An error while creating a new entry causes complete retyping

[Neil Smithline]

I was creating a new entry, missed a field, and hit the saved button.
As required for a beta, I got an error message and was brought back to
the page to create a new entry. I suspect this is sufficient for beta.

But, I think this needs a cleanup before going live. I can think of a
number of changes including (1) having JavaScript check for the most
obvious errors (such as a missing field) and report it in a pop-up to
the user. This is probably the best for usability as pop-ups are
effective error messages (kinda hard to miss) and also the best for
you as, once you code this up, it avoids an extra round-trip to the
server. (2) When an error occurs that requires a round-trip to the
server and you are eventually brought back to the error page, the
fields should contain the values you submitted - currently they are
blank. (3) I think of lower priority but a nice feature is to have the
input page be the error page. The top could have some text in red
saying what the problems are and the pre-filled fields could have a
flag next to them indicating the problem.

I'm not sure how good you are at JavaScript coding with CSS2 but the
combination of these could make this work very simple. By adding named
but empty DIV blocks in appropriate places and passing query arguments
to the create entry page, your JavaScript (connected to an OnLoad
event for the body) could examine the query arguments, fill in any pre-
filled fields, and insert error messages where appropriate.

Neil

[David Dahl]

Neil:

What field did you miss? I would like to replicate the problem. Do you
have the Firefox extension loaded? You will not need to use the form
if you have the extension for 99% of caches. In the meantime I do
want to fix the form submit problem.

Best Regards,

David

[David Dahl]

Neil:

I guess the only required field is "Entry Text", and you are right,
the form is returned blank. That was not they way I wanted it - I
guess I only use the form to upload a file, so I rarely use it.

Thanks for pointing out this problem, I will fix it ASAP.

Regards,

David



On Jul 17, 8:10 am, Neil Smithline <neil.smithl...@gmail.com> wrote:

[David Dahl]

I fixed and deployed this bug. Thanks for reporting it.

David