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Old Sep 28, 2008 | 10:13 am
  #37  
jpatokal
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,353
Lightbulb Update: Editing streamlined

Just rolled out a fairly major change to OpenFlights, although it doesn't look like it at first glance. Basically, the flight editing framework was given a total rewrite:
  • You can now move backwards and forwards in any flight list
  • The system tracks whether you've made any changes: you can only save once you've made some, and you're alerted if you forget to save
  • When you exit the flight editor, the flight list is automatically updated.
This makes it much faster to, say, fix import errors or assign flights to a trip. However, due to the amount of new plumbing behind the scenes, this will also probably throw up some bugs in the next few days, so please let me know ASAP if you get any strange behavior.

A few usability questions:
  • Is anybody actually using the "click on airport to enter it" feature in the flight editor? This seems to confuse the hell out my on-site tester ("why don't I get the bubble any more when I click on that airport?"), so I'm thinking of dropping it entirely.
  • Instead of requiring you to manually "Save", should the editor just automatically save any changes unless you click on "Undo"? (Which doesn't exist yet, but could easily be added.)

And by popular demand, I guess I'll have to implement great circle plotting. Busy week ahead though, so it may take a while...
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