Obsurvey blog

Go to facebook to see our updates

2011-07-13T01:59:00.000-07:00

We've decided to use facebook for frequent updates, instead of this blog.

Join us on facebook
There will only be infrequent updates here on the blog, when we have big things to announce.
This will allow us to spend more time on improving obsurvey.

Geolocation

2011-05-01T02:50:00.000-07:00

We've just made some updates that should help you get geolocation data from your respondents ip-addresses. Meaning you get the respondents approximate geographical location.
You can see this data when you click "Individual responses" for a survey or when you click "Report" and then click "Show map"

We are now using two different geolocation services, if the first service does not have geolocation for the respondents ip-address, we try the other service. This should mean that almost all responses get geolocation data attached to them.

New front page and new social sharing

2011-04-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

We've released a complete redesign of the obsurvey front page. We hope you like it as much as we do.
Also' today we released a new social sharing feature. The social sharing you can add to your survey is much better looking now:

Themes for your surveys, and more

2011-02-13T14:22:00.000-08:00

It is now possibe to select themes for your survey. There are five themes in 2 different widths available, we will add more in the future.

If you know how to edit css, cascading style sheets, you can create your own themes. If you create a theme you like, please consider sending it to us, so we can consider adding at a standard theme in obsurvey. To the benefit of all obsurvey users.

Furthermore, we've added the abitily to password protect your syrveys. Click "collect responses" and add a password. You can also specify the password prompts text. Foreign language users will find this particularly usefull.

Finally there is a new filter in the reports "unique by IP-address", this filter is especially usefull if you are using obsurvey for polls or voting-style surveys.

Themes release will be thouroughly user tested

2011-02-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

For the Themes-release of obsurvey, where you will be able to select different themes for your survey, we are conduction a lot of real user testing.
What we do is record normal users completing the task of creating a survey. Then we analyze all the problems they were having and come up with solutions that will solve those problems. Then we implement the solutions, and start over with recording new user tests. We've just completed our 6th round of user testing, and it seems we've ironed out all the major issues.

I think you will be able to tell that a lot of hard work has gone into the Themes-release, when it's released later this month.

Not released yet: A preview of the CSS editing features that will be in the next release of obsurvey

2010-11-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

This has not been released yet. But I thought I would give you a preview of the CSS editing that will be in the next major release of obsurvey.

Rename survey/Change survey title

2010-10-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

It is now possible to change the survey title. Simply click "Edit survey", change the title under the survey options on the left side of the screen and save the survey.

Delete responses

2010-10-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

You can now delete responses, in the "individual responses" view. When you delete you can also undo the deletion, if you delete by accident.

Required questions

2010-10-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

You can now make it required to answer a question.

You make a question required, by clicking it's Options button, and checking the required checkbox.

If the user does not answer a required question and clicks the Next button. The required question will change to red font, and the background will pulsate red, until the user answers the question.

If there are several unanswered required questions on the page, only the first required question will pulsate red. The second that question is answered by the respondent, the next required question on the page will pulsate red. This will continue until all required questions have been answered.

If a required question is hidden, by a "Only show when.." rule, it will naturally not be considered required.

Also just released:

You can now see geolocation information for your responses in the individual answers view, and when you save to disk.

Set the text of the next button

2010-10-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

You can now set the text of the next button in the survey. This means you can control all the text of the survey. It's now possible to make the survey entirely in another language than English.

Pdf reports released

2010-09-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

You can now download a pdf version of your survey report.
On the report page, simply click the "Download PDF"-button at the top of the page.

Update: You can also download PDF reports in the shared reports now.

Branching released

2010-09-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

It is now possible to branch your survey.

If you for example have a question "Do you own a cellphone? (Yes/No) " in your survey. You can have another question "What brand is your cellphone?", that is only show if the user answered "Yes" to the question "Do you own a cellphone".

The question that is shown/hidden, based on what was answered to previous questions, can be on the same page or later pages in the survey.

If a page in your survey ends up empty because, all questions on that page are hidden, the respondent won't see a blank page. Instead the page is skipped.

Compared to other survey solutions I've turned this feature on it's head.
In the branching of obsurvey you specify the branching on the question being hidden, instead of on the question being answered. In this case the "What brand is your cellphone?" question. You click on the "Only show when" button for that question and specify under what conditions the question should be shown/hidden.

Here is a screenshot from the new branching dialogue:

A small taste of the next release

2010-09-19T23:11:00.000-07:00

I've been working hard on the next release of obsurvey. It's still going to be some weeks before it's released. But I thought I might give you a small taste of what's in store with this screenshot:

Survey outline

2010-08-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

The survey editor of obsurvey now features a survey outline on the right side. In the survey outline you can see an outline of the questions in the survey in a short format.
You can use the survey outline to navigate your survey, clicking a question scrolls it into view and makes that question active.
You can also rearrange questions by dragging and dropping questions in the survey outline. You can even drag a question from the workarea to the survey outline and vice versa.

Social sharing of survey

2010-08-14T01:27:00.000-07:00

You can now add social sharing buttons to your survey. Clicking the "Add Social sharing" button at the top of the survey editor adds buttons at the end of the survey, enabeling the respondent to share the survey on facebook, myspace, google, twitter and a lot of other social media.
This is a good way to increase the number of respondents to your public surveys. If users share the survey with their friends they may go and fill out the survey to, and maybe also share the survey.

Share a live report

2010-08-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

When viewing a report in obsurvey, you can now click the "share live report" button at the top.
This will allow you to enable sharing of your report. You will be given a link that you can send to anyone you want to see the report.
The report they see, is just like the normal report in obsurvey. Meaning that

The shared report is updated live as responses come in to your survey
You can filter the results in the shared report
You can download charts from the shared report

It is also possible to password protect your report.

Report a problem

2010-08-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

Now you can report problems with obsurvey directly in obsurvey. There is a prominent "Report a problem" button at the top. I really hope you will take the time to report any problems you have while using obsurvey. Also in this release there are some bugfixes, making text bold and other rich text formatting no longer makes Safari and Chrome crash, they both have a bug, but I found a workaround.

I'm currently working on sharing reports and generating Pdf reports, and making great progress. After that I feel I must implement branching/skip-logic. Branching is the most asked for feature.

Clear all filters

2010-07-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

When you add filters to your report or when browsing individual answers, the option to clear all filters now appears in the top bar. Clicking it will clear all filters you have added.

New version of obsurvey

2010-07-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Copy question, download pretty graphs, question as heading of graphs. These are just some of the improvements in the new version of http://obsurvey.com/ I just released. Thank you to everyone who contributed feedback.

New release "pasting from word"

2010-06-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey. Before, copying and pasting text from other sources into obsurvey, for example from microsoft word, would also copy the formatting of the text you copied. This might cause parts of your survey to be formatted differently than the rest of the survey. Now, when copying and pasting text from other sources into your survey, all formatting of the text you copy will be removed. This ensures that your survey has the same formatting throughout the entire survey.

I've also fixed a few bugs.

Minor update "rounded corners"

2010-06-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

I just made a minor update to obsurvey. It now uses rounded corners in firefox, chrome and safari browsers.

minor release "One response per computer"

2010-03-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Now you can limit the responses to a survey, in such a way that a respondent only can answer the survey once. Enabeling this feature also means that the survey will make it possible for a user to leave the survey, and then when the survey loads again, it starts from where the user left off. Technically it's implemented with cookies, so it can be circumvented by deleting cookies.

new major release "report filtering"

2010-02-03T06:42:00.000-08:00

I’ve just released a new version of obsurvey.
It now features instant searching and filtering of responses in reports. You can see a video of how it works here:

You can also view, search and filter individual responses now. You can see a video of how that works here:

You can try it yourself at:
http://obsurvey.com

I’ve spend a lot of time on this release, and I’m very pleased with it. I hope you will like it.
If you do please drop me an email, also drop me an email if you have any kind of comments about obsurvey. I love hearing from the users of obsurvey.

Minor release "Response count"

2010-01-21T09:04:00.000-08:00

On the list of surveys and on the list of response collections the number of responses is now show. Also the number of new responses since the last time you viewed the results of individual responses is shown, if any.

New release "Individual responses"

2010-01-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey. Now you can view the individual responses for your survey. I've used a technique where the results are split into several pages if there are many results. Browsing the different pages should be quite fast. In fact it's so fast, that I show the page when you mouse over the page number in the page navigator. I hope you like the new release.

New minor release "Copy survey"

2010-01-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

One of the most voted for features in my recent survey of what you, the obsurvey users want, was the ability to copy a survey. Now when you create a new survey, you are given the option to copy from an existing survey.

Minor release "Download graph as picture"

2010-01-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

I've just released a minor update to obsurvey, you can now download graphs as images on the results page. This is a direct result of the voting for new features done with an invite to registered users who allow mails from copenhagen code. Generating the report as a pdf was the top voted feature. I'm guessing that beeing able to download the graphs for individual questions as images will be welcome too.

Three rounds of user testing

2009-12-30T03:49:00.000-08:00

I've just finished three rounds of user testing of obsurvey, with incremental improvements each time. The tests show that new users have a much easier time using obsurvey now. We've fixed some minor bugs, improved the tooltips, made selection of predefined ratings in rating questions into a wizard, increased the undo/redo icons visibility, and many other small improvements. I hope you like the changes.

New minor release "Ratings"

2009-12-23T15:05:00.000-08:00

I've just released a minor update to obsurvey. Now when you insert a rating question a wizard pops up that lets you choose between the predefined rating scales.

Usertesting is great.

2009-12-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

I just updated obsurvey with some layout changes in the survey editor. Now the add question buttons, options buttons and bolloontips are in red and a much larger font. This should make it easier for new users.
I conducted 3 user tests through usertesting.com, I had 3 videoes, in a couple of hours and based on the feedback for these usertests I made the changes.

Minor release "reporting on rating questions"

2009-12-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

I've just released an update to obsurvey.
Now rating type questions have more detailed reporting, showing the votes for each rating for each question in a graph.

Minor release "page up/down"

2009-12-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

I just released a minor update to obsurvey. Now you can navigate the survey with the "page up" and "page down" keys as well as arrow keys.
Also pressing Ctrl+Home jumps to the beginning of the survey and Ctrl+End jumps to the end of the survey.

Minor release "results"

2009-12-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

I've just released an update to the results page, It now uses a different charting for select one and select several type questions. It's not perfect, but the charts look better than the old ones.

Minor release "click edit"

2009-12-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

By request I've changed the editor a bit. Now you have to click a question before all the move/delete/add buttons appear. The page seems a bit less busy when you move the mouse around - you have to click a bit more now, but I think it's worth the tradeoff.

Minor release "powered by obsurvey"

2009-12-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

I've made som small changes to obsurvey.
Now the options for a question are a bit easier to spot.
And new surveys get a "powerd by obsurvey" text, you can delete it if you want. Leave it in, if you want to support obsurvey.

Minor release "answers the last 30 days"

2009-12-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

I've been working with the results page.
You can now see how many answers there are to "select several" multiple choice questions. And you can choose if you want to show a percentage of the number of answers or percentage of total number of votes.
Also, you can now see a graph of how many answers your survey has recieved in the last 30 days.

Minor release "page navigation v2.0"

2009-12-07T12:23:00.000-08:00

I just released another minor update to obsurvey.
The page navigater that let's you jump between pages has been updated. It now shows a preview of the page on mouseover.
Furthermore, when previewing a survey you can now also navigate between pages using the page navigator.

Minor release "Embed update"

2009-12-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

I've just released a minor update to obsurvey. Now the embedded iframes look nicer for people without JavaScript or a mainstream browser.

New minor release "Easy results"

2009-12-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

I just released a minor update of obsurvey. Now you can get to a surveys results, directly from the "my surveys" main page. If the survey only has one answer collection you are taken directly to the results. If not you are taken to the answer collection list.
Clicking "Collect answers" will now jump directly to the publish survey-page if the survey only has one answer collection. If not you are taken to the answer collection list.
Notice, the only way to create more than one answer collection for a survey is to click on "View collections" on the my surveys main page. And the click "New answer collection"

The reason for these changes was that several users have had problems, where they would unintentionally create a lot of answer collections for a survey, when what they wanted to do was reuse the one answer collection they had already created. Reusing answer collections is now the default behavior.

Also, some of the subpages in obsurvey have improved with additional navigation buttons.

New minor release "Arrow key V2.0"

2009-11-29T05:15:00.000-08:00

I just released a new version of obsurvey.
Navigating around a survey with the arrow keys in the survey editor has improved a lot.
Lots of other minor improvements. Including optimizations for better speed.

New release "Survey editor update"

2009-09-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey. This time it's the survey editor that's been updated. Now ther is no longer a toolbar for inserting questions. Instead buttons for adding questions appear above and below questions when you hold the mouse over them. When you click the "Add question" button, you are asked to select what you want to insert. The selection items are those that where in the toolbar before. Select one, select several, rating, text (single line), text (paragraph), text (not a question) and pagebreak (not always). You are also given the option to delete.

Let me know how you like the new editor. Go to obsurvey and try it out.

New release "bloggers update"

2009-09-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey. Now surveys embedded in blogs use precisely the same font as the blog, also the same size (example)
This eliminates the need for any kind of styling of a survey you want to embed on a blog or website. Also I've added page transitions, to make it easier to see what part of the blog has changed when you go to the next page of the survey.

Also the font size of surveys has been reduced. It was kind of big before.

Feedback added to obsurvey

2009-09-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

The forum's I changed to where no success, the became unusable due to a bug in the software.

Today I found the wonderfull service at uservoice.com. An I've used it to add feedback options for obsurvey. Obsurvey now has a red feedback button on the left side of the screen that leads to a feedback forum where you can suggest improvements and vote for suggestions already made.

So go to obsurvey and make your voice heard and leave me some feedback.

Structured Active Rich Document (SARD) - used in obsurvey

2009-09-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

(Work-in-progress since 2002, by Allan Ebdrup)

This document is intended for web developers. It is a description of the principles
behind the SARD technique. SARD can be used when normal users will be editing any
kind of structured document, it is used in the obsurvey application, but I have
used it successfully for other projects as well. The principles of SARD are:

Modify data or documents according to their structure
Support the notion of a document
Define a model for your document structure, a conceptual display model
Databind your conceptual display model
Show only the structure that is in use, support outlining if needed
Make your document active
Now you see it, now you don’t
Don’t waste space
Rich text formatting
Real or “close to” WYSIWYG editing
Never leave the document while editing
Support the use of drag and drop
Let the user undo
Provide context sensitive help

Each principle is described in detail in the following sections.

Modify data or documents according to their structure

If you have a model for the structure of your data, typically some kind of hierarchy,
and you want to edit this data dynamically, SARD might be a good idea.

At he heart of SARD is the use of Rich text formatting capabilities in the browser,
from here called Browser Rich Text (BRT). The typical use of BRT is that you have
a single fixed size editing area. Right above the editing area you have formatting
functionality in a toolbar, with buttons for making text bold, italic and other
more or less advanced formatting possibilities. Very much like in a word processor,
you are free to edit everything in the BRT area in any way you like.

This is not how you edit documents in SARD. In SARD you have a document structure
that needs to be enforced. So basically you limit the editing capabilities of the
user, so he/she can only modify the document in a way that adheres to the structure.

For example in obsurvey you have a select-one-option-question, where you are constructing
a question that has several answer options. The idea is that when the user is done
editing the question the respondent can answer the question by selecting one of
the answer options by clicking the radio button next to the relevant answer option.

In order for the user to construct a meaningful question, there needs to be one
and only one radio button for each possible answer option. When using SARD you enforce
this structure by making only the question text and the answer option text editable
BRT areas.


As shown on screen	Editable elements marked in green	Uneditable elements marked in red

Video explaining basic SARD (41 sec)

Furthermore, the user can add another answer option is by clicking the plus icon
at the bottom of the question, shown below. And the user can remove an answer option
is by clicking the minus button to the right of the answer option. It is also possible
to move the individual answer options up and down, changing their order, by clicking
the up and down arrows.

Video explaining basic SARD structure modifications (25 sec)

This effectively makes sure the document is well structured, and in this case that
means a valid question is always constructed. It also means that when a respondents
have given their answers, it's possible to generate a meaningfull report. Having
a structure in the document not only means you get well-formed documents, it also
means you can do intelligent things with the data in the document.

Support the notion of a document

You should make editing your document feel like a single document. When splitting
the document editable and non editable parts, you can easily break the notion of
a single document for the user.

If your editable text area is typically just one line of text, you should override
the default behavior of pressing return. Instead pressing return should do the logical
thing and insert new elements below where you are, according to your conceptual
display model, discussed in the next section. Alternatively pressing return can
be ignored or cause the cursor to jump to the next editable text area.

Furthermore pressing arrow down, when the cursor is at the last line of an editable
text area, should jump to the next editable text area in the document. Pressing
arrow up, when the cursor is on the first line of an editable text area, should
jump to the previous editable text area. Pressing arrow left, when the cursor is
before the very first character in your editable text area, should jump to the previous
text area. And pressing arrow right, when the cursor is placed after the very last
character in your editable text area, should jump to the next editable text area
in your document.

Finally if your editable text area is complete empty and the user presses backspace,
you might consider deleting the editable text area and its associated un-editable
elements.

Video showing how to support the notion of a document in SARD (28 sec)

Define a model for your document structure, a conceptual display model

Draw a class diagram of the model that defines the structure of your document. Implement
this model i JavaScript in your frontend. For example the model for obsurvey looks
something like this:

The conceptual display model for obsurvey is actually bigger, this is the part that
is used in the survey editor.

The important thing in creating your conceptual display model is keeping anything
directly related to HTML out of your conceptual display model, but at the same time
having your display concepts in your conceptual display model. For example a boolean
indicating wether something is hidden can be in your conceptual display model, but
that's all, just a boolean in the model. You can't put any details about how the
hiding is done in your conceptual display model.

You should alway strive to divide and conquer, reuse and have a high abstraction
level in your main conceptual display model. If you are modelling a concept, like
an array of elments where one and only one element is shown at any given time, this
concept should be extracted out as a concept in it's own right, with it's own model
that can be reused.

Note that if you have a model in your business logic on your server, the conceptual
display model may differ from that model. The conceptual display model is specifically
modelled for displaying on the screen. For example in obsurvey a page break is an
entity in the conceptual display model and not an entity in the business logic.

Databind your conceptual display model

Databind your model to your HTML, your display. A good idea is to use a JavaScript
framework to assist you in databinding. Unfortunately the databinding capabilities
of the main stream JavaScript frameworks are not that good, but hopefully this will
change in the future. There are some of the frameworks that supoort rich two way
databinding. I use my own JavaScript framework. Databinding allows you to make changes
to the model and have the display automatically update and vice versa. If you do
not have databinding capabilities in your JavaScript framework you'll have to wire
things together manually.

Show only the structure that is in use, support outlining if needed

Never show parts of the structure that don’t contain data, except when the user
has indicated he/she wants to add data there. When following this principle you
can potentially have a massively complex structure, but the individual documents
may not appear cluttered with information about the structure the document adheres
to. Only the part of the structure that is in use is visible.

If you have large documents you can support outlining, where you can collapse and
expand parts of the document. If you support outlining you should add mouseover
effects to the collapsed parts that shows a summary of what has been collapsed.

Make your document active

Add the functionality (buttons, popup-menus, etc.) that is needed to modify the
structured document where it is relevant. That means buttons for modifying data
to the document is right there in the document where the data is added. Like the
plus, minus and arrow icons in our example from before.

This way it will be clearer to the user what the buttons do. It also gives the user
an understanding of what the underlying structure of the document is. The user should
be able to click a document expanding action to see what it does and easily undo
the expansion. This is essential to allow users that are unfamiliar with the structure
of the document, to discover the structure of the document by trial and error.

Now you see it, now you don’t

You should hide the active functionality (buttons, popup-menus, etc.) in the document
when they can’t possibly be activated. The user should be able to move the mouse
away from the document and see the document without any clutter of the active elements.
In the example from earlier, the select-one-option-question the plus, minus and
arrow icons dissapear when the mouse is moved away from the question.


Mouse over	Mouse out

Usually you only show the active functionality for a part of the document, when
the mouse is over that part of the document. You hide the active functionality when
the mouse is moved away.

Video showing basic now you see it, now you don’t in SARD (21 sec).

Don’t waste space

You should always try to use flow layout. Specifying the width or height of an element
should only be done for elements like buttons, menus and the like. The document
itself should use the powers of the browser to let the browser decide how big or
small parts of the document should be. You can decide the width or height of the
entire document, for example if you want paragraphs to be easily readable and therefore
not too wide, but you should never specify the size of elements inside the document.

Rich text formatting

Support rich text formatting if your users need it. You can also use resizing textboxes
that don’t allow formatting. However this solution is made difficult because textboxes
don’t inherently support automatic resizing to the content they contain. You'll
have to make the resize.

Video of basic rich text formatting in SARD (28 sec)

Real or “close to” WYSIWYG editing

You should strive for What You See Is What You Get editing. The users view of the
document when editing should be as close to what it looks like when it’s published,
printed etc. If you show active elements (buttons, icons etc.) the user should be
able to move the mouse away from the document and see the document as it will look
like when it’s published, printed etc.

Never leave the document while editing

The user should never have to leave his/her document while editing it. You can provide
menus, toolbars, buttons, icons etc. pop-up expansions but the user should never
feel he/she has left the document. This means you should always see part of the
editing environment. Wizards should be kept small and only hide part of the document;
you should avoid wizards if you can.

The exception to this rule is previewing the document. If you have some kind of
preview function, having it take over the browser is often a good idea, in order
to provide a clean and undisturbed preview of the document.

Support the use of drag and drop

You should make it possible for the user to drag and drop parts of the document.
Drag and drop is a great way for the user to quickly manipulate a structured document.
It is also a good idea to provide a way to add top level parts of the document by
using drag and drop. When dragging, use the conceptual display models classes and
have the databinding take care of the changes to the HTML. (Drag and drop is almost
fully implemented in obsurvey)

Let the user undo

You should let the user undo any manipulation of the structured document. For example
the user should be able to undo a deletion if he/she deleted something by accident.

Video of undo implementation in SARD (43 sec).

Provide context sensitive help

You should integrat help into your user experience, in obsurvey I pop up examples
when a user is selecting a question type, and I also pop up some help text in the
bottom right corner of the screen. This pop up help text is shown in direct relation
to what the user is currently doing. It is context sensitive.

The technology behind SARD

The technology behind SARD is all well known, SARD is just combining them in a new
way. The technology in use is

An Internet browser
JavaScript
Dynamic HTML
Rich text formatting capabilities in the browser (Content editable in Internet Explorer,
Chrome and Safari or design mode in Firefox)
CSS
AJAX

Minor release "Csv export speedup"

2009-09-01T03:06:00.000-07:00

I've just released a minor update of obsurvey.

The CSV (Excel) Export has been improved, the output is better and the speed of generating the csv file has greatly improved. It is able to handle thousands of answers easily now.

Minor release "Page navigator"

2009-08-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

I've just released a minor update to obsurvey. Now you can navigate to a given page of a survey in the survey editor, by clicking the page numbers, that now appear right next to the survey title. This is what it looks like(marked with a red circle):

New release: "Live edit"

2009-08-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey. Now you can edit a survey that is live. Meaning you can edit a survey that has answer collections and has answers collected already.

You can edit the survey in any way you like. Note however that you results will be very difficult to interpret if you add options to questions after already receiving answers for that question.

Next feature, edit a live survey

2009-08-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

After feedback from Mads on the forum:

http://forum.obsurvey.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=5

I've decided that the next feature I will implement will be the ability to edit a live survey without loosing already collected data.

Minor release "Tooltip"

2009-08-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

I've just added balloon tooltips to obsurvey.
They show up when you add a question or option by clicking a button or drag and dropping, not when clicking return to add. This is what it looks like:

I added this because a some people have difficulty with obsurvey when they first try it.
They don't know they can type the questions directly in the survey document. This hopefully helps new users.

Minor update

2009-08-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

I just released a very minor update to obsurvey. I've fixed a bug when clicking "view survey" from "my surveys" and I've made the application much faster when starting and when switching between editor, view survey etc. I also AJAX enabled the paging of showing text answers on the view results page.

Embed Release of obsurvey

2009-08-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey. You can now embed surveys in your blog or website.

Here is an example of an embedded survey:

When you embed a survey, the survey blends into your webpage.

Also in this release you can now drag and drop individual options of multiple choice questions.

New forum

2009-08-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

I've just updated the forum of obsurvey to use the Yet Another Forum software. A ok open source forum package. the new forum can be found at forum.obsurvey.com

Bugfix

2009-07-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

Seemed the new release caused a bug that made it impossible to create new surveys. And some surveys collected no answers.

That should now be corrected...

Too bad I didn't catch this in testing. This was a major rewite of a lot of code after all.

"Navigation" release of obsurvey

2009-07-25T02:13:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new version of obsurvey.

You can now navigate around the survey editor with the arrow keys. This is what you expect to be able to do, because of the way obsurvey works. Now you can. You can also delete empty questions and options with backspace.

Surveys should load faster. Especially multipage surveys load almost instantaneously when jumping to next page.

There are many minor changes in this release also, and a few bugfixes as well.

I've decided to name larger releases of obsurvey. This release is named the "Navigation" release.

I know I promised the next release of obsurvey would include the possibility of embedding surveys in a webpage or blog, this release is a step on the way to that. The next release will include embed functionality.

Video

2009-07-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

Bugfixes

2009-07-14T05:56:00.000-07:00

I released some minor bugfixed for IE 8 for obsurvey.
I'm still hard at work on the embed functionality.

Changed blog

2009-07-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

I changed the obsurvey blog to bolgger.com since wordpress.com does not support JavaScript in blog posts. And I want to use JavaScript in my blogpost when I've finished the embed survey functionality. All future blog posts for obsurvey will be posted here.