Usability of the Portal Studio Catalog & Knowledge Exchange...

Question

Just wanted to say:
Usability of the Portal Studio Catalog in a word:
SUX.
Browsing the catalog is incredibly tedious on a corporate LAN; can't imagine how impossible it would be on any slower speed connection: Click. Wait. Click. Wait. Click. Wait.
The Knowledge Exchange, in a word:
ISN'T.
And, while I'm getting this off my chest, I am SICK AND TIRED of having to enter my password 15 times a session. If my network/machine is cookie-friendly enough for your system to remember my username, why can't you manage to retain my password when I go from one page to another??
Sheesh.
And, the reason I'm submitting this complaint here, and not in the elusive Feedback section, is because it's too dam' hard to get to!!!
Has Oracle EVER once run a Usability Study on its website(s)???
Sheri

Answer 1

Hiya, Mohana, and thanks for the response!
Have you checked the browser setting (if using IE, check Internet Options, Security tab, and if you have Custom setting, verify settings like the Userdata Persistence and User Authentication.) I've added portalstudio.oracle.com and otn.oracle.com to my list of trusted (!!) internet sites. However, I'm on a US Army intranet, so there's a limit as to what I can change WRT security. I've already established with one of your managers that there are some issues with our firewalls and your site. For example, I can't view the monthly developer's newsletters from work, inside the firewall... but when I go home and login to Oracle via my cable modem, I can see the newsletters just fine.
Your problem with performance (click and wait) also seems to be stemming from a configuration issue - I'm specifically talking about the catalog tree structure. You click on the little (+) signs, wait wait wait, and get a teensy bit of info. Then click again to see a teensy bit more info. Soon the whole screem is full. So, you have to click on the (-) signs to compress the open parts of the tree. The page is slow to load, regardless of the time of day. I admit, pages on the internet can sometimes load slowly at lunchtime hereabouts, but for most of the day that's not at all a problem. Nor do I have this problem with other pages on the oracle.com site. Just the catalog. There's simply got to be a more efficient, faster way to display this tree and its content.
Regarding the Knowledge Exchange, I'd be happy to know what exactly are the issues you're facing in using the KE. Did you try downloading any contributions or uploading your own? First of all, it's darn hard to find anything to download on the KE. Yes, the top five items of the day are simple. But, there's no organized catalog of offerings that I can find. Deep digging is required.
Uploading something?? Hah. I'm no Java programmer. I can readily massage existing code to make it do what I want, and I have PL/SQL Developer, which is a very neat and easy-to-use program. However, I wasn't able to figure out how to get the PDK working in 90 minutes of trying--and gave up in frustration; I have slews of content to put up!! Too, our Lab development staff wasn't able to get PDK working, either, and they ARE programmers and DBMs.
And, while I've got your much-appreciated attention, we're still on Rel 1, and it is very difficult and time-consuming to navigate thru. We have Rel 2 sitting in the Lab, ready to install, however, the report from the Lab team yesterday is the benefits of Rel 2 are not worth the effort of installation. "It's too buggy, not to mention there's a lot of vaporware: promise of functionality that won't really be available until the next release in March 2003."
I tell you, I wanted to cry when I heard that. Can you give me any ammo to contradict that opinion??
And, if there's a Oracle front-end developer's List out there anywhere like the HTML Webmonster List, I would dearly love to know where to join!!
One final point: the path links in the gray bars in the Oracle Discussion Forums are not coded properly. Look at the top of my first message where it says:
Products > Portal > Performance and Scalability
Click on any of those words; doesn't matter. You SHOULD go back up the path a level or two. But instead, you stay on the same page. Might as well click Refresh/Reload. The path links in the red bar at the top of the page work fine:
Oracle Technology Network > Collaboration > My Forums
They take you up the path. Just not in the gray bar.
Sheri