Look for changes

I recently received some excellent feedback on SoarPort. From the list, the changes that will occur on SoarPort in the next month will include:

1. Entry page improvements: "there's
nothing on the first page that tells me what the actual purpose is"
2. Sign up page improvements: "There's nothing there that tells me why I would want to be a member, and
how being a member would benefit me"
3. Explanation of system requirements: "I couldn't see anything useful until I enabled scripts. " I've never run the site without scripts, so I will have to see what can be done technically to over come this. If this cannot be dealt with technically, then a note must appear to instruct the user to enable their javascript.
4. Fewer ads (if any) "It appears that the
purpose of the site is to sell Google Ads". There is a place for advertising, but not in the areas where it was previously placed. I will explore different options for advertising.
5. More Zoom levels "Once I did enable scripts all I saw was an image viewer that has very
limited zoom capabilities. " Fewer zoom levels was part of the proof of concept, where when testing I wanted to get the image in place quickly. I can change the zoom levels to 10, and eventually look at increasing that number as well. Recent technical improvements to how tiles are created has made the footprint of a stored image not a problem for more zoom levels.

I have begun to work on these changes already, and will roll out a fix to address each of these issues by June 1, 2008. There may be more refinement required after that point, but there will be an effort made to address each of these items by that time.