Beta testers!

[Chrisss]

I hope this is cool with the forum rules, basically we're looking for 'beta testers' for our university project, it's nothing overly fancy but hopefully it'll turn out good, it's a typing tutor with uses RSS feeds to provide typing material from sites such as the BBC.

Our wiki - http://n-type.sourceforge.net/index.php/User_documentation#Information_for_testers

So if you're still interested (or have nothing better to do) then we'd appreciate you on board, and it won't involve doing much on your behalf. We have a couple of people on board already but it'd be great to here more opinions about the project as we go along. We're looking for anyone and everyone really, even if it means as little as posting a quick opinion on what you'd like from a typing tutor, or d/ling the program and telling us what you dislike about it.

You can grab the alpha from Soureforge or from SVN, (all detailed on our Wiki) and if you have time could you answer these questions on our forum (will take 1-2 mins) - and look out for the beta in a few days time...

Thanks

Edit...fixed link

 

[Chrisss]

If anyone's interested, there's a beta available now, which includes a fully working RSS part, profiles, the ability to type out articles as well as a bit of statistical feedback.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/n-type

(we need a few testers still!)

 

[Augmented]

beta-01 and beta-02 both fail to start on Fedora Core 6 (2.6.19-1.2895.fc6 SMP):

nick@gryphon:/usr/local/src/n-type-beta-01-linux/n-type-beta-02-linux>./run

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: ntype.NTypeGraphicChar
   at java.lang.Class.initializeClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
   at ntype.NTypeGraphicsListener.<init>(NTypeGraphicsListener.java:32)
   at ntype.NType.init(NType.java:42)
   at ntype.NType.main(NType.java:32)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: java.util.Scanner not found in gnu.gcj.runtime.SystemClassLoader{urls=[file:ntype.jar,file:jogl.jar], parent=gnu.gcj.runtime.ExtensionClassLoader{urls=[], parent=null}}
   at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
   at gnu.gcj.runtime.SystemClassLoader.findClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
   at java.lang.Class.forName(libgcj.so.7rh)
   at java.lang.Class.initializeClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
   ...3 more

 

[Chrisss]

Ok thanks for that, can I ask what version of Java are you using?

 

[Augmented]

$ java -version
java version "1.4.2"
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-51)

 

[Chrisss]

Ok, I think it must require 1.5 to run at the moment.

 

[Chrisss]

It seems we use a fair bit of 1.5+ specific code, so unfortunately 1.4 isn't supported.

 

[Augmented]

Ah, well that's appears to be the current version of java that's in the official repository for FC6, and from what I can see here the one in Ubuntu too. If it helps, Ubuntu will likely need sun-java5-jre installed for 1.5 support .

 

[BillytheImpaler]

It works just fine in up-to-date Ubuntu 6.10.

 

[Chrisss]

Cool, any feedback about it?

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Cool, any feedback about it?

I intended on posting on the sourceforge BB but it won't let me login.

Anyway, I think it's a pretty good start. It's quick to load, its instructions are easy to understand, and it gives relevant information.

Perhaps it might be useful to more forcefully convey the message that the user has mistyped something. Maybe the color could flash or a beep could sound. It might be worth considering.

 

[Chrisss]

Yeah, the problem is trying to tell the user they've mistyped something without the effect being too distracting.

I think the current plan is to make any mistyped letters expand and then quickly fade away.

Anyway cheers.

 

[Chrisss]

Final beta is now out, it's come a long way recently, please check it out and give feedback

Here are some screenies...