Category Archives: DIVERSE Technical

A few technical problems..

Posted on by
1

A few of you may have noticed that diverse.lincoln.ac.uk has been down over the past week or so; firstly we want to apologise and ensure you that we’re working hard to get it back up and running again! A few changes have been made within the University that has led to us having some network issues. We’ve identified the problem and we’re talking to ICT to help get it fixed as soon as possible; we can assure that you everything will be back up and running in time for the influx of new students!

Stay posted for more updates!

Recent Changes

Posted on by
Reply

DIVERSE Clouds

We’ve made a whole host of changes over the last few weeks to help make DIVERSE more user orientated and easier to view. The first thing we’ve done is make some nifty changes at the backend of the DIVERSE; these changes have been focused on dynamically changing the clouds to make them react differently on different screen resolution. In layman’s terms it now means that if you have a bigger screen you’ll be able to see more of the cloud stretching across it, if you have a smaller screen then the cloud will adjust to fit within your boundaries. See below for a few examples:

DIVERSE displayed on a large screen

DIVERSE on a large screen

DIVERSE on a large screen

DIVERSE displayed on a smaller screen

DIVERSE on a smaller screen

DIVERSE on a smaller screen

The next thing we’ve done is add a menu system to each of the clouds; this enables users to actively add new links as well as display the current statistics for the cloud; in the future we’ll be adding more features but for now check out the images below to see how it works.

Clicking the Show/Hide button at the top of each cloud will display the menu bar.

Show/Hide Menu

Menu Bar

Menu Bar

Using this menu bar it is then possible to add new links to the cloud and view the current statistics for the cloud. The images show these two buttons in action.

Add new link

Add New Link

Cloud Statistics

Cloud Statistics

These are just two of the features we’ve added to the menu so far, watch this space for future updates!

Toolbar

Now DIVERSE has been improved we focused our attention of adding some extra functionality to the DIVERSE toolbar.

The toolbar allows you to rate up and down links along with adding new ones; we’ve tweaked these functions and they are now fully active!

Check out the images to see them in action.

Liking a link

Clicking the thumbs up icon on the toolbar will prompt a popup to appear (shown below) this popup displays the link to the current page along with all the clouds it exists in. From here you are able to select the cloud which relates to the link you want to like; clicking the like button will then rate up that particular link (if the cloud you’re looking for doesn’t exist then you will have to to add it to the correct cloud; check out “adding a link” below to find out how to do this.)

Liking a Link

Disliking a link

The same principle applies for disliking a link, you will be prompted with a popup box; select the correct cloud for that link and click dislike; this will reduce the rating of that link by 1.

Disliking a Link

Adding a link

The add link button can be used to add a new link to any of the cloud that currently exist within DIVERSE; if you previously wanted to like a link that didn’t exist in a particular cloud then you can use this to add it.

The principle is the same as liking or disliking a link, you’ll be displayed with a popup; in here you’ll see the link to the page you’re currently on, to add it to a cloud simple select the name of the cloud from the drop down box and click add.

Adding a Link

It’s as simple as that!

That’s it from us for now, feel free to check out the new clouds and features; we’ll get back to making DIVERSE even better!

Changes to DIVERSE

Posted on by
Reply

Cloud

Just dropping by to keep you all updated with what we’ve been doing over the last week or so. There’s been a few changes to the system which we think help make it more user friendly and easier to use; we’ve added:

 

  • a preview of the webpages within the cloud; this allows you to view a sample of the page without having to visit it
  • like and dislike buttons for the links when you move your mouse over the relevant image
  • some stats at the bottom of the page about the cloud you’re viewing. You’ll be able to see the most popular link as well at the least popular

    •  

    Along with this we’re also looking to work with the University to help incorporate some of their systems into DIVERSE; the next step is to look into how OAuth can be used to help track analytics for each of the clouds and help to keep the clouds for university students only.

     

    Toolbar

    In the coming weeks we’re looking to create an application to make installing the toolbar even easier; you’ll simply download the application and the bookmark will automatically be added to your browser. In the meantime we’ve updated our manual; check it out here for info on how to start using the toolbar!

    What we’re up to

    Posted on by
    Reply

    Just dropping by to keep you all updated on the changes we’re currently making to DIVERSE. We’ve been working hard on creating our new toolbar ready for when DIVERSE goes live. For those of you who don’t know, this will allow you to add new links, rate up and down existing ones, view the current pages popularity along with a whole host of other cool features; better still, it’ll be available wherever you are on the internet so there’ll be no need to head back to DIVERSE to access it, cool eh?

    How do we plan on making this work I hear you ask? Well, we’re in the process of turning our toolbar into a bookmark; this will allow you to access the toolbar anywhere on the internet simply by clicking the bookmark. Don’t worry about losing the page you’re on though, the toolbar will sit happily at the bottom of your page until you decide you don’t need it anymore and click the hide button. We’ll be releasing a full user guide on how to use this so watch this space!

    Other things we’ve done:

    Along with making things look pretty we’ve also be focusing on things behind the scenes. We’ve added features that help to remove offensive language from any of the posts; this ensures you or anyone else won’t be offended by the content you see on DIVERSE. You may have also noticed that we use different images to indicate the links within a cloud; well we’ve now added more images to help better distinguish where posts have come from; we’re also added a default image for those posts we’re not so sure about! On top of this we’ve been working hard to restructure the system to help make it faster!

    All our changes and updates will appear in this blog so keep your eyes peeled to be the first to know!