Ibex farm on mobile?

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Laurence Sevilla

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Jul 3, 2019, 7:12:39 AM7/3/19
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Hello everyone, I’m running an experiment on Tagalog, a Philippine language. I initially thought I would not have problems encountering participants, because everything is online. However, more than half of my potential participants complained that they couldn’t do the experiment on their phones. Apparently, most university students can not afford their own computers, while those who do can’t be bothered to participate in the experiment. All of the students have mobile phones (mostly android). Is there a way to run ibex farm on mobile phones? On iPhones, a virtual button appears which participants can tap to emulate a space bar press, but the same button doesn’t appear on android phones according to the participants.

Alex Drummond

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Jul 3, 2019, 7:16:01 AM7/3/19
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The simplest solution would just be to remove the isIphone check on
line 210 of https://github.com/addrummond/ibex/blob/master/js_includes/DashedSentence.js

(This was written a loooong time ago, when people doing experiments on
Android phones wouldn't have been a thing.)

You can copy the controller into your js_includes and rename it (modify line 6).

Alex

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 12:12, Laurence Sevilla
<sevilla....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone, I’m running an experiment on Tagalog, a Philippine language. I initially thought I would not have problems encountering participants, because everything is online. However, more than half of my potential participants complained that they couldn’t do the experiment on their phones. Apparently, most university students can not afford their own computers, while those who do can’t be bothered to participate in the experiment. All of the students have mobile phones (mostly android). Is there a way to run ibex farm on mobile phones? On iPhones, a virtual button appears which participants can tap to emulate a space bar press, but the same button doesn’t appear on android phones according to the participants.
>
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Laurence Sevilla

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Jul 3, 2019, 7:19:39 AM7/3/19
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Sorry if I'm a bit slow, I'm still trying to figure out how this works. Do I delete lines 210-239? Or just line 210? Also, I assume that changing the name to, say "DashedSentenceAll" means that I would have to change the controller in the data file as well.


On Wednesday, July 3, 2019 at 1:16:01 PM UTC+2, Alex Drummond wrote:
The simplest solution would just be to remove the isIphone check on
line 210 of https://github.com/addrummond/ibex/blob/master/js_includes/DashedSentence.js

(This was written a loooong time ago, when people doing experiments on
Android phones wouldn't have been a thing.)

You can copy the controller into your js_includes and rename it (modify line 6).

Alex

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 12:12, Laurence Sevilla
<sevilla...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone, I’m running an experiment on Tagalog, a Philippine language. I initially thought I would not have problems encountering participants, because everything is online. However, more than half of my potential participants complained that they couldn’t do the experiment on their phones. Apparently, most university students can not afford their own computers, while those who do can’t be bothered to participate in the experiment. All of the students have mobile phones (mostly android). Is there a way to run ibex farm on mobile phones? On iPhones, a virtual button appears which participants can tap to emulate a space bar press, but the same button doesn’t appear on android phones according to the participants.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ibexexperiments" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ibexexp...@googlegroups.com.

Josh Pennington

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Aug 19, 2020, 10:38:44 AM8/19/20
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Did anyone ever figure this out? I am struggling with this, too. Most of my respondents are from the Balkans and own vastly cheaper Android mobiles. 

Jeremy Y.

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Feb 2, 2021, 6:27:41 AM2/2/21
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Has anyone figured out how to add the next button on android devices? Please help...

Alex Drummond

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Feb 2, 2021, 6:30:54 AM2/2/21
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If you just want the button to appear on android devices too, then see
my answer above in this thread.

In general the Ibex code predates the era of people accessing the web
via smartphones. When I added the button, the iPhone 3G had just come
out and the idea of doing an experiment like this on a smartphone was
a novelty, not a practical proposition. So you'll probably need to
modify the controller code a bit to make it work well.

Alex
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Josh Pennington

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Feb 3, 2021, 5:46:19 AM2/3/21
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Hi Alex - Thanks. I did try the remove isIphone line, but it still wouldn't function. Do you think you could update the file and post it here?

Alex Drummond

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Feb 3, 2021, 5:49:29 AM2/3/21
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You just need to remove the check. So e.g. you could e.g. add
'isIPhone = true;' before the if statement, or replace 'if (isIPhone)
{' with 'if (true) {', or delete the conditional statement and its
associated closing '}'.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ibexexperiments/630e6d35-90e7-486d-be12-c3e31b963ba9n%40googlegroups.com.

Jeremy Y.

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Feb 3, 2021, 6:13:19 AM2/3/21
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Hi Alex,

Thanks a lot. I tried what you said but it did not work on Android.

Since I don't know how to write in js I asked a programmer to fix the problem. He said it's very complicated to set the next button on Android, and tried to charge me 800 quid for writing the codes. I was wondering if it's true...

Best wishes,
Jeremy

Alex Drummond

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Feb 3, 2021, 6:29:52 AM2/3/21
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The modification that I suggested works for me on a Pixel 3a:
https://ibex.spellout.net/experiments/example/example_original/view
(At least, it 'works' as well as it ever did. I should emphasize that
this was never intended to be a practical way of doing an SPR
experiment on a phone.)

Here is the modified file:
https://ibex.spellout.net/experiments/example/example_original/source_files/js_includes/DashedSentence.js

I suggest that we put this to bed now. Ibex just wasn't designed to
work on touch screen devices. It would be a significant amount of work
to fix that properly, and it's not on my short term todo list. If you
want someone else to do the work then – yes – programmers' time and
expertise has a market value and they'll charge you a fair chunk of
change.

You might also check out PCIbex. I know that they've been doing a
bunch of work on adding new controllers. I don't know if any of this
work has focused on improving usability on touch screen devices.

Alex
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ibexexperiments/c118dec0-d7c5-45af-8e56-41bc46405020n%40googlegroups.com.

Alex Drummond

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Feb 3, 2021, 6:31:36 AM2/3/21
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Oops, that link only works if you're logged in. Here's a paste:
https://pastebin.com/EXezNTMd

Jeremy Y.

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Feb 4, 2021, 4:59:54 PM2/4/21
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Thank you so much Alex!!!

Best wishes,
Jeremy

Josh Pennington

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Feb 4, 2021, 5:47:36 PM2/4/21
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One last question. Can you post the actual part of the code you edited here, so I can find it in the file? I don't understand how your directions lead to the creation of functionality on Android devices. 

  1. if (true) {
  2.                 var btext = dget(this.options, "iPhoneNextButtonText", "next");
  3.                 var next = $("<div>")
  4.                            .addClass(this.cssPrefix + "iphone-next")
  5.                            .text(btext);
  6.                 this.element.append(next);
  7.                 next.click(function () {
  8.                     var time = new Date().getTime();
  9.  
  10.                     // *** goToNext() ***
  11.                     //t.recordSprResult(time, t.currentWord);
  12.                     var word = t.currentWord;
  13.                     if (word > 0 && word < t.stoppingPoint) {
  14.                         var rs = t.sprResults[word-1];
  15.                         rs[0] = time;
  16.                         rs[1] = t.previousTime;
  17.                     }
  18.                     t.previousTime = time;
  19.  
  20.                     if (t.currentWord - 1 >= 0)
  21.                         t.blankWord(t.currentWord - 1);
  22.                     if (t.currentWord < t.stoppingPoint)
  23.                         t.showWord(t.currentWord);
  24.                     ++(t.currentWord);
  25.                     if (t.currentWord > t.stoppingPoint) {
  26.                         t.processSprResults();
  27.                         t.finishedCallback(t.resultsLines);
  28.                     }
  29.  
  30.                     return false;
  31.                     // ***
  32.                 });
  33.             }
  34.         }
  35.     },

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." Max Weinreich 

James Joshua Pennington, PhD
Slavic and Eastern European 
Languages and Literatures


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Alex Drummond

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Feb 4, 2021, 6:02:57 PM2/4/21
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if (isIPhone) {

has been replaced by

if (true) {

Again, I’m not at all confident that this is a good way of running an SPR experiment on a mobile device, but that is the change that I referred to earlier.

Alex

Josh Pennington

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Feb 4, 2021, 6:16:34 PM2/4/21
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I used your template for doing a multiple choice test with native speakers of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. It works really well, but the issue was with not having the option to do this for Androids. So for my purposes, this is immensely important, as it increases my respondent totals probably from the 100's into the 1000's, considering the outrageous price of Apple products in the Balkans. 

Thanks again for this!

--Josh

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." Max Weinreich 

James Joshua Pennington, PhD
Slavic and Eastern European 
Languages and Literatures

Jeremy

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Feb 7, 2021, 6:31:22 AM2/7/21
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Dear Alex,

Thank you very much for the file! It works quite well. But there is a bug in the results: The RT of the last region in a sentence is always "null" in the results. How could it be sorted out? 

Best wishes,
Jeremy

On Wednesday, 3 February 2021 at 11:31:36 UTC Alex Drummond wrote:

Alex Drummond

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Feb 7, 2021, 7:08:04 AM2/7/21
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https://pastebin.com/XFLxbqVW if you want the reading time for the
last word when participants are using the 'next button.
Alex
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ibexexperiments/c515f319-9fff-42cf-89d5-16c469d0aaa5n%40googlegroups.com.

Jeremy

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Feb 7, 2021, 7:14:20 AM2/7/21
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Alex you are awesome!

best wishes,
Jeremy

Josh Pennington

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Feb 7, 2021, 7:36:48 AM2/7/21
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It wast just the return False that was changed?

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Alex Drummond

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Feb 7, 2021, 7:47:41 AM2/7/21
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