><li>...d by the pipe character | "

> Well the | is part of the design I think (which I'm not responsible for)... Is there any particular reason why a list should be used ? Applies for "... links on the left should again ..." too.

4. "Your logo is a div instead of an image,..."

> I believe Dave has taken care of this and I just set the alt

5. "http://sociafyq.com/ci/spublic/about would be good to have alt text with something like ..."

> Done

6. " but where's the h1 preceding them? Should probably be the text you get there with the blue background."

> Done

7. "http://sociafyq.com/ci/forum/ had me fooled f... someone uses labels for a change ...x was dissapointe"

> Not sure which place in the forum you refer to (perhaps the login form), but all labels throughout "our" part of the site either surround the field they are meant to or [for] it. Is there any more issues involved regarding that part?

Anyway you should direct the forum comments to Dave I believe.

8. "As a personal preference I also prefer my forums at 100% width ..."

> I believe Dave has just used a stock template on the forum and since it's not yet a major priority for the site (and also we don't have a designer ;) ) it's  just left as it is.

9. "You got a nice lightweight page, but it can be lighter according to smushit as it states a saving of 9.04% can be accomplished..."

> Do you mean the markup or the resources?

I noticed that ALL images could be optimized further, cropped, combined or better yet removed (like I did with the footer image when looked at the page at 1680x1050 for the first time ;)) . And not only images...

I'm just letting the design settle for a while (also didn't have a red channel on my old monitor) then will compress and optimize all resources and their usage.

10. "Another personal preference of mine is to have the logo at the top link back to the homepage..."

> Sure it's everyone's :) I believe Dave has done that a while a go.

11. As of the longdesc attribute I think we still rely that a SEO expert will join our efforts for any major or final touches since non of us is willing to take the responsibility for that I believe  ;D

 

All your comments - past and further have and will be greatly appreciated (I can't describe how much so I'll try to make it show ;) ).

 

Thanks and expecting more from you (perhaps on the functionality as well - feel free to use our forum for that).

Daniel

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The <ul><li> is better semantics, which is liked by both google and 'alternative browsers'.

border-right: 1px solid #cecece; looks the same as a pipe symbol but doesn't add something potentially confusing for screenreaders (although I'm sure that being as common as it is most will work around it)

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The <ul><li> is better semantics, which is liked by both google and 'alternative browsers'.

border-right: 1px solid #cecece; looks the same as a pipe symbol but doesn't add something potentially confusing for screenreaders (although I'm sure that being as common as it is most will work around it)

 

Right on...

Thanks.

 

btw perhaps you meant

li + li{ border-Left:solid 1px #cecece; }

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The menu makes me want to rip my hair out.

 

Some elaboration would be helpful.  How does it make you want to rip your hair out?  What could he do to make it better?  You know, that sort of thing...

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Sorry. Guess i should of been more specific. The menu that lists the different things you can check.

 

I am pretty sure that it is a javascript based menu, and it is really sensitive on my computer.

 

Well that's been the idea, to only open when hovered to save space. An actual problem with it has been that it is not sensitive enough and sometimes gets stuck under the pointer and one has to click on it to unfold.

Is it better completely unfolded (reload the js files) ?

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Sorry. Guess i should of been more specific. The menu that lists the different things you can check.

 

I am pretty sure that it is a javascript based menu, and it is really sensitive on my computer.

 

I will elaborate more on my problem, but seeing as Me + JS = Explosions, I'm not sure how to fix it.

 

Sometimes, when I mouse over a "header" (Myspace, Facebook), it auto-expands. This is fine.

However, sometimes, it doesn't. This would be fine if it didn't auto-expand sometimes.

 

When I go to select something under a header, and have scrolled the page to view what I have come to view, when the page reloads, that menu now changes because of a "forced" mouse over.

 

So.... I would either just remove the auto-expand/collapse, or make sure that it works 100% of the time?

 

Sorry. I am really bad at explaining my personal issues with things. I don't want to offend x.x

 

 

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I will elaborate more on my problem, but seeing as Me + JS = Explosions, I'm not sure how to fix it.

 

Sometimes, when I mouse over a "header" (Myspace, Facebook), it auto-expands. This is fine.

However, sometimes, it doesn't. This would be fine if it didn't auto-expand sometimes.

 

When I go to select something under a header, and have scrolled the page to view what I have come to view, when the page reloads, that menu now changes because of a "forced" mouse over.

 

So.... I would either just remove the auto-expand/collapse, or make sure that it works 100% of the time?

 

Sorry. I am really bad at explaining my personal issues with things. I don't want to offend x.x

 

It used to only expand on clicking, and worked well (is that what you suggest) ?

It just turned out to be much easier to navigate by just hovering instead of clicking every branch and also to re-open the active branch when the mouse leaves the menu.

That stalling's been pissing me off too (luckily I don't use it that much ;D) but that's just how the mootools plugin works and I still don't feel like making one from scratch that would work better with the whole menu.

I suppose I'll just try a compromise variant for the time being.

Let me know if you still have comments on it (or any other part of the site) and don't worry about offending someone.

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Just a couple of minor things that I thought were strange (More personal opinion than critique, so brace yourself!).

 

1. The Menu. I was wondering: "Ok. So how do I login?" when I hit the index page. Instead of the "My Social Data" link, maybe have "User Area" or something. Maybe even a form on the right hand side of the page.

 

2. The Graph. When I hovered over the graph (Line graph for the Groups on Facebook), I noticed that I had to put my mouse directly over the points to get a tooltip (caption). It would be nice to have that sensitive area all along the graph (Check Google Analytics Graphs and you'll see what I mean).

 

Other than that, nice job.

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Just a couple of minor things that I thought were strange (More personal opinion than critique, so brace yourself!).

 

1. The Menu. I was wondering: "Ok. So how do I login?" when I hit the index page. Instead of the "My Social Data" link, maybe have "User Area" or something. Maybe even a form on the right hand side of the page.

 

2. The Graph. When I hovered over the graph (Line graph for the Groups on Facebook), I noticed that I had to put my mouse directly over the points to get a tooltip (caption). It would be nice to have that sensitive area all along the graph (Check Google Analytics Graphs and you'll see what I mean).

 

Other than that, nice job.

 

Thanks...

 

1. It's really a way of looking at things and looking for the login and the account area is more of a distortion due to the fact that most sites have self-advertising portion AND a member area.

Directing the main link 'My Social Data' on the site to the main user protected page is deliberately and is meant to wipe out that stereotype and establish the idea the 'my data' is really 'your data' and not 'our data' and allow the user to feel the whole site as his own app on his (for eg.) iphone.

And once you check the [remember me] option on the login page (which page should just be accepted as a minor detail) you'll never see it again...(...for a while).

 

2. Yes it's easier to access the detail info on a data point the google way. Unfortunately this is not up to us since the flash chart lib is closed source and the FLEX library comes with the payed version which is ridiculously expensive. Would be easier to make one from scratch and even more easy to just pick another chart lib, but that's a second site stage step and we're still in beta...

So the best I could do now is increase a bit the anchor radius. It makes a little difference.

 

Thanks for the comments.

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