Further Updates and Improvements to Visnos
First of all a big thanks to the many users who have taken the time to make suggestions or point out issues with the website. All emails regarding the website are much appreciated and obviously if I am unaware of an issue it won't get fixed. So any concerns please email admin@visnos.com
A lot of hard work has gone into improving and fixing bugs and problems that have developed over time. Many of these changes are under the hood, but users should notice a faster more reliable experience.
Learning Multiplication Tables
User feedback from Canada suggested that the activity was using incorrect conventions. This has been corrected, so now 3×5 means 3 lots of 5. To make the grouping clearer, shapes can now be displayed using two colors. The default shape has been changed to a circle, simply because they appear a lot clearer. Don't worry the original fish by changing the settings.
The shape direction control has been improved. Toggling between horizontal or vertical direction, changes the direction of group colors and swop two of the cards. This is necessary so the grouping convention stays correct.
The user interface has also had some changes with logically connected buttons placed into different parts of the screen. The action buttons have been made a bit larger.
Automatic mode is now activated by one button, when active the slider appears to allow the speed/delay to be changed.
Classroom Timer
The timer has been improved, so that if you are viewing a different webpage while the timer is running. A favicon (a small image) shows the current value of the timer. Also a bug has been fixed as sometimes the timer would reach zero and continue.
Clock
Removed resizing of the protractor. When changing the mode to angles, the angle arc is automatically shown by default and snapping to the minute hand is turned off. Don't worry you can change both of these using the controls.
When in angles mode the second hand is now hidden, it was just an extra line that could cause confusion. However when in realtime mode and the type of angle is set to seconds, then the second hand is shown along with its angle arc.
Random Spinners
Some users had reported strange symbols appearing instead of the multiplication sign, this was due to an encoding issue. Also clicking to show or hide a value did not work properly on all devices. The strange symbols will be fixed in the next couple of days.
Chrome on android double tap
Android mobile phones and tablets might have been experience a problem when tapping a button would result in two presses. This was as a result to changes made in the chrome browser. This issue has now been eliminated.
More updates coming soon
One of the reasons that updates had become less frequent, was that the update process had for various reasons become quite complicated. If the site was updated it required lots of testing to make sure that nothing had broken. A lot of the underlying website code has now been completely rewritten. Testing is now mostly automated, meaning that problems are found quicker and not while the site is live.
Your help needed
However a lot of changes have been made and it is inevitable that some issues pass through automated checks. So please if you notice something that doesn't look correct, then please email admin@visnos.com