Please review the Handel and Haydn Society Performing Arts Seatch Page.

Hi All,

I've had this site up on discountasp.net for almost two years. It's an Performing Arts Web Based Archival Application with a public Search Page. I get good traffic (for such a site) but hardly any feed back. My curtrent client is the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Massachusetts. and their performance history goes way back to 1815.
I invite you to view the Search Page and comment on it. Feedback is GOOD! It's written as a .NET 1.1 ASP.NET application with a lot of reliance on AJAX Technology. I know it takes a while to load, but then again, there is a lot to load. Bang on it for a while and let me know what you think. If you do not want to comment here, then you can email me at [email protected].
Here is the site, http://webgraphics.web108.discountasp.net/HandH/Search.aspx

BTW: You need javascript enabled and if you allow popups (which I test for) I can display certain performers biographies in the popup windows.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.
-Stephen

 

Wow, a very comprehensive search, but for anyone but a hardcore internet geek user I think it is going to be baffling.


Too much text, too many options, and the search button off to the side of the page, separated from the input is unusual and counter-intuitive.


If this is for administrative users or archivists or something (a small group you can instruct on its use) it might fly, but if it's meant for the general public I think you're going to scare the majority of them away. You have plenty of instructions and documentation, but a casual user is not going to read that far in.


What if you broke the search down into steps, with a "continue" button right under the fields they are completing? You need to do something to make it more bite size, it's sort of overwhelming as-is.


But again, whether that's necessary really depends on your target audience.

mjp
DiscountASP.NET
<SUB><SUP>http://DiscountASP.NET

 

...Even with a 6MB connection I needed to refresh the page loads to get all the content each time.


My foremost suggestion would be to quarter the site and load less via the visitors selection.

 

Thank you for the observations. This is exactly what I've not been getting. You made some interesting points.

It is a rather complicated looking Search Page and I've had problems scaling it down. I'm planning a move to .NET 2.0 so some of these suggestions might make it there. The 'Continue' is a good idea but I then I fear it will make people feel the have to complete everything. I had that problem initially, that's why everything is listed as 'Optional' In fact, you don't have to select anything at all to get back results.

Did you get the impression that you only had to use a few of the fields or were forced to fill in many of them? I gather from your remarks if I could better get that point across, the Search Page will come off less intimidating. Maybe if I go to a tabbed page with tabs listed as 'Dates', 'Composer's and Compositions', 'Performers', 'Directors', 'Concert Halls' and I make sure they (the user) know they don't have to select everything. I've been giving that some thought for a so-called version 2 of that page.

Did you actually perform some searches? Curious how the controls worked for you.

-Stephen

 

Hi wisemx

I do agree that page can take a bit to load, but your comment is a bit surprising. Due to the AJAX Technology you should never have to refresh the page. The ASP.NET page never does a post back. An unfortunate side effect of AJAX Technology is a heaver loading time. That, hopefully, is compensated for by the fact the page loads only once during it's use. Initially the plane ASP.NET page posted back several time while users were making selections for the dynamic content. Solved that, but now it is a bit top heavy.

I'll have to see what I can do to widdle down all that JavaScript that gets loaded. Not easy

I'm also suspicious that the image gallery (on the right) is pre loading all the images and not picking them up one at a time every 20 seconds like I wanted. That would certainly put an extra heavy burden on Page Loading

I've also noticed that if the Search Page hasn't been seen in a while it take longer to load. If you view it while someone else has an open session (or 20 minutes after) that page loads much faster. I guess its the .NET Framework doesn't have to fire up a new worker process or application state because they are already running.

Did you try actually using the Search Page? Curious how it's working for
Thank you for your observations and feed back.

-Stephen

 

Lots of javascript alerts in firefxox

kevinasp.com

 

Can you tell more of what you got?

What did you see? Did you try a refresh? What were the JavaScript errors?

Here's why. It's something with DiscountAsp.net. Here's a sample of the log output I generated from the session tracker for your visit....

'SqlException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.'
'SqlException: A severe error occurred on the current command. The results, if any, should be discarded.'

These Sql Errors happens once every few days, but unfortunatly thay never seem to happen to me. It's VERY intermitant.

You see due to the AJAX Technology the JavaScript and Sql 2K are tied close together. I'm thinking that on occations the Sql Server is not responding in a timely manner and when that happens the Ajax/Javascript have nothing to complete building several of the controls with. If the controls don't finish building the JavaScript is incomplete, hence the warnings.

BTW: I never get any JavaScript warnings or errors with Firefox 1.5+ or 2.0 that's why this one has been difficult to trace.

 

Read this handy article as you prepare for the v 2.0 apps:


http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/12/14/433194.aspx

 

It sounds like your web application is being recycled and you are loosing your sessions. Can't say for sure. DASP servers has three conditionswhen a web application will be recycled by the system. Here are the conditions....


1) More than 20 minutes of idle time (no http request in 20 minutes)
2) The application uses more than 100 MB memory
3) The application uses more than 75% of CPU time

Try running your web application on your developement box and see if it hits or come close to any of these conditions.

Additionally if your queries are using your sessions as part of the query, you may want to try logging your queries everytime your web app is used. If you are finding the session has a null value, then you would definitely will receive this error.

 

Thanks Raymond,

Those Sql Exceptions and JavaScript errors seem to happen when the application/sessions start up. So the sessions should be there (for at least 20 minutes or so) I've added a bit of redundancy to the queries that populate the the dropdown listboxes yesterday to see if that helps the situation. If the initial query to load the 'Performers' dropdown list box for example doesn't work,

1. close the connection
2. log the error to my customized log file
3. wait one second, then try again again for a total of 3 extra tries.
4. If still no content, then I send the user a nice alert and tell them to try re-loading the page in a few minutes.

All this above activity I capture to a customized log file so I should see if this happens. It's too early to tell if the re-tries solve this problem. I'll have to monitor the logs for a few weeks or so.

What I did not mention is that this Search Page is part of a larger (6 other Web Forms) Database administration application. The Search Page is only the public page.

Even with all of this the Handel and Haydn Society (with their slower DSL and Mac computers) and I (Cable & Win2K Servers) have no problems!! It seems to happen, very intermittently, to other people. And they only use the Search Page. Very frustrating.

Anyhow, I'm requesting this review because I'm planning on a 2.0 version of the application and I'm gathering as much information as I can. I've had some good 'insites' so far. A tabbed Search Page might just be in the works. And I just might make the Search Page into a Web Services client. That should cut down or the loading of that page as it won't have to start the entire application.

Thanks for your observations.

-Stephen