Essign Beta Development Blog

Welcome back

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:20:43 -0400

Summer’s over, and that can only mean one thing, kids: it’s time to start doing your homework your teachers are posting on Essign!

Performance of the Web application has been rock-solid since we switched to a new hosting provider in early May. This ensures that you will always get your assigned homework, rain or shine! Don’t think we didn’t hear that collective groan, students.

Here’s to a productive school year.

Essign has a new home

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:56:06 -0400

Well, it turned out to be much easier to fix the random errors than we originally thought. This is good news for us, but even better news for you guys.

Essign is now on a faster, more reliable server. You should notice that the pages load much more quickly, and you shouldn’t have any of the recent problems.

Naturally, we have to add the disclaimer that this switch was made very quickly, and there might be some things we overlooked. If you find a new problem that wasn’t there before, please drop us a line using the support link at the bottom of the page you were on.

An update on recent problems

Thu, 07 May 2009 21:56:00 -0400

So, Essign has been a little spotty lately. Sometimes when you log on, you won’t get any errors at all, and sometimes almost every click throws an ugly message your way.

Think of it like a friend who immediately responds to your voicemail on some occasions, but at other times can leave you hanging with nothing to do on a Friday night.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a problem that can be fixed immediately; it’s going to take some time. We really appreciate your patience with the buggy program for now. When you get an error, the best you can do is to refresh the page and hope it loads the next time.

This kind of service is unacceptable and we’re working hard to fix it.

Oops

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:26:00 -0400

So we had a little glitch this morning, April 1st – no joke! ~~Service is still a little spotty… we’re working on it.~~ Service should be back to normal. If any teachers put in new assignments early this morning, the assignments might be missing now. You’re going to have to put them in again; sorry!

Sorry if anyone got caught up in this mess.

"They're just these features, you know?"

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:15:00 -0500

We’ve got a few new things to roll out today. First off, check out that fancy new page header block. In it, you’ll find the current page title, along with any relevant links and pretty icons to boot. From now on, common page actions and navigation will be located here.

Here’s a fun one for teachers. If you are using the “student questions” feature, now you can choose to have these questions instantly sent to your e-mail inbox. Log in and go to Account Settings to double-check your e-mail address and to enable this feature. We promise you will like it.

Attachment errors?

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:10:59 -0500

Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of error messages in the log files that pertain to attachment files being missing, yet nobody has reported any problems. We have been unsuccessful in recreating this scenario, and would be grateful if anyone who has encountered this error would send in a Support message with details about how it occured. Thanks a bunch.

Irony

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:02:00 -0500

It looks like the Support and Feedback forms were both broken! Go figure. Anyway, they’re all fixed now.

You’ll also notice some new fancy icons on the welcome page. These beauties are courtesy of Mark James. We’re going to try to work these into the interface in more places to add a little color and make things easier to find.

Edit: I guess many other things were also not working, such as creating new assignments. These should be okay now. Sorry for that (rather large) inconvenience.

Hic-hic-hiccups

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:21:07 -0500

Thanks, everyone, for bearing with us during the recent application issues. Our hosting company just updated some software that Essign needs to run, causing some minor things to break here and there.

We think we fixed everything, but if you find a newly-broken page, please let us know ASAP using the support form.

Server Issues (Resolved)

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:00:00 -0500

I’ve been told the site has been down since yesterday. There seems to be a problem with the server on which this site is hosted. Our Web host knows the problem exists and is working on it now.

Sit tight, folks!

Update: “Outage resolved: We believe the issue to be resolved. […] We’re very sorry for any inconveniences.”

Ahh, Refreshing

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:18:00 -0500

We performed a little refresh of the user interface today. Everything should be in the same place as you found it before, but you will notice a few tweaks here and there that help clean up the site.

Most notably, the page header has changed and opened up a little. Along the left side at the very top, you will find application-related links: your school’s home page, the teacher list, and search. Along the right-hand side of the navigation bar will be links relative to your identity. Teachers will see a link to their control panel, students will see a link to My Homework, and so on.

We also obliterated those confining, useless border lines along the left and right of the page. We found that the page content holds itself together quite nicely without the need for a containing border.

Users on Internet Explorer 6, all 14% of you, probably noticed that the old site had some issues with the page footer and such. All that is fixed now.

As with any improvement, there will be problems. Please be sure to report any problems you see in this new interface.

What's Your Preference?

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:33:51 -0500

Today we rolled out some new preferences for teachers. They are all course-related. That is, these settings exist for an individual course only. You may find them by going to your Control Panel and clicking on “Course Options” next to that course.

Let student see future assignments

This setting controls whether students may or may not see assignments that have a “date assigned” that is in the future. Some teachers might find it more useful to hide upcoming assignments to prevent confusion and to better guide students’ learning, but others might like to reveal where the course is headed. It’s all up to you.

New Assignment Preferences

This section include two preferences that let you control some default values for the creation of new assignments: the default assignment type, and whether or not students can ask questions about that assignment. The default values that you specify on this screen will be automatically be filled in when you go to create new assignments in this course. You can always change them, of course; this will merely save you some clicking time if, for example, most of your assignments are Homework, or you always want to enable student questions.

Hey, I Remember You!

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:56:21 -0500

Today’s fun new feature was actually a student request! Before, it was really annoying to log in to essign as a student or a teacher, because you would automatically be logged out as soon as your Web browser closed. Now there is a “Remember me” check box that will keep you logged in for up to thirty days. Of course, you can still log out at any time.

Teachers should be wary when using this feature, especially on computers that are in public places, such as a classroom. Always make sure you log out when you’re done!

We also just created a Twitter feed for all the lattest news and thoughts from the great minds behind essign. Be sure to check it out at:

http://twitter.com/essign

Any Questions?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:49:23 -0500

Today we are introducing a feature that we have been wanting to add for a long time. essign used to be a one-way communication tool: teachers post homework, students check homework. This isn’t the way education is supposed to work! To learn is to have a conversation and to share ideas.

That’s why today, students may now ask questions about their assignments. Assignments with this feature enabled are tagged with the number of questions posted about that assignment, e.g. “3 Q”. Questions may be submitted to any assignment with a similar designation.

The question does not appear right away, however; it is sent directly to the teacher for review. Once it is approved and answered, the question and answer will appear together right beneath the assignment.

Sweet!

The Beta Beat

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:38:00 -0500

Teachers might have noticed that there is now a link to this blog in the control panel. It lists the most recent blog post and its date so teachers can be informed of changes as they happen. Do you have a question about a new feature? Check the blog first!

But that’s not all! Because of the block scheduling system at Nauset High School, some of the teachers present the same course material across multiple days. Different courses mean different due dates; what’s a teacher to do?! We’ve streamlined the “duplicate assignment” feature so teachers have more control over the duplication process.

The Missing Links

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:34:00 -0500

A big advantage of having your homework posted online is that it is easy to access all kinds of related resources, such as bulletins and file attachments. However, we left out a big one, the very foundation of the Web: links. Now teachers can add related links so students can read additional online resources. Students can find these links on the right-hand side of the course pages, right below bulletins and attachments.

Another requested teacher feature (hey, that rhymes) also implemented is the ability to specify an “end date” for bulletins. This way, the bulletin will automatically hide once that day has passed. If you would prefer the bulletin to exist indefinitely, then just leave that field blank when you are writing the bulletin.

Finally, the Teacher Control Panel has been revamped. The old one was getting really cramped with the addition of the links feature. I think teachers will find the new layout uses space more appropriately.

You Clicked the Shiny Green Button, Didn't You?

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:42:00 -0500

I know that you did!

Here’s a tip for skimming the blog: important stuff is highlighted.

Links Should Be Underlined

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:47:00 -0500

It’s been that way since the Web was born: links were designed to have underlines. It doesn’t matter how fancy the text becomes when you roll your mouse cursor over it; if it isn’t underlined to begin with, you won’t want to click it. That’s why you will find that all links are now appropriately underlined. Click away!

You might also notice that the layout of the main “welcome” page has been tweaked. The important stuff is big, and the content text, which you will probably only need to read once, is down and out of the way.

I do it because you people are the best.

Small Refinements

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:14:00 -0400

With little fanfare, I’d like to present the premiere of the essign Web application development blog.

Now, on to the important stuff.

Bug Fixes

So, apparently the Feedback and Support e-mail forms were themselves throwing error messages. I believe this is the very definition of irony. Whatever the case, it is fixed now.

User-Interface Improvements

Most of the changes made today are small user interface tweaks. For example, some teachers expressed concern that it was tough to find things on the site because there was not very much contrast, and this is tough on “old eyes.” You will find that links are now a little brighter. They no longer have an underline, however, to compensate for the increased link visibility.

Additionally, the links in the page footer have been consolidated into several, user-specific “chunks.” This seems to be a general trend on Web sites nowadays; people love to fill up the page footer with search-engine-friendly links. In this case, it just makes it easier to add more links in the future. It also looks neater.