Major Site Upgrade

Submitted by stuart on Thu, 02/28/2019 - 09:12

Major Site Upgrade

After a year in the doldrums, the site has had a major upgrade with an update from the development server. There are innumerable bug fixes and the most notable are:

  • Added the Spanish version to the menu and it now switches language back and forth more consistently. I wish I could say seamlessly but It still has the occasional glitch. The easiest fix is to switch to another language and back again.
  • Tidied up many of the broken links. This is an on going project and there are still a few broken links to be fixed – especially in the Spanish and Korean versions.
  • Fixed up the display and fonts so the figure captions are now distinctive and the calculators look cleaner. The overall look of the site is simpler and the menu is more structured.
  • The side menu is now on a tablet. Its disappearance drove me nuts.
  • I removed the Quizzes since they were out of date and didn’t always work correctly. New ones will be added but there is no target date.
  • A note now appears if Flash is not installed. Flash can be installed for Firefox at: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ I would like to change the Flash animations to HTML5 but it is a laborious process.
  • Comments are back but feedback has been removed. There is an endless battle against spammers. Unfortunately I had to remove the feedback form due to the overwhelming amount of spam. I stlil have all your feedback notes and I am working to fix them. To leave a comment you have to login and then leave the comment. It is more laborious but the advantage is I can reply to comments.

Thanks to everyone who has left comments and/or feedback. They are invaluable for improving the site.

Comments

If possible, I would like to use a figure from the PVEducation website
in a textbook on Astronomical Instrumentation (to be published by
Taylor and Francis) - specifically, the plot in Section 3.2 on the absorption
coefficient of various materials at 300 K as a function of wavelength.

Would you be able to advise as to what I need to do to obtain formal permission
to use the figure, and what acknowledgement text would be appropriate?

Thanks in advance,

Matt Griffin
School of Physics and Astronomy
Cardiff University

Hi,

Yes you may use a couple of figures in a publication as long as you acknowledge the source. For a text book an appropriate reference (or equivalent in your reference format) is:

C.B.Honsberg and S.G.Bowden, “Photovoltaics Education Website,” www.pveducation.org, 2019.

or 

C.B.Honsberg and S.G.Bowden, “Absorption Coefficient,” page on www.pveducation.org, 2019.

While I try to keep the weblinks the same they do change around as content is added to a URL reference to a specific pager will change over the life of a textbook.

Send me an email ([email protected]) when your book is about to be published. I like to know where these things end up.

 

Stuart.

Hello, I use your site (not all the pages) for an introductory course in solar power systems. We concentrate on the pages necessary to show our students what doped silicon is, how a voltage is generated once photons are added, and how the addition of a closed circuit creates a current. Yeah! Electricity. We rely on the Flash graphics to convey these essential concepts, yet we are aware that Flash will no longer be supported come the end of 2020. What are you thinking will happen to your site once this happens? You mentioned the amount of work involved in switching over to HTML 5 -- are you considering a future? No future? Seeking donations to pay for the work?

Hello, I use your site (not all the pages) for an introductory course in solar power systems. We concentrate on the pages necessary to show our students what doped silicon is, how a voltage is generated once photons are added, and how the addition of a closed circuit creates a current. Yeah! Electricity. We rely on the Flash graphics to convey these essential concepts, yet we are aware that Flash will no longer be supported come the end of 2020. What are you thinking will happen to your site once this happens? You mentioned the amount of work involved in switching over to HTML 5 -- are you considering a future? No future? Seeking donations to pay for the work?

The future of flash is something that we have struggled with for some time now as there are no good replacements. Getting donations to pay for the work is a good idea. I will investigate the options.