qqwref
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- Joined
- Dec 18, 2007
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- 7,834
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- 2006GOTT01
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Yes, yes, I know alg.garron.us exists. But it has always been iffy at best and after trying to get a reconstruction I pasted off facebook to work today I have had enough. The cubing community NEEDS a better alternative to this old, buggy, black-box website - something where we can quickly paste in a reconstruction or alg and see its effect. And I don't have time to do this myself.
Here are the things which I think a new version needs:
- To not be written in Java. Java has gotten increasingly unusable over the last months/years. There's something wrong with the certificate, which means Java completely prevented me from using the site unless I went into their special "Java Control Panel" hidden on my computer and set lower security settings. And even then, I have to click through a dialog box whenever I open the page. For a web app this is honestly ludicrous. Just don't use Java.
- Scramble and reconstruction in the same textbox. Maybe having separate textboxes should be an available option, but for me, the only effect of having them separate is to make things take longer.
- Better alg parsing. Something like R’ (I think this is U+2019) or Ri should not crash the program. In fact, it should ignore things it doesn't understand, like uncommented words. Error messages should make sense to a cuber, not a programmer.
- A cube layout that makes it easier to see what's going on without necessarily having to rotate it - maybe something like hi-games, with very spaced-out stickers over an invisible cube.
- Better, more intuitive control over the cube and alg. No more "reload"/"view" difference, or buttons that load a completely applet. Use universal symbols for media control, when it makes sense. We should be able to jump forward and backward one move with one click, as well as skip to any point in the alg. (Also, as an idea, newlines should be converted into "breakpoints" we can easily skip to.) We should be able to rotate in all axes but have some indication of where U/F are, or at least a way to reset the view.
Here are some things it does NOT need:
- PNG generation.
- Hiding parts of the cube.
- Ability to actually do moves on the cube manually.
- AlgTyper.
- Scramble button.
Here are the things which I think a new version needs:
- To not be written in Java. Java has gotten increasingly unusable over the last months/years. There's something wrong with the certificate, which means Java completely prevented me from using the site unless I went into their special "Java Control Panel" hidden on my computer and set lower security settings. And even then, I have to click through a dialog box whenever I open the page. For a web app this is honestly ludicrous. Just don't use Java.
- Scramble and reconstruction in the same textbox. Maybe having separate textboxes should be an available option, but for me, the only effect of having them separate is to make things take longer.
- Better alg parsing. Something like R’ (I think this is U+2019) or Ri should not crash the program. In fact, it should ignore things it doesn't understand, like uncommented words. Error messages should make sense to a cuber, not a programmer.
- A cube layout that makes it easier to see what's going on without necessarily having to rotate it - maybe something like hi-games, with very spaced-out stickers over an invisible cube.
- Better, more intuitive control over the cube and alg. No more "reload"/"view" difference, or buttons that load a completely applet. Use universal symbols for media control, when it makes sense. We should be able to jump forward and backward one move with one click, as well as skip to any point in the alg. (Also, as an idea, newlines should be converted into "breakpoints" we can easily skip to.) We should be able to rotate in all axes but have some indication of where U/F are, or at least a way to reset the view.
Here are some things it does NOT need:
- PNG generation.
- Hiding parts of the cube.
- Ability to actually do moves on the cube manually.
- AlgTyper.
- Scramble button.