Latest Site Update

[Lemming]

You may have noticed a few changes recently.

There are a few new maps and lists but most of the changes are intended to improve operation on phones. Buttons are bigger and links more spread out so that they're easier to hit with a thumb rather than a mouse pointer. I suspect that it's still not enough but, hopefully, a big improvement.

I'd love to hear how well, or not, it's working for you. I'm especially interested to hear about the experience on Apple i-phones and macs because I don't have anything like that to test on. I've tried Chrome, Firefox and Edge on my PC and my Android phone and they all seem fine. Internet Explorer struggles a bit but, hopefully, nobody uses that any more.

Incidentally, if it all falls to bits completely and you're a regular visitor then you may need to clear your cache. This may particularly apply if you looked at the prototype lists I posted on here a while ago. Shift-F5 will do this on Chrome on a PC but on phones it's often necessary to clear history. Please let me know if you're having trouble.

As usual, it's all work in progress. This is a never ending project so more tweaks are likely to follow.

[AzLaker]

Just took a quick look. I like it, and especially hitting the joints to check things out.
Thanks Lemming.

AzLaker

[Lemming]

Thanks Az. Can I ask what device you are using?

Lets hope we can finally get back to Amsterdam next April, eh?

[AzLaker]

Thanks Az. Can I ask what device you are using?

Lets hope we can finally get back to Amsterdam next April, eh?

iPhone.

Yes....I'm tired of constantly changing my flights. Lets hope April 2022 is a winner.

AzLaker

[Lemming]

Great to know it works on an iPhone. Thanks for testing.

[TheBlueMusketeer]

For a very long time, I've been wondering why (and annoyed by the fact that) the emailed reviews on the front page aren't sorted by received date. As it is, you have to go through every emailed review in order to find the new ones.

Best.

[Lemming]

the emailed reviews on the front page aren't sorted by received date

I must be missing something here. Surely the emailed reviews ARE in reverse date order with the latest at the top and always have been. Even the forum reviews are shown in reverse order on the shop pages.

More of an issue, I think, is that some shops haven't been reviewed for years so there are no new reviews to show. Hopefully the Netherlands will reopen soon and you will all swamp me with floods of new reviews.

More generally I hope that the latest changes are working for everyone.
Happy 2022!

[TheBlueMusketeer]

the emailed reviews ARE in reverse date order

Yes, that is indeed the case for the emailed reviews of each coffeeshop on their respective pages.

However, here...

https://www.coffeeshopdirect.com/NewComments.html

...it's sorted by the name of the reviewer. It would be easier to see which email reviews are new if they were sorted by received date on that page instead of having to go over all of the shop reviews to find which ones are new.

Does that make sense?

Best - and happy 2022!

[Lemming]

However, here...
https://www.coffeeshopdirect.com/NewComments.html

Ah! Now I see what you're getting at!
Yes, I could change that. I'll look into it.

Some background, if you're interested: for many years the coffeeshopdirect.com address was just a shortcut to my space on FreeUK. This dated from the days of dial-up modems (ask your dad ) and I had to upload new updates via old equipment over expensive phone lines. To keep the size of these uploads down I had a mechanism to just generate shop pages that had changed since the last upload.

The original What's New page showed what I'd just uploaded in the latest batch.

Thanks to the lovely HullDJ I can now upload over broadband so I do so more often and update the entire site every time. When I stopped the small batch updates I also dropped the What's New page but later I was asked to reinstate it and that led to the current version.

Another limitation of the old FreeUK site was a very tight maximum size. Content had to be stripped down to fit. An early list of all reviews by reviewer was getting very big so I dropped that a long time ago. Quite recently I reinstated that too. It's now an enormous list available here.

The upshot of all of this is that we now have a place where reviewers can see a list of their contributions to the site so it would make good sense to change the format of the What's New list. I'll get onto it ...

[TheBlueMusketeer]

I appreciate the history and development of this site as well as the limitations of early internet access (phone lines, ISDN, ADSL, etc.) - the first home PC in my childhood home ran Windows 3.1. !!

Mind you, I've lurked ACD for years and years before finally getting around to signing up for an account this past summer.

And may I say, I really appreciate the work you're doing and the effort you clearly put into this site!

[Lemming]

the first home PC in my childhood home ran Windows 3.1.

Ha! I remember CP/M, MP/M and Gem before Windows One staggered in.

Here ya go: Latest reviews in date order

[TheBlueMusketeer]

Awesome! Thanks!

[Lemming]

Lots of new stuff over the past few months.
Most recent include lots of pictures of the Willie Wortel shops
and an update of the Mega Map of all shops

Hopefully all of the changes have improved the site ready for when the Netherlands comes out of lockdown.

[Willjay]

Thank You

[davidcarp]

Thank you for uploading all these updates. Personally, I found them pretty useful. I have been using it on the Safari browser. So I can easily say that it is compatible with Apple software.