Cassiopaean Session Transcripts Search Website

Hi @Pecha,
Wonderful contribution!
Would it be possible to link each session heading to its corresponding forum session? It would make the process of quoting a session much faster, because one wouldn't need to manually search for the link (through the forum's search function or from šŸ“š Cassiopaean Session Transcripts by date).
For example, the heading 'Session 8 April 2023' would link to Session 8 April 2023.
cts.png
Let me know if you want to add this feature. As I know it can be quite tedious to copy and test the link of each session, I am willing to offer some help.
 
Natus Videre said:
Hi @Pecha,
Wonderful contribution!
Would it be possible to link each session heading to its corresponding forum session? It would make the process of quoting a session much faster, because one wouldn't need to manually search for the link (through the forum's search function or from šŸ“š Cassiopaean Session Transcripts by date).
For example, the heading 'Session 8 April 2023' would link to Session 8 April 2023.
View attachment 73471
Let me know if you want to add this feature. As I know it can be quite tedious to copy and test the link of each session, I am willing to offer some help.
Click to expand...

Howdy @Natus Videre! I have a few more backend updates to add, and I can add this feature to that list no problem. I'll let you know if I need assistance with adding the link to each sessionā€”thank you for offering!

For allā€”if you have any other suggestions that would improve your flow, feel free to let me know.
 
Hi all, sorry for the downtime. I had issues last week Monday on some database migrations. I had to restore the database, but I wasn't able to from the managed service I was using. I switched to a new database and had to re-add the data there.

I'm pleased to announce that the site is working correctly now albeit with a couple of changes. One change is that this database doesn't support matching on multiple forms of a word as described in a previous post:

Pecha said:
I updated the search highlighting algorithm last night. It will now match multiple search terms and their respective forms.

For example, if you type "comet flare" in the search bar and hit enter, it will match on the terms: "comet", "comets", "flare", "flares", "flaring", etc.

It's still searching and filtering transcripts based on AND, so it will find only find transcripts that only have the terms you specify and their various forms.

I'll work on adding the OR filtering next, which will find any transcript that has any of the search terms you put in.
Click to expand...

You'll need to now be more precise with the search terms you enter, and will match any transcript that has those exact terms in it (AND operation). While this removes some functionality from the original, hopefully this will better differentiate from another feature coming up the pipeline, which is adding the OR operation. This means that the search will query any transcript that contains at least one of the words in it.

Also, I added @Natus Videre's suggested feature, which is the ability to go to the exact transcript session on the forum by clicking the title of one of the sessions on the site.

Thanks for your patience everyone!

https://cassiopaeatranscripts.org
 
Hi Pecha,
The new updates really make a difference, thank you again.
Searching and quoting the sessions is an integral part of a forum member's life. šŸ˜‰

I have two more suggestions to improve user experience:

Suggestion 1: The right scrollbar (the one used to browse the contents of a particular session) is very thin and can get pretty small if a session contains a lot of text. As a result, the scrollbar gets harder to locate and click. Is there a way to make the scroll bar thicker and/or longer?
For example, here is how the scrollbar looks for Session 22 October 2022:

scrollbar.png

Suggestion 2: When users search for keywords in a session, they often end up far away from the session's original link (added at the top of each session in the last update). If they want to click on the session's link leading to the forum, they need to scroll all the way to the top of the page. Is it possible to add a "back to top" arrow, similar to what we have here on the forum?
1685911993317.png


Again, these are just "micro" suggestionsā€”feel free to ignore them. We are getting into micro-adjustment territory, which is already an indication of the site's great overall usability. :thup:
 

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Natus Videre said:
Hi Pecha,
The new updates really make a difference, thank you again.
Searching and quoting the sessions is an integral part of a forum member's life. šŸ˜‰

I have two more suggestions to improve user experience:

Suggestion 1: The right scrollbar (the one used to browse the contents of a particular session) is very thin and can get pretty small if a session contains a lot of text. As a result, the scrollbar gets harder to locate and click. Is there a way to make the scroll bar thicker and/or longer?
For example, here is how the scrollbar looks for Session 22 October 2022:

View attachment 75275

Suggestion 2: When users search for keywords in a session, they often end up far away from the session's original link (added at the top of each session in the last update). If they want to click on the session's link leading to the forum, they need to scroll all the way to the top of the page. Is it possible to add a "back to top" arrow, similar to what we have here on the forum?
View attachment 75573


Again, these are just "micro" suggestionsā€”feel free to ignore them. We are getting into micro-adjustment territory, which is already an indication of the site's great overall usability. :thup:
Click to expand...

I recently made the right scrollbar smaller in the last update to free up white space, but now that you mention it, it should not be at the cost of user experience. I'll make that change to make it larger.

Yes! Adding a button for the user to scroll to the top would indeed be handy. I've been mulling over how to best represent it (especially on mobile with all of the buttons down there already), but perhaps I can fit it in by making the other elements down there smaller.

I'll be adding these changes along with another major feature update coming up the pipeline.

Natus Videre said:
Hi Pecha,
The new updates really make a difference, thank you again.
Searching and quoting the sessions is an integral part of a forum member's life. šŸ˜‰
Click to expand...

With ease @Natus Videreā€”thank you for the suggestions as always :-D
 
nicklebleu said:
Hi @Pecha, is it possible to search for a string of characters like ā€œin and out ofā€ as a whole? Tried the old quotation marks, but it doesnā€™t work. Any suggestion?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes, it's possible: Cassiopaean Session Transcripts Search

However, this search query will yield ~26,340 results, which may take a bit of time to load. Along with adding the search "OR" operator (now works as is with the "AND" operator), there are plans to add a way to paginate the results to only load parts of the query results at a time, which would make it faster. Though, please let me know if I've misunderstood.

I'll expound a little on how the search results are sorted. Starting with: 1) exact query matches (i.e. the search query we enter shows up in a transcript sequentially) 2) non-exact query matches (i.e. transcripts containing all of the search queries, but are scattered throughout), and 3) by date.

As an addendum, I've put on hold further major updates to the website as I'd like to take advantage of the quick summer we have here to learn woodworking. However, I'll be back to work on this in the near future!
 
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