New Features
I’ve added a couple of new features to the site here is a list below:
- The ability to add “Last Posting Times” to new postboxes in a separate field.
- Added “Business Postbox” to the type of postbox (This is a postbox that only accepts franked mail).
- Added a text area (multiple line input) to “Further Details” and “Last Posting Times” rather than being restricted to a fixed text field.
Postboxes that contain last posting times in the further details field will be amended in due course.
Thanks for all your suggestions to make PostBoxr more useful.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:37
OK. Thank you for putting last collection times in separate field(s).
I’ve added a “voluntary” box, which is inside a branch of Sainsbury’s. I’m not sure if you want these included.
October 15th, 2008 at 13:39
I notice that you have converted one of my existing pillar boxen (correctly) into a “business postbox”. Thank you.
However, on my browser (Firefox 3.0.3), the new “business postbox” is showing up as a large dark red teardrop icon, the sort that you get when you are adding a new postbox.
October 15th, 2008 at 22:00
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “voluntary” box? Are postboxes in stores not official postboxes?
The business postbox type works fine on my system, you could try emptying the cache of the browser. It should load as an orange marker, I have checked this on a few systems and it works as it should.
October 16th, 2008 at 15:31
Well, I’ve cleared my browser cache and I still get a large symbol. I’ve uploaded the screen capture to ImageShack for you to see. It is at
http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/6493/badboxaw1.jpg
This is a part of Stevenage, SG1. Please compare it with what you get.
As for a “voluntary” box, I mean one that isn’t operated by the Royal Mail, but is provided as a service to customers at such places as Hotels, Workplaces, Halls of Residence, Supermarkets etc.
In practice, they are emptied by the RM on an informal basis, or a member of staff at the Hotel/whatever just collects them together every so often and posts them in a conventional box.
I can get you a picture if you’d like.
October 16th, 2008 at 15:34
Matt, can you make “business postbox” available on the “box type” dropdown menu, and make the “last posting times” show up in that dialog and on the search results as well ?
October 16th, 2008 at 22:21
I think the marker problem you’re having is something that firefox is doing (try refreshing the page a few times). I think that it isn’t getting the updated scripts that contain the code with the new features, When I added the new features I also updated the contribute bubble to contain “Business Postbox” and “Last Posting Times” as input fields, it appears that you’re not getting these either. As I said before I have checked this on a few different systems and it works with no problems. Are you able to try it with Internet Explorer/another browser then we know it is Firefox. Also, I do the majority of my testing on Firefox and have had no problems.
I didn’t realise that the postboxes inside premises were not “official” postboxes. I think they should be added, there are a good few already listed already. Keep them coming!!
Let me know how you get on with IE.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:48
I’ve now restored my computer to factory conditions and reloaded all my software. I now get all the teardrops shewn in the correct colors and size. I now also get the new dialog fields. I’ve tried it on IE and it also works correctly, but I hadn’t tried it before the reload.
As regards postboxen inside private premises, some are “official”, some are not. All the official ones that I’ve seen inside private premises are what I call “plastic pillars”; the unofficial ones that I’ve seen in private premises are in a variety of shapes/colors/materials. The most recent one that I saw/added was in a Sainsbury’s, and was part of an advertising stand. There is wording on it to say “posting in this box can not be legally accepted as giving an item into the custody of the Royal Mail” OWTTE.
If we are going to include these, we really need to make it clear that it’s an unofficial box. Otherwise, you (or the contributor) might conceivably be sued if an item goes missing after being posted in one of those boxes.
By the way, am I the only one who inputs last collection times ? I’ve never seen any other contributors include it.
I was thinking the other day that maybe you should modify the concept of “nearest postbox” to include only those where you could walk to before the day’s last collection.
Why do people not include the last collection times, I wonder. They’re printed on the box for all to see.
Also, could you include existing postboxes on the map when adding new ones, to assist in preventing duplications.
I’ve noticed that you’ve manually changed a few of my entries to put the last collection times in the last posting times new fields. Are you doing this manually ? I wrote these entries to assist machine parsing. If you look for a string that starts “LC:” and ends either with a semicolon or EOL, you should be able to extract the last posting data.
November 5th, 2008 at 17:59
Genius idea. One extra feature for you to consider though; I’ve just added a new box on Churwell in Leeds and accidentally spelt the location wrong (Churwekk). I didn’t notice it until the confirmation screen, sorry.
How about a ‘go back and correct it option’ on that confirmation screen. It would have helped me, and I can’t be the only eejit about to use this site
Regards,
M@
November 10th, 2008 at 20:20
Similar to Matt Ketteringham’s comment above, I think an Edit Details function (possibly within the Contribute page) would be useful. For example if someone has added a box in slightly the wrong place, or has not added details like last posting times, they can be added later when someone with the knowledge comes along.
PS. Great idea for the site.
November 18th, 2008 at 13:17
I’m a bit dubious about Matt Brice(?) allowing unfettered editing ability to the site; without a proper login facility, there is the possibility that people will maliciously delete/alter postbox data.
Having a separate field for the box number would be useful as well; it would help eliminate duplicates and give an idea as to how much of a given area was “done”.
November 26th, 2008 at 15:04
(A) Regarding ‘voluntary’ boxes; not so sure. There is one in my local Sainsbury’s but it does have a kind of Royal Mail collection plate on it, and it is on the Royal Mail’s list.
(B) There are particular locations (e.g. West Bexington in Dorset) where no matter how hard I click, it will just not submit! Any ideas?
(C) How about a way of adding photos of the boxes?
November 28th, 2008 at 23:27
I’ve just added a few post boxes but the further details field has a few issues:
1. it has escaped an apostrophe so that it appears as \’ instead of ‘
2. it has truncated the information I typed in. I don’t know whether it is stored truncated or just displayed truncated, but it has cut off some useful information.
December 22nd, 2008 at 16:52
Is there any chance of adding some form of editing facility ? This has been promised for two+ months now.
I managed to performed a FastSpot(tm) of 48+ new postboxen from a moving bus yesterday. These are backed-up on my MDA but I’m a bit reluctant to contribute them yet because I don’t have full position info (+-100m due to GPS lag and bus speed) and I don’t have LastCollexion times or Box Numbers. These absences aren’t a problem for some people so I’d *like* to add them now.
However, I don’t want to go through them in 4 months time, when I have more data and go through manually adding them again and emailing Matt to remove all the duplicates that will result.
Even some form of “submit a secret PIN” in the entry form will at least allow people to edit THEIR OWN postboxen when they get more data. This isn’t ideal but it’s the quickest solution of which I can think.
I doubt Matt will want to receive tens of daily requests of the “please move this PB 34m NNE and change LC times to HHMM etc” nature.
Regarding anb’s comment
———————–
Yes, Postboxr seems to truncate at the amersand sign. Perhaps putting it in as the HTML equivalent escape will work. It truncates on storage, not on display. This seems to be a problem with the SQL (?) parser
The escapes are a bit silly though; escaping things with backslash is supposed to be used for clean TRANSFER, not for DISPLAYING. I can only suggest that you use the HTML equivs for these as well.
I wonder what Matt thinks.
Oh, and another thing, what are we supposed to do when we get TWO postboxen with the same number, as I found in HP1 the other day: two identical dual-aperture boxen 1 meter apart, with the same number and same collexion times !
December 24th, 2008 at 17:02
Richard
There are two postboxes outside a post office by me, with the same number. I have just submitted both of them, alongside each other, noting the box number and that it is the same number as the one next to it.
(Most of those seem to have different numbers so I was surprised that they were the same - but there you go!)
December 24th, 2008 at 23:22
Chris Downer: Can you let me know where this postbox-pair is, please ? Does it show up on the .pdf as one box or two (albeit with the same number). I’ve seen postboxen paired before (such as a bizbox next to a pillar box) or for additional capacity. This (in HP1) was the first time I’d seen two physical boxen with the same number, though. I’ll have to see what’s on the .pdf
I need to do a mass upload of postboxen from time to time, and find the process of drilling down into the map (and then drilling back up again, to move the marker that I forgot I had) is getting very trying. Is there any way Matt (Matt ? Are you there ?) that I can do a mass upload using coordinates (coming from some formatted text file) rather than a map-pick?
Another thing I’d like to see is “this box was submitted by xxx”. Frequent Spotters could have a sort of login mechanism and we could have a Spotter of the Week or whatever.
Where is Matt, anyway ? The latest blog root entry is over two months old. Perhaps he wasn’t aware of the monster that he would create. Let’s see what happens to this ampersand sign in HTML -> & . Did that come out right ?
December 25th, 2008 at 13:55
Can something be done about the line-wrapping, please, Matt ?
Whenever I type in a long description, the input box wraps it, but the resultant lines are just concatenated with not even a space between. This works the same whether the entered newlines are hard or soft.
I’m still losing stuff after ampersand signs; using the HTML escape does not work.
Matt ? Matt ? Speak to us, O Leader.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:18
Hi Richard. The two postboxes with the same number are listed as one on the Royal Mail list.
December 29th, 2008 at 12:30
Chris Downer:
Yes, my pairing is listed as one box as well. I entered it as such because, at some time, Matt (wherever he’s got to (!)) will have to implement some form of duplicate detection and if it sees two boxes together (like <2m apart), then the question arises as to whether it should treat it/them as a duplication or two singles.
In case anybody’s interested (probably not), you can type HTML in the Further Details box (although without the ampersand character) so a line-break can go in as <BR> . I hope that came out right.
Where’s Matt ? Is he ill ?
December 30th, 2008 at 9:04
Sorry for the absense, PostBoxr is something that i’m running in my spare time and i’ve been very busy in my private life and will be for the first few months of next year. Don’t worry I am working on updates and they will be implemented in due course.
Richard:
I’ll post soon about how to submit a bulk upload.
January 1st, 2009 at 14:29
Welcome back, Matt. If there’s anything I can do to assist, without compromising the personal data on your web servers, I’m happy to help.
Richard [in SG1]