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  • Aislinn 1:01 pm on September 14, 2015 Permalink  

    Feature Update – *share your program, set *min and *max values on a *chart 

    Here’s what’s new:

    Entice users to *share your program

    Users will be able to easily share your program via Facebook, and pretty soon we’ll be adding a Twitter option as well.

    Here’s how the button will look to users:

    Here’s what they’ll see when they click the button:

    And here’s the sample code:

    These posts will automatically link to your program and can be customized with three pieces of information:

    • *description: (required) the text description of the program to be shared.
    • *title: (optional) the larger title that will display across the user’s post.
    • *picture: (optional) the image that will appear in the post.

    A couple tips to keep in mind:

    • You can use variables in any part of your share data.
    • The ideal image size is 1200 x 630 pixels, or, a 1.9:1 apect ratio.
    • Facebook doesn’t know quite what to make of certain symbols, such as a %. These may need to be written out (e.g. writing “percent” instead of using a % sign), as we’ve done in our example.

    Add *min and *max values to your chart


    By default, the x- and y-axis of a chart will stretch to a size relative to the largest and smallest bits of data you’re displaying.

    You can customize the size of your chart though with ease. For instance:

    Setting a *min of 0 won’t be necessary if your chart data is always in the positive, but it can be useful when you have very specific ranges you would like to set.

    You can additionally customize the *xaxis with *scatter charts.

     

    Update: use .shuffle instead of .randomize

    Let’s say you have a collection like so:

    If you wanted to randomize the order of a collection, you would previously type >> .randomize

    However, a new update requires you to shuffle your collection like so:

    Why this change? There was some confusion over the difference between *randomize and .randomize. *randomize still functions as it always did, allowing you to randomly provide one of several possible bits of text or code to the user. With .shuffle though, you don’t just randomize one item in a collection, but shuffle all of them around. You’ll see shuffle used again in another soon-to-launch feature that shuffles question answer options. 
     

     
     

  • Aislinn 1:39 am on April 30, 2015 Permalink  

    Feature Update – *experiment and *navigation 

    Here’s what’s new:

    The *experiment keyword, for smarter randomizations

    The *randomize keyword is great. It let’s you randomly assign participants into different groups, but because it’s totally random, you could end up with groups of different sizes.

    The new *experiment keyword operates just like *randomize, except it keeps groups balanced. So if you have groups A, B, and C, the first participant to take your study could randomly be assigned any one of those, let’s say they get assigned group B. The second participant could only be assigned A or C, since B was just taken. If they get assigned C, then the third participant will be in group A. The fourth participant once again has an equal chance of being assigned any one of the three groups. This ensures that the difference in the size of the groups is never more than 1.

    Unlike *randomize, it doesn’t make sense for *experiment to choose more than one group. So, instead of using the inline text to specify how many things to randomize (e.g. *randomize: 3, *randomize: all), *experiment uses it to name the experiment so that the CSV is much easier to read. We also allowed *group to have the same capacity, so you can now have code that looks like this:

    So when should you use experiment over randomize? In most cases, when you’re running an actual experiment (where you want to see how a change in one thing in the program effects some other thing) you should use *experiment. When you merely want things to be random (but you’re not conducting an experiment) *randomize is probably the right choice.

    Add *navigation to the top of your program

    Let’s say you were bored one day so you wrote a GuidedTrack program entirely about squids. You can now use the *navigation keyword to provide permanent links at the top of your program that will allow users to jump to different sections of your work.

    With navigation, your programs can be a lot more like full-fledged apps. Maybe you want to use *navigation to help users access different programs of a comprehensive tool you’ve made, or revise their settings in your well-being program. There’s a lot you can do with navigation and adding it is easy. Here’s an example of how the squid code might look:

    The program above begins with the navigation keyword, which will be visible immediately when the user starts the program. Each of the four navigation items are indented beneath the navigation keyword. Indented beneath each option is the content users would immediately see if they clicked on that option.

    Once users are done viewing content from a navigation option, they return to the place they were at before they clicked the navigation.

    Navigation content can include all other GuidedTrack keywords, not just text. For example, you can add icons to your navigation program, which could look like this:

    You can even use the *goto keyword to redirect users to other parts of your regular program, as this example does.

    In this program, the navigation options don’t appear until the user clicks the “Begin” button and the navigation is activated. Once the user clicks “Begin,” the program called “Stache Styles” will also immediately start. Users can go through this program regularly and then begin the next programs in sequence. At any point, the users can also click one of the navigation options to easily review content they may have already seen or to jump ahead to new content that come later in the sequence.

    If at any point you want to hide the navigation, you can do so by typing *navigation: hide

    An update to *icon

    Do you remember when we told you that multiple choice and checkbox questions can now get new pieces of flare? No? Good. Because the code for this changed a touch when we upgraded to a new version of Bootstrap.

    To add an icon to an answer choice, find the icon you like from this NEW link: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/3.3/components/#glyphicons

    Then, indent the keyword *icon beneath the answer option and type in the full name of the icon. Below is an example:

    Displaying a user’s paragraph answers retains line breaks.

    There are times when you may want to save a user’s answer to a paragraph type question (using the *save keyword or *tags, for example) and display it back to them. Now, if users create line breaks in their answers by hitting the enter keyword (while typing out a list of their favorite foods, for example), when they see their answer displayed back to them, the line breaks will be preserved exactly as they had them (previously, it would have looked like a mucky, cluttered mess).

    Here’s an example of how preserving line breaks might look:
     

  • Aislinn 12:28 pm on February 11, 2015 Permalink  

    Feature Update – exponentials and updates to *video and *back 

    Here’s what’s new:

    Exponentials and square roots

    Wow your users with your fancy-pants math skills. Calculate the power of a number using the ^ symbol (shift + 6 on your keyboard). Take the square root of a number by using ^1/2 or ^.5. The following shows some of the calculations you can do:

    Assuming that x is equal to 4 and y is equal to 3, the above GuidedTrack code would produce the following values:

    16

    2

    2

    0.25

    64

    Share your program with custom-loaded variables

    Imagine this scenario. You have a GuidedTrack program that you want to share with the world, but you want to give slightly different versions of it to different groups of people. No problem. You don’t need to create multiple GuidedTrack programs in order to accomplish this goal, you just need to tweak the share URL a little bit.

    Adding a single text variable

    Let’s say your teenage daughter wants to start dating. You’re sort of okay with that, but you want each date to first take an extensive survey that includes criminal history questions and compatibility scales to ensure they’re a good fit for your little poodlesticks. You want to personalize it a little by adding a variable that uses their name every now and then, so they don’t think you’re weird. Rather than include their name as a variable in the program (which you’d then have to change for the next person who wants to date your daughter), you can add it to the URL like this:

    https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/uniqueprogramID/run?name=Danny

    The wording in bold font is what you would add to the end of your share URL in order to ensure that the variable “name” is defined as “Danny.” Then, you just need to make sure your program uses this variable, with plenty of references like “Howdy, {name}!”

    Adding a single numerical variable

    The process for adding a numerical variable to your program is pretty similar. Here’s an example:

    https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/uniqueprogramID/run?x=4

    You can define x as any number that you want, including decimal and negative numbers. Just don’t use any commas.
    <h4″>Adding a single collection

    Suppose you wanted to do the equivalent of the following command, but through the URL:

    >> beatles = [“John”, “Paul”, “George”, “Ringo”]
    You just have to ensure you add brackets after the name of your variable, like this: beatles[]. You also separate each item in the collection using an ampersand.

    https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/uniqueprogramID/run?beatles[]=John&beatles[]=Paul&beatles[]=George&beatles[]=Ringo

    Adding multiple variables

    Suppose you wanted to do the equivalent of this in the URL:

    >> x = 3
    >> y = 4
    >> z = 5
    To do this through the URL, you’d separate each of the 3 variables with an ampersand:

     

    Previous answers saved when using back buttons

    When users press the back button, they’ll now be able to see the original answers they gave to past questions and they can edit those answers. This will make editing paragraph responses a breeze for users. This feature works whether the question type is text, paragraph, multiple choice, or checkbox.

    In the above multiple choice example, this user can see their original answer was “Going out” and can change it or keep it by pressing either option.

    The *video keyword is easier

    Before, you had to use a fairly particular link in order to display videos in GuidedTrack. Now, it’s easier than ever to add a YouTube video to GuidedTrack. Simply copy the video link from the address bar, or grab it from the share section. You can also customize the video so it starts at a certain time point or hides the video controls.

    Users alerted when their internet is down

    When the internet goes down, a small popup appears in the corner letting users know about the issue. They can still continue in your program, but all the answers they’ve given will only be saved to the server once their internet comes back on.

    Tips on editing your program in GuidedTrack

    Few people know that the GuidedTrack text editor is actually very powerful stuff. There are a number of special shortcuts you can use to become an editing ninja. For example, you can use Ctrl+f (Command+f on a Mac) to bring up a box that will help you find text and Ctrl+h (Command+Option+f on a Mac) to replace text. Pressing Ctrl + , (Command+, on a Mac) will bring up the text editor settings. Click here to learn more ways to be an editing aficionado.
     

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