Digital Art Zone

Skiriki - 01 August 2012 02:32 PM

Renderosity (it is on the same page with the DAZ download tool). And RDNA (ditto). Bottom of the page, but I linked to the .zips (hopefully you can download directly).

RDNA beta has expired.  :(

Aw, bother. PM Taozen and ask if s/he could slip up a new version?

We are aware that over the last couple of days we have been testing some site updates. We realize that there may be some strange issues so please be aware. The good news is we are seeing some improvements each day as we move forward on the fixes.

Page load times are improving,
Check out processes are getting better, less issues with adding to cart and checking out.
We have isolated most of the download issues to Internet Explorer 8, the web team is looking into a fix for this.
Search by Release Date, Shop by Vendor etc are working as we all now expect.

Thanks to all of you for helping us through this.

DAZ_bfurner - 02 August 2012 03:48 PM

Search by Release Date, Shop by Vendor etc are working as we all now expect.

What about the scrambling of display order whenever we change from view-15-per-page to view-60-per-page? As far as I can tell there’s no way to be certain something that would display on a second page (while viewing the first page) won’t jump to the first page while viewing the second page.

Does anybody at DAZ recognize there is a download/find item/reset item problem?  Is anybody working on it?

A while back in July or so DAZ had some of their $1.99 club items for $.99.  In one order I bought 50 of them. 

I didn’t get to download them all. Now I have to go back and try do this one item at a time, often guessing at what the first name of the item is. If I guess wrong, after scrolling through dozens of back-forward pages only 2 at a time, then I have to start the whole process over again. Just for one item.

Most recently I spent a half hour and didn’t find the item I started looking for, though I did find one other item on the list. A half hour. 30 minutes.  For 50 items that will add up to 25 hours just finding the items. 

Since in this case all the items happene3d to be from one order, I logged into customer service, gave them the order number and asked if they just do a blanket reset on that one order. They said they didn’t have the capacity to do that even themselves.

For the member above with 2200 items, they must to go through more than 50 pages, incrementing two pages at a time just to get at their best guess for the first letter of the item, as DAz archives it.

Let’s see M.  That’s about halfway through the alphabet.

Here’s looking for “M” to reset it with about 2,000 items purchased:

2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause+2 pause

You don’t believe me? Try it.

Now, with luck, we’re someplace in the listing of M’s. For the first item we’re looking for. If we got the name exactly correct.

And for “T” should we start from the back or the front? The number of pages links to the frequency of the first letter in the items you’ve purchased, not balanced by the alphabet.

I currently have a trouble ticket open on this. And, while I’m going to try Touzen out of sheer desperation, and glad that it exists and that there are forum members who know about it,  that is not a DAZ solution. In fact, the Touzen alpha program says it expires in a few weeks.

I really don’t like to have to download a third party software when I feel I should be dealing on private purchases in my private account directly with DAZ.

I would just like to hear from someone at the project level at DAZ that (a) they recognize there is a problem and (b) what they’re doing and when they plan to have it fixed.

This really is a pretty big problem here.

Actually pretty unbelievable, I feel.

SpottedKitty - 02 August 2012 06:09 PM

DAZ_bfurner - 02 August 2012 03:48 PM

Search by Release Date, Shop by Vendor etc are working as we all now expect.

What about the scrambling of display order whenever we change from view-15-per-page to view-60-per-page? As far as I can tell there’s no way to be certain something that would display on a second page (while viewing the first page) won’t jump to the first page while viewing the second page.

That 15 items per page is small issue, but a pretty repetitive time waster for me. EVERY.  SINGLE. GOSH-DARN TIME you look at EVERY. SINGLE. GOSH-DARN product page you have to spend 10-15 seconds to change that little button.  And if you had something in a search order it vanishes.  Now, while that maximum item search button is not as irritating as the old Microsoft hourglass used to be, it’s getting up there whenever I log into Daz.

I have my browser set to delete all settings when I exit (privacy and security).

In the old Daz, prior to this system, there was a preferences setting that I did once, and that Daz remembered when I logged in. It was much easier to shop and search in that system.

In the scheme of things, again, that is a small problem. But it does get me pretty angry at times when I just want to find something, or quickly see if there is something I want then get out. In my mind I feel that DAZ sure must like making their customers spend time clicking on things rather than spending time shopping and using products.

By the way, I’d like to see maximum item pages of 100 and 250 (say, for browsing Platinum Club items), not just limited to a low number like 60 items per page.

(For those of you counting, that’s 4 less clicks on a 250 page preview compared to the maximum Daz allows now and 16 less clicks than the current DAZ default.  How long does a click and reload take? 3 seconds? 10 seconds? It adds up).

Consumer573 - 20 September 2012 12:00 PM

I didn’t get to download them all. Now I have to go back and try do this one item at a time, often guessing at what the first name of the item is.

Since in this case all the items happene3d to be from one order

The Order Conformation you received from DAZ in your email when you made your purchase will give you a list with the names of all the items.

Consumer573 - 20 September 2012 12:00 PM

For the member above with 2200 items, they must to go through more than 50 pages, incrementing two pages at a time just to get at their best guess for the first letter of the item, as DAZ archives it.

Why 2 pages at a time? You can jump ahead 5 pages by clicking on the 5, or by clicking on the three dots it will take you 10 pages ahead. I only have 1659 items but I can get to “M” in less than 4 seconds with 2 clicks, and I can find any specific item in my Itemized Order History in less than 20 seconds.

Coldrake

Three dots… I never tried that, heh.

Another tip - once you get off page 1, the link has the page number. For instance:
https://www.daz3d.com/shop/customer/account/itemizedHistory/?p=2
“p=2” is page 2.

Change that 2 to any page you want.


Of course if you’re on Windows, Taozen’s history manager takes all the pain out of it.

By the way, yeah, trying to find things by alphabetical order is a freakin’ nuisance. Back in the day of paper bound dictionaries, encyclopedias, and telephone books, 4 words I dreaded were “Go look it up.”

“L, Q damnit, Me, Mea, Mel, Mo…”

(Those weren’t the only 4 words, “Why aren’t you asleep?” “Wake up for school.” “He wouldn’t do that.” “You must’ve done something.”...)

Then there are more modern 4-word phrases… “We’re upgrading our website.”

Cold Rake, your comments help somewhat.  I respect the number of items you have as I would think you should see the problem, too, and you don’t. But I am still missing something.

First, my three dots take me ahead 7 pages, not 10. A weird number that’s difficult to picture in your head until you actually calculate what it’s doing. That’s probably why I didn’t pay attention to it as a practical advance device until you told me to look at it.

Second, I don’t see any mechanism to go 5 pages ahead. Clicking on the only “5” I see gets me nothing additional.

Searching my emails first for the order that has the proper names of what I bought is something I hadn’t thought of. It’s an added layer of complication, but it would work okay in this particular instance when it is all in one order. I could have two windows open and cross reference them.

Jaiman, your suggestion to look that the top line bar for the page number is excellent. And I like the links you add at the bottom of your page.

The best solution given here, though,  was Taozen.

I did the Taozen program and that was the charm. It saves your order to your hard disk in a comma delimited spreadsheet format that most spreadsheets, including Excel can use.  If he put in the artist’s name and the price, I wouldn’t have to keep track of any of this myself; I’d just update his work and save it to disk.

But Taozen is really just a web scraping program. If they can do it, then Daz should be able to at least get an alphabet up there pretty easily which would simply things by two orders of magnitude. Then it would work for their Mac users, too. And including a search/sort by Order number button should be doable since Taozen has that in their program and it must be part of each item data. Similar for Date.

I feel I shouldn’t have to deal with a third party when I want to access private account information with Daz, no matter how good that third party may be. That’s just a bit creepy to me.

And, Jaiman, yes back in the day.  I guess I still come from the day when Video was wireless, ubiquitous and free, and Voice was tethered to the home by cable.
.

Jaiman, this is off topic,but fun, relating to"Looking it up” and “back in the day”.  (Bear with me site admins). I recently looked up “Moon” and “Mars” in my grandparent’s 1957 (one year pre-Sputnik) Encyclopedia.  Here is a direct quote from the last paragraph in the section that describes the planet Mars.  Again, 1957. Not that long ago:

MARS

“there seems some observational evidence that vegetation exists; at least, certain phenomena can be most simply explained in this way. Hence, without venturing a positive opinion, there are grounds for this belief, and if vegetation exists, then low forms of reptile or other animal life might be inferred. But the supposition that higher forms exist, such as mammals, stretches one’s imagination beyond any bounds which science can substantiate. The attempts at planetary intercommunication, even if there were beings to receive our messages, are not as yet subjects for serious consideration. The ideas advanced for travel from planet to planet are simply wildly imaginary and take no proper account of perfectly well known facts and natural laws. Thus radio messages to Mars, much less reaching the planet by rocket ships or similar devices, are at present wholly beyond the limits of serious scientific study.”  ~ Charles P. Olivier, Director Flower & Cook Astronomical Observatories, University of Pennsylvania, 1956.

Back in the day.

When he wrote it he wasn’t wrong, you know. Just expressing the extent of human experience at the time. When we see a 1957 Chevy at an auto show, it seems old, but not that old. Maybe something we’d like to own and drive. Sometimes we don’t realize or appreciate how far we’ve come.

Maybe that’s why 3D graphics are fun, too. We get to live our “wildly imaginary” ideas, with the ability to deliberately, “take no proper account of perfectly well known facts and natural laws.”

OT

I don’t think the admins will mind, as long as the original poster doesn’t. Of course, if we keep bumping it too often, they might. But we should be
 

Error: The topic doesn’t exist.

Consumer573 - 22 September 2012 10:41 AM

And, Jaiman, yes back in the day.  I guess I still come from the day when Video was wireless, ubiquitous and free, and Voice was tethered to the home by cable.

LOL!

Hey, I just realized kids can’t ditch each other, anymore! “Siri, find Joe” “Joe is hiding around that corner.”

I remember 3 channels (and PBS), and catching distant UHF channels, on Spring nights, before we got our own local UHF (and after, because theirs had more money). Static was annoying, but not as irritating a digital-over-the-air, stuttering when the signal drops out, or satellite blipping out repeatedly during a storm, or cable just going black for as long as it wants to.

Consumer573 - 22 September 2012 11:38 AM

MARS

Wow, that’s incredible. I remember in elementary school, mid-60’s, when all those fun Mars stories had long been debunked, and then they brought the hammer down on fields of vegetation. I thought it was figured out from bigger telescopes… but they’d had giant observatories for…

I’ve still got the old ‘63 Worldbook set, boxed up, for the sake of collecting dust. (No hyperlinked text, you know).

Holy Cow! Same stuff with more detail!

[Wikipedia break]

Mariner 4, 1964… That’s earlier than I was thinking, but the Apollo program was going. Mars, though… Imagine what it took to calculate that trajectory on their rows of computers. It went past though, just a few pix, that was frustrating.

The attempts at planetary intercommunication, even if there were beings to receive our messages, are not as yet subjects for serious consideration. The ideas advanced for travel from planet to planet are simply wildly imaginary and take no proper account of perfectly well known facts and natural laws. Thus radio messages to Mars, much less reaching the planet by rocket ships or similar devices, are at present wholly beyond the limits of serious scientific study.”

ROTFLOL! And 7 years later, a tiny little satellite was broadcasting images back to Earth. One pixel at a time.

When he wrote it he wasn’t wrong, you know. Just expressing the extent of human experience at the time.

Yep, for the radio signals, even a laser spreads out, in space, fairly quickly over a good distance, but he was magnitudes of order off. A big enough receiving dish, focusing the weak signal…

And, yeah, the vegetation hypothesis was perfectly reasonable. Massive dust storm because of the thin atmosphere - no wonder that didn’t occur to them. Sending people is still a challenge, of course… but a lot more manageable one.

When we see a 1957 Chevy at an auto show, it seems old, but not that old. Maybe something we’d like to own and drive. Sometimes we don’t realize or appreciate how far we’ve come.

Good point. Some of that happened so fast, some so slowly. But its a whole different world.

I used to kinda marvel at how it had changed from the horse-drawn, telegraph, the-town-has-gas-streetlamps world my grandparents were born into. My parents as kids in family’s first Model T, the first telephones. But they were really impressed by it.

And now I know how they felt.

Maybe that’s why 3D graphics are fun, too. We get to live our “wildly imaginary” ideas, with the ability to deliberately, “take no proper account of perfectly well known facts and natural laws.”

That’s my thinking, it’s fun to unleash. From the preposterous to the strictly plausible, you can render things nobody’s ever seen before.
Or things only you’ve seen before…

I’d used to read a lot of sci fi, and run across things that I’d visualize, and wish I could set it down for eyes to see.
(Now my eyes protest when I read very long, and the glasses that they give me….). And I remember spare time… and sleep… oh right… I haven’t had enough of that…

T Jaiman - 22 September 2012 01:45 PM

I’ve still got the old ‘63 Worldbook set, boxed up, for the sake of collecting dust. (No hyperlinked text, you know).

Hyperlinks are just a modern version of “See page 142” (and finding page 142 in a book is a lot faster than finding page 142 in DAZ History actually - so much for modern technology…)

Taozen - 22 September 2012 05:10 PM

T Jaiman - 22 September 2012 01:45 PM

I’ve still got the old ‘63 Worldbook set, boxed up, for the sake of collecting dust. (No hyperlinked text, you know).

Hyperlinks are just a modern version of “See page 142”

Har! Or on sites like Wikipedia “See [other volume of the encyclopedia].”

(and finding page 142 in a book is a lot faster than finding page 142 in DAZ History actually - so much for modern technology…)

LOL! Yeah, perhaps the more advanced the tech, the more of a chance can be ruined by a usability-design choice.

I’m just grateful you gave us an aftermarket replacement we can bolt on. Especially now, when stacks of content are being updated.

Taozen, the program I used, is that your work?  Very nice. I want to thank you for providing it. It was a life-saver. Or at least a real aggravation and time saver.

I can’t believe that Daz doesn’t even recognize how bad what they have is.

Out of curiosity, what prompted you to make that program and then provide it for free?  Is there a business model (driving traffic, name recognition) , or just community generosity for something you did for yourself?

Either way, it was well done and appreciated.

T Jaiman - 22 September 2012 01:45 PM

OT

The attempts at planetary intercommunication, even if there were beings to receive our messages, are not as yet subjects for serious consideration. The ideas advanced for travel from planet to planet are simply wildly imaginary and take no proper account of perfectly well known facts and natural laws. Thus radio messages to Mars, much less reaching the planet by rocket ships or similar devices, are at present wholly beyond the limits of serious scientific study.”

ROTFLOL! And 7 years later, a tiny little satellite was broadcasting images back to Earth. One pixel at a time.


[/size]

Thanks Jaiman, I enjoyed your comments.

From the 1957 comments to now where it’s possible for an X-Prize. Just think: an “X” prize for Mars, where they set a course from one area of the planet to another. You launch your vehicle and race car and get it to a pre-destined start line. A moderator sets the start and the finish. Any country or indiviual can participate. Start! Then you control it from earth and see who gets to the finish first!  And maybe along the way you’re supposed to collect Y number of samples no more than Z distance apart!

In theory we can actually do this now - build a race track on another planet!