• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

cubecomps.com - for delegates and organizers

shelley

chang
Joined
Apr 23, 2006
Messages
1,683
WCA
2004CHAN04
Unfortunately, I can't try this by me. The way it works is by a simple Javascript code. Did the rest of features work fine? Was JS enabled?

JS was enabled and the rest of the features worked, and the navigation works on Firefox on Linux. I'm not sure if it's a browser issue or OS issue; I'd test Chromium on Linux but the password seems to have expired.

I already implemented the importation of the registration details inside the CubingUSA's XLS file. In fact, this ability was already available for the time of your competition. :D Steven was informed, and I thought that it was he who imported the final file. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

Yeah, Steven was the one who did the final import. That point was just based on my own observation when I was trying it out before the competition. I got the competitor info to import, but not their registered events.

I'm not sure to understand this point. You mean that if someone left an event on second or next rounds, you'd like to see that line removed from the .XLSX results file? If so, wouldn't it cast more light about what happened if we left the line blank?

Apart from this, I understood that the XLSX file will be better if I remove any reference to a competitor that didn't compete at all. Please let me know if I'm correct here.

Right, if someone advanced to a next round but didn't compete, we typically just omit him from that round's results entirely.

As for people who didn't show up to the competition at all, I typically remove them from the spreadsheet. I've been told that's not strictly necessary (as in nothing will break if we leave them in), but the perfectionist in me just feels it keeps things neater, especially if competition spreadsheets are archived somewhere for record keeping purposes.
 
Last edited:

Luis

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2010
Messages
97
Location
Granada, Spain
WCA
2009PARE02
Ok. Now it's clear. I will consider all your suggestions and will be implementing some of them soon.

The following:

- Confirmations for deletes - it seems like it would be too easy to accidentally delete something, which could potentially be an issue.
- I use the numpad on the keyboard to enter results (and actually invested in a USB numpad for laptops), so I liked being able to select a competitor by typing the ID number. Following this, it would be awesome (and probably not hard to implement) if I can use numpad symbols for DNF and DNS (perhaps / and *) so I don't have to "regrip" the keyboard at all.
- Show the total number of competitors somewhere. Just makes it easier to figure out WCA dues.
- The scorecards are pretty and all, but I'd like to see a version that's more economical on printer ink.
are already implemented.
 

Luis

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2010
Messages
97
Location
Granada, Spain
WCA
2009PARE02
A new type of schedule has been implemented. See an example at:

http://live.cubecomps.com/live.php?cid=14&schedule=1

More appealing, linked to the open rounds, and time-sensitive: when you enter the schedule on competition days, the active part of the schedule is shown at the top of the page.

I took some ideas from me and several suggestions of people who already used the system to implement it. Thanks to all them :D
 

Lorenzo VP

Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2012
Messages
1
WCA
2007POLI01
Hello everyone!
I used Cubecomps at the Milan Cube Open 2012 and I was really satisfied.
It's really intuitive and easy to use, so I guess we'll surely use it again for Italian competition.
I'd like to thank Luis for his work, it really implements efficency in the process of managing results.
 

shelley

chang
Joined
Apr 23, 2006
Messages
1,683
WCA
2004CHAN04
Oh, I thought of something that we didn't have to deal with at Berkeley but comes up fairly often: How does cubecomps handle combined rounds? It doesn't seem like it will let you submit a competitor's results if he doesn't have all five results.

Also something simple to streamline award ceremonies - a listing of the top 3 from the final rounds for every event. So I don't have to flip between a bunch of different results pages when I write certificates at the end of the competition.
 

Luis

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2010
Messages
97
Location
Granada, Spain
WCA
2009PARE02
As long as the round is time limited, the system accept two (or one) time only if they are over the cut off. I note down your suggestion about the listing of podiums. Thank you.
 

Luis

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2010
Messages
97
Location
Granada, Spain
WCA
2009PARE02
A couple of improvements have been implemented, following your suggestions:

I did not see a good way to remove no-shows from advanced rounds of an event (e.g. if a competitor left early). I had to remove them manually from the generated Excel spreadsheet. Maybe add an option to mark someone as a no-show so that he doesn't show up in the final spreadsheet?
Now, the produced XLSX file doesn't include information about people who didn't show up. Besides, if someone couldn't participate in any round, their empty line is not appended at the end of the sheet.

Also something simple to streamline award ceremonies - a listing of the top 3 from the final rounds for every event. So I don't have to flip between a bunch of different results pages when I write certificates at the end of the competition.
The 'special classification' report has been replaced by a 'classification' report, which encompasses the old special classifications (oldest and youngest competitors, fastest female...) plus all the podiums.
 

JBCM627

Member
Joined
Apr 27, 2008
Messages
799
Location
Ohio, USA
WCA
2006MERT01
We used this at CMU spring 2012. It seems to work great :) Certainly a huge improvement over the workbook. Given the potential of this, and seeing how you have been very responsive, here are a few more things to consider:
  • A display designed for scoreboards would be useful. While the live results pages can be used for this, they don't have a layout tailored to it.
  • In general, a lot of things I want to do are 2 or 3 (sometimes non-obvious) clicks away from where I am. By considering some things people may commonly want to do, interfaces can probably be made more streamlined and usable. For example, while typing in results, it would be useful to be able to add/remove competitors from an event without having to leave the page.
  • For me personally, the live results menu system would ideally have all items expanded (along the same lines as the last point - lots of clicking required to navigate). It would also be nice to not have to reload to see if new events have opened - just clicking on a menu item could bring up a message that the event isn't yet available.
  • Also with regard to reloading, a lot of the interfaces are just begging for ajax. The number of page reloads could probably be reduced quite a bit.
  • It is a good practice to avoid inline css and js. It is always of course a good idea to read up on web design / application development best practices to learn what works best ;)
  • A higher contrast layout could help usability, both in terms of colors, and separation of menus/content. Perhaps de-emphasis of menus and titles, more emphasis on function and content.
  • I agree with comments that typing in the first few letters (approximately) of a name would be better than searching for an ID and typing that in. Even something as simple as a <select> containing names would let you type in the first few letters of a name to jump to that entry.
  • When entering data, if you change the data entry field by pressing "tab", the [print] link comes into focus. So then when going to submit, pressing enter not only submits, but also hits the print link.
  • When you zoom in on tables (eg, for displaying live results on a projector), the header table and body tables are separate, and thus scale separately. This results in the header columns misaligning with the body columns.
  • I agree that descriptive urls would be useful, even if it means just adding in a dummy parameter.
  • I often can't use my browser's navigation to go between pages; I get 404 errors (makes no sense why I'd get such an error for a page that should certainly exist).
  • It would be nice to have sessions last a whole day instead of timing out so quickly; then logging back in won't be necessary during lulls in the competition where no data is entered.
  • I would find it useful to have all rounds with incomplete data open by default, instead of having to open them manually. Once all data for a round is entered, the next round (if there is one) becomes open.
  • Wouldn't hurt to allow inputting 1:00.00 as 60.00 :p
 
Last edited:

Pedro

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2006
Messages
1,743
Location
Uberlandia, MG - Brazil
WCA
2007GUIM01
YouTube
Visit Channel
We've used the system this weekend and, well, it's great :)

Unfortunately I didn't ask Luis to set it up earlier, so we couldn't use the cards printing thing, but I'm very happy with the way things went.

One suggestion, though: Make the session timeout longer on the "admin" page. I had to log in again a lot of times...
 

pjk

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 13, 2006
Messages
6,686
WCA
2007KELL02
SS Competition Results
We used this at the Colorado Springs 2012 a couple weeks ago. Although I didn't do data entry during the day, I did get to play with the sandbox version quite a bit, and also mess with it a bit throughout the day. It worked well, as expected. The biggest feature that I'd recommend would be an offline version that doesn't require a connection. Live results aren't too important for the small competitions in our area, and some venues we've had don't have internet. With an offline version, this could literally be used for every competition.

Thanks Luis for setting it up for us. I look forward to using it again in future competitions.
 

Geert

Premium Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2010
Messages
94
Location
Belgium
WCA
2010BICL01
YouTube
Visit Channel
With an offline version, this could literally be used for every competition.
almost every venue here in Belgium has no internet (for some reason).
And using a USB-modem is just impossible because the amount of traffic you can use with it is very limited...
I'm hoping cube comps will have an offline version by August so I can use the site for N8W8 Summer :)
 

Mike Hughey

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
11,303
Location
Indianapolis
WCA
2007HUGH01
SS Competition Results
YouTube
Visit Channel
I know that Luis seems to think an offline version is really difficult. But I can't help wondering if there isn't some simple trick to pull it off, perhaps not working quite like Luis might expect it to work. I keep thinking, if you could simply set up your own PC to run whatever the current server at cubecomps.com runs, independently, then maybe you could build an Excel spreadsheet importer that works as well as the exporter currently does, and then upload your results from your PC to the main server that way.

What I don't know is: what kind of software is actually running on the server, and how practical is that to run on a typical laptop PC?

Of course, there's a strong possibility I'm just being foolish and this is a terrible idea.
 

Luis

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2010
Messages
97
Location
Granada, Spain
WCA
2009PARE02
Well, I'm not sure what to say, but I don't like to have these two last posts unanswered either.

At the moment, I can't think of a simple workaround to make my page (or any page) function locally as if it were functioning over the web. Likewise, I can't see that the necessary changes for the website to have a 'local database option' is that simple.
 

JBCM627

Member
Joined
Apr 27, 2008
Messages
799
Location
Ohio, USA
WCA
2006MERT01
Well, I'm not sure what to say, but I don't like to have these two last posts unanswered either.

At the moment, I can't think of a simple workaround to make my page (or any page) function locally as if it were functioning over the web. Likewise, I can't see that the necessary changes for the website to have a 'local database option' is that simple.
html5 data storage:
http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_webstorage.asp

The idea would be to just store data locally, then when a connection became available, sync results with a server. PDF and Spreadsheet generation and such would probably be really difficult to implement offline, but data entry and competition management should be feasible.
 

FatBoyXPC

Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2009
Messages
1,796
WCA
2010LACH01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I was going to suggest a package called Uniform server. It's a WAMP package built for USB drives, so you can just carry it around with you (unless I'm misinterpreting how it's to work). I believe the idea is that you can take your web dev projects w/you on the go and always be able show somebody when they ask to see it, etc. It would take a little bit of work (copy the cubecomps project over, create the database and user for mysql, etc) but really Luis should be able to just download the package then throw everything together to make it available to download.

I do really like Jim's suggestion though. The worst that could possibly happen is all data entry would need re-entered, which isn't that bad of a deal (much better than losing the data permanently).
 

Luis

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2010
Messages
97
Location
Granada, Spain
WCA
2009PARE02
I often can't use my browser's navigation to go between pages; I get 404 errors (makes no sense why I'd get such an error for a page that should certainly exist).
This has been changed to a notice saying that the session's expired and inviting to re-login. In any case,...

It would be nice to have sessions last a whole day instead of timing out so quickly; then logging back in won't be necessary during lulls in the competition where no data is entered.
One suggestion, though: Make the session timeout longer on the "admin" page. I had to log in again a lot of times...
...the session never expires now, so you won't even see that notice.

Apart from that, the number of attempts for x3 BLD has been increased to "2" even if the round is "Best of 3".
 

lachose

Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2008
Messages
121
Location
France
WCA
2008PIAU01
Feedback from Dins Open 2012 (starting with cons and improvements to do :p) :
- would be nice to have the possibility of having best of 1 - avg 5 and not only best of 2 - avg 5 for combined rounds
- again, it would be awesome to have an offline version (because sometimes the connexion were not that great and in order to use it at more competitions...). Btw, a work with the people at the wca could give something really awesome. I mean, if the organizers give a schedule to the wca and it generates automatically (something like the page that generates the xls file for instance) it would be really cool
- (maybe it's possible but I don't know how) : if someone is qualified to the final round (or any non-1st round) and don't come for it, we can't just simply delete him/her from the round, we have to put "DNS, DNS, DNS, DNS, DNS"...
- if someone gets 3rd with a DNF average (but still as a single time), he is not considered on the podium
- would be nice to have all the round in the exported xls file even if the rounds aren't opened
- would be nice to have the possibility of switching from "best of 3" to "mean of 3" (and reverse) even if someone as times
- since it's using internet, it would be nice to compare results to wca database in order to display NR, CR and WR automatically ;)

pros :
- times are really easy to enter
- live results looks nice^^ (does it refresh automatically every x minutes ? because that would be nice too)
- the document with all the podiums is cool
- the automatic rankings are great and the automatic people that are allowed to do the next round too
- we used the blank cards at the beginning of the competition but not the ones with all informations on it. Anyway, they were useful.
- adding or removing people from an event is really easy and that was really appreciated ! but, when we had someone to add, we had to ask for name, id and date of birth. Can it be possible to just put wca id or name and it will find the person (like the wca registration more or less)
- really liked the fact that we just had to press D for DNF and S for DNS :D

I probably forgot some details but the main ideas are here. Maybe the delagate will have some more ;)

All in all this tool was pretty helpful and is really nice even if some details needs to be improved. Will be using it at La Montagne Open in June/July.
Also, big thanks to Luis who was really responsive and helped use to use it even if I asked him Friday morning !

And I hope this message will be understandable (I'm sure my sentences are full of mistakes^^)
 
Last edited:
Top