why is the Zemax Forum so SLOW at loading the list of threads?

  • 15 October 2020
  • 7 replies
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Trying to read topics in the Forum is almost pointless, because refreshing the thread list is excruciatingly slow.  Why does that need to be the case?  The old Forum prior to the MyZemax portal was much better and more like normal forums on the web.  


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The other thing that affects usability is that if I'm on page 2 of the forum say, read a post, and then go back to the forum listing, it takes me back to page 1 and I then have to navigate back to the page I was on. It would be great if Back took you back to the page you were on, rather than page 1.


 


- M

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I have been meaning to post this for weeks. I thought maybe it was my company throttling the speed on this site, but I see the same slow loading times on my personal computer. I've also noticed the slow loading in the knowledgebase articles. 


Mark, a workaround I've used is just to open a forum post in another browser tab so the forum list never has to reload to page 1.

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D'oh! I knew this, but some some reason those neurons refused to fire! Thanks Sean

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I, too, have found 'Open Link in New Tab' to be my friend, but it's easy to forget to do so, and it still doesn't help when doing any navigation of the Forum pages listing of Threads.


On a similar note, Searching the KnowledgeBase is now nearly useless to me.  I'd like to be able to list all recent posts (to see what's new, as in the Forum), a feature that is teased by the 'Modified Date' box to lower left on the KnowledgeArticle search page:


https://my.zemax.com/en-US/search/?logicalNames=knowledgearticle&q=


But, alas, one cannot enter a null string (or no string) into the search box to get ALL articles in a date range, which is the expected behavior...entering nothing into the search field returns ZERO results 'No results found for query:' instead.


It's even non-intuitive to find that search page itself, not at all obvious from the landing page for KnowledgeBase!  I had to figure out that one can get there by clicking on the 'magnifier' search icon without (or with) anything in the search field.


I've already entered requests elsewhere for Originally Posted and Latest Modified dates on each KA-xxxxx page, but will repeat them here, since this is a recent MyZemax gripe thread. Didn't they appear in the earlier KnowledgeBase?  Dates, besides allowing one to keep up with recently added or modified KnowledgeArticles, would help one to know whether some older postings might be applicable to older versions of Zemax / OpticStudio (or other products).  Speaking of which, a field at the top listing which versions a KA might be limited to could come in handy, too...


And while I'm wishing, I wish for a real search, perhaps having more than one search box and/or Boolean operations, and wildcards(!!) so that one can look for posts containing e.g. 'fresnel' AND 'lens' but not necessarily adjacent, etc....  Here's a good feature from a patent database I use: a 'proximity query' such as 'fresnel lens'~3 that would find all examples in which 'fresnel' and 'lens' appear within 3 words, including 'lens fresnel,' 'fresnel objective lens,' etc.


-- Greg

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BTW, at one point I tried entering 'OpticStudio' into the search field to find all KA related to OpticStudio.  (Yes, I know there is an OpticStudio button in the 'Product Line' section on the left, but as I said above, instead of ALL articles, a search returns NO articles if there is no entry in the search field.)  No such luck.  What is returned is a list of only those articles having OpticStudio in the TITLE of the article. Shouldn't the search function penetrate the full-text body of the article?  I.e., I don't want KB Search ONLY searching the contents of the TITLES.

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Sorry, I spoke too soon.  'Search' DOES delve into the body of KnowledgeBase articles.  I proved this quickly with an example or two; one you might find amusing is choosing Product Line: OpticsBuilder and entering OpticStudio into the search field.

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Other feedback for the my.zemax page in general. It took me an embarassingly long time to realize there was actually a link to www.zemax.com on the site. I assumed by clicking 'Not a Customer' it would take me to a 'contact us' page or maybe some FAQs. It was not intuitive that was the link back to zemax.com

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