Please test beta-app.astrobin.com - Forums

Dear members of the AstroBin Beta Testers group,

I'm working on some infrastructure changes for the deployment of the Single Page App (SPA) available at app.astrobin.com.

This app hosts, most notably:

The image uploader
The image data editor
The subscription pages
The notification pages
The equipment explorer
The IOTD/TP selection queues

For anybody who cares, I'm working on adding "server side rendering" to improve SEO.

Functionally there won't be any differences, but I would like to make sure that I'm not breaking anything.

The test cases pass, but obviously not everything is tested.

So we will do this testing in two phases:

Phase one

Volunteers, please browse to your heart's content, perhaps start from https://beta-app.astrobin.com/equipment/explorer/camera and play around. Moving forward, every time AstroBin takes you from www.astrobin.com to app.astrobin.com, please replace app with beta-app and continue what you were doing. Please let me know if anything major needs fixing before I move on to phase two.

Phase two

Everybody in the Beta Testers group automatically uses beta-app by default.

After these two phases, if everything is alright, I will switch the deployment.

Thank you very much!
Salvatore

Hi Salvatore, if you need any help with SEO, please let me know. That's my job in "normal life". Cheerz Andreas

I can follow your link to the app2 instance, but flip back to www when I leave that area.
going to app. … or app2.astrobin.com serves me an error 404 !?

Andreas Stegmann:
Hi Salvatore, if you need any help with SEO, please let me know. That's my job in "normal life". Cheerz Andreas

Hi Andreas, that's so kind of you to offer! I would love to get a few tips without wasting too much of your time. I will shoot you an email soon, thank you!

Arny:
I can follow your link to the app2 instance, but flip back to www when I leave that area.
going to app. ... or app2.astrobin.com serves me an error 404 !?

Hi Arny,

the root page of the websites at app.astrobin.com and app2.astrobin.com don't do anything, the page 404 is expected. This is why in my post above I suggest to start from equipment explorer (https://app2.astrobin.com/equipment/explorer/camera) and click around.

Of course some pages will go back to www.astrobin.com, that still hosts most of the website.

The parts of the website under "app." are listed in my first post in this topic.

Perhaps I should just go ahead and quietly send a bunch of you always to app2 until I get some error reports

To make things easier, soon around half of you in the Beta Testers group will automatically be redirected to app2 instead of app (most of the times, it won't work from notifications, for instance).

If something in app2 is broken, please let me know!

Thank you all!

is there anything in particular we should be looking at? I know I am, for example, just looking not using them to change anything (both because I don't need to change anything and a bit reticent to do so with beta software).

Is it just that app2 should look like app?

Or should we expect something new?

I had nothing blow up in some brief browsing around.

Hi @Linwood Ferguson,

if anything is wrong on app2, is only upon the first loading of the page.

Once the page is loaded, and click around to do stuff on the same page, or you navigate to another page that is still on app2, there's nothing functionally different than before.

This change is about the initial loading of the app, which is done differently.

For instance, I noticed that if you go to a page that will result in a notification popup in the upper right corner, that notification will look broken.

The only serious issue that I haven't fixed yet, and the reason why I haven't enforced app2 transparently to the beta testers yet, is that some equipment pages will not load (again, on the first load of the page of course) and the page will be stuck forever.

I need to fix that first.

Quick feedback:
I searched and "followed" two cameras. Then I changed the item class to "telescope" and hit a 404 error before changing any other search criteria. The URL it was trying to reach is https://app2.astrobin.com/equipment/explorer/telescope/.

I also hit a 404 again later when changing the item class to "camera":
https://app2.astrobin.com/equipment/explorer/camera/

I noticed that it keeps the previous search information in the search box when changing the filter.

I think it might be a collision between the "Item Class" drop down and the main filters on the left.
Rob

I really like the changes!

Here is another suggestion and an observation:

On the equipment details page, it would be nice if it always displayed both Metric and Emperial Units, especially when displaying the weight.
The equipment images are displaying placeholder images instead the actual equipment.

Rob

Please note:

I've replaced app2 with beta-app (e.g. https://beta-app.astrobin.com/equipment/explorer/camera).

Probably on Friday I will automatically redirect some of you Beta Testers to that web page automatically, instead of "app.astrobin.com".

Just to make some things clear:

Visually and functionally, nothing changes in these Beta pages
The only things that changes is the server infrastructure that serves these pages
If anything is broken, it's only when you open a page on beta-app for the first time (e.g. when clicking on a link from www.astrobin.com or refreshing a page). If you're in doubt that something is broken or not, copy/paste the URL to another tab and remove beta-.

Thanks!
Salvatore

Salvatore, I'm having a problem with the beta - if I make changes to the basic information, equipment used, or acquisition details in the staging area I find that I cannot save the changes. If I revert back to the old version it all works fine. Peter

Hi Peter,

thank you, already working on it!

Anybody affected, just replace "beta-app" to "app" in your browser's address bar, and press enter, to go back to the stable app while I fix this.

Thanks!

It's fixed, thanks again!

Hello Salvatore,

When I click at an item in the "Equipment pending edit" list (in my test case, Telescopes & Lenses), the item's page scrolls down at the bottom of the "Acquired with this item" thumbnail list. This is awkward since someone will have to scroll back at the top of the page in order to edit/review the item.

Hi @Die Launische Diva, I cannot reproduce. In any case, just to make sure this is a beta issue not (very unlikely tho) can you reproduce the same if you by bypass the beta site by removing "beta-" from the URL and pressing enter to reload the page, then repeat the interaction?
Thanks!

Salvatore Iovene:
Hi @Die Launische Diva, I cannot reproduce. In any case, just to make sure this is a beta issue not (very unlikely tho) can you reproduce the same if you by bypass the beta site by removing "beta-" from the URL and pressing enter to reload the page, then repeat the interaction?
Thanks!

I did some further tests: At first, it didn't happen when I removed the "beta-" from the URL. Also it didn't happen when I opened an item pending edit to a new tab (instead of clicking the item) 🤔
Then, I disabled my Firefox plugins and the issue went away. Lastly, I purged my browser's cookies and cache and tried with my plugins enabled and again, the issue wasn't there 🤷

The only thing I'm noticing so far (I believe you've redirected me to the beta), is alot of 404's and sometimes the search suggestions window just never populates after typing in a piece of equipment.

Beyond that it feels exactly the same.

did some testing, that there are no functional changes to look out for (that was different with the new image uploader)

Observations:
- page reactions seems a bit slow
- when selecting an item in one category, its name still is presented when you change category
(ie. select Asi2600mc in Cameras, switch to mount and still see Asi2600mc prepoluates it in the item box)
- following an item is a bit weird, as it seems to stick to the next object you visit, at least in the display. Cannot describe how it breaks, but ended up with 50% wrong items being followed and 50% missing that I had intended to follow.

Outside of this beta, I find it still confusing that going back into another search after having found an object, the last object ie ´s being displayed in the search box, but is not editable. Leads to a) confusion and b) a lot of retyping the static parts of products like Sky-Watcher, Celestron etc. …

alot of 404's

Hi Brian,

thanks for taking time to have a look around. Can you tell me what exactly you clicked, and what page did it go to, that was a 404?

Arny:
- when selecting an item in one category, its name still is presented when you change category
(ie. select Asi2600mc in Cameras, switch to mount and still see Asi2600mc prepoluates it in the item box)
- following an item is a bit weird, as it seems to stick to the next object you visit, at least in the display. Cannot describe how it breaks, but ended up with 50% wrong items being followed and 50% missing that I had intended to follow.

Thanks Arny! Both sound like bugs that have nothing to do with beta. I'll look into them!

Salvatore Iovene:
alot of 404's

Hi Brian,

thanks for taking time to have a look around. Can you tell me what exactly you clicked, and what page did it go to, that was a 404?

Anytime I go to the equipment page... I'll click the drop down, change it to 'telescope or lens', for example, it will immediately end up in a 404. The link reflects the proper page, however I am forced to refresh, then it works.

This happens ANYTIME i change the Item Class. I confirmed the link is staying on the beta page.

Anytime I go to the equipment page... I'll click the drop down, change it to 'telescope or lens', for example, it will immediately end up in a 404.

Thank you Brian. This too is not specific to the beta app (again, the only thing that's different on the beta app is how the app is bootstrapped) but I wrote the fix and it's currently deploying! 🙏

Hi Salvatore,

While reviewing images in the Submission queue, when I go to dismiss an image, I have encountered on several occasions, where the site just grinds and grinds and doesn't allow any further actions. I have had to go out of Astrobin and reenter the site in order to complete the review of images.

Clear skies,
Kevin

Hi Kevin, is this unique to the beta site or does it happen also if you remove “beta-“ from the url?

I have only experienced it on the beta site, Salvatore.

Clear skies,
Kevin

Some more test results:
- uploaded a new image deliberatley without acquisition details and received mail that it cannot be considered for IOTD without acq. data. so far so good

- continued to receive eMails about not being eligible for IOTD - I would think one is enought, I received about 8 ...
- added some acquisition details and further images - but continued to get eMail notifications on lacking eligibility

link to the image: https://www.astrobin.com/52y8yv/B/