Alan,
I am certain that we all appreciate the efforts of Steve, Michael, John, etc.
who volunteer their time to work on this. Obviously a lot of work went into
it. Therefore I don't want to be overly critical or too demanding, and I hope
they are not offended.
I agree with you 100%. I made an earlier suggestion to keep the parts
cross-reference simple as well, which I will reiterate. The searching is a
nice
feature, but if I might suggest that is less of a priority. After all, every
word processor and web browser does have built-in search function. If all the
data are displayed on a single page, one can simply use the built-in search
function.
With the old list, I could not only save it to my computer and print it out,
but also load it onto my Palm handheld computer so it was always with me in
case I needed a part. There have been a couple occasions when having it on the
Palm has come in handy (..as anyone who knows me can attest, the only time it
is not on my person is in the shower).
As an alternative, I propose making the database downloadable as a file,
either a copy of the SQL Server file, or exported to Access or even an Excel
readable format. (The data would not need to be normalized.) In that way,
those
who want to create their own reports could do so using the parts data.
Hopefully it would not be asking too much to add a download link, or even
display all
the data in a table on a single web page which would allow one to copy and
paste it into a database and create a report. If I create a report from the
data I will share it with the club.
Thanks for the work on the parts database and I hope this does not sound
harsh, because but that is definitely not the intent.
George
In a message dated 2/5/2005 12:27:21 AM Eastern Standard Time,
colemaal@hotmail.com writes:
> I appreciate the efforts of those who have worked hard on improving the
> BI
> web site. While it is probably a good idea restricting the parts cross
> reference to BI members only, and it looks like a good bit of work went into
>
> the new site, I dont think that having a searchable parts data base is an
>
> improvement. In my opinion, for what it is worth, the old list that John
> Blair maintained was better. Everything was categorized just like now, but
> it was easier to read, newly listed parts had bullets to bring your
> attention to them, and there were valuable notes by some of the parts, that
> were visible right away which made it easy to compare similar parts. If
> there are three similar parts that you want to compare now, there is no way
> that I can figure to display the part #s and complete notes on three parts
> at the same time.
>
> While some people might like clicking their mouse several times so they can
>
> get the information, I am a believer in the KISS philosophy and find it
> much easier to just drag down the list and visually scan, rather than making
>
> several entries to get the information.
>
> We should either go back to the list or put the notes right with the parts
> information so that when a search is done all the pertinent info is visible
> without having to click again
> I would like to see other peoples input on this subject.
>
>
> Thanks again for your efforts people and thanks for listening!!
>
> Alan Coleman
> #246 Original Owner
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