Some issues

food4Rhino
1

Since there was a questionnaire on F4R recently I wanted to bring my main issues up here too:

  • Speed. F4R is extremely slow for me, sometimes my browser even is telling me it can’t be reached at all.
    If I browse through the available plugins (I’m especially interested in GH modules) it is really painful to sit and wait until the tenth page finally shows up. I know it’s a first world problem but I think it would be good to see if the used system can use some kind of cache or other ways to speed reaction speed up - it’s not as if there are terrabytes of data involved… :wink:

  • What I find extremely irritating is that the offered sorting on “Last Updated” does not relate to the plugin itself being updated but also to the latest comments. So you think “Hey, awesome, my favourite plugin got updated!” - only to find that it’s still the same old version from 2013 but somebody asked if there ever will be an update.
    IMO the comments should not be part of the “Last Updated” ranking, only real updates to the plugin itself.
    Latest comments could be another option if needed.

  • It would be great if the site would remember me longer. It seems that very often when I visit F4R I have to log in again. It’s not a real problem, I can save the PW in my browser, but I think it would make sense for a site like F4R to remember the user pretty much forever? Not sure if maybe the cookie needs a longer lifetime?

  • A nice feature would be to be able to subscribe to certain plugins, so you don’t have to check all of them regularly (a working “Last Updated” category would help there too). While I can post a comment and subscribe to further comments, I don’t see a way to subscribe to the plugin and updates.

  • The “Remote” application isn’t really helping. It’s also very slow for me and when downloading a GH plugin with it from within Rhino, it tells me to close Rhino to install the plugin.While I understand that Rhino can’t load plugins at runtime, somehow it would feel much more user friendly if Remote would create a kind of queue of all the plugins I’m interested in and install them in one go.
    I wasn’t able to download a second plugin after the first told me to restart Rhino - which makes it rather tedious. Something like a queue seems to be there in theory (when I click on a download a new windows pops up “Items for Download - Grasshopper Add-ons” but the plugin I clicked wasn’t listed, the windows stayed empty.
    And finally: Remote doesn’t find the libraries I’ve already installed without it.

I’m a big fan of F4R and would really like to see it updated with a bit more fluid workflow.

Thanks and cheers,

Tom

4 Likes
3

Hi Thomas,

First of all I’m very sorry for this huge delay in the answer. I guess we, at food4Rhino development team, were not really watching this category on Discourse but this is now fixed.

The new food4Rhino website has been online since the end of October and I wonder if you have had the opportunity to use it.

This new version should be a lot faster than the old one, that was our main priority.

Last Updated does not take into account the reviews anymore. Apps are marked as updated only if their content was modified. There are still some issues but we are keeping track of them and trying to make the system even more accurate.

As for the log-in, I feel like it is now keeping it longer, but if you could confirm it, that would help us.

The Subscribe option is on our list of wishes.

Remote is now dismissed and it should be replaced by a feature integrated in Rhino 6.

I would be glad to hear about your experience on the new website.

Thank you!

Cécile

5

Hehehhe - well, you seem to have been aware of the main flaws even without me :wink:

The new site is much much better indeed, fast and fluent.

I personally find the header slider superfluous - everybody who knew the old site will immediately know that the site is new and so that big slider shouting it at me feels silly and distracting. Since it’s a very specific site about Rhino and Grasshopper extensions with no relevance for anybody not using those, I think you can keep it less “loud” in self-advertising. I personally would get rid of the slider altogether or just have one static, cool theme-image up there. What you say there now is self-evident. :wink:

I had to log-in today, but if you feel it helps with security to make the cookie time out after a while, I have no real problem with it. I’m not as often on F4R these days since I shifted most of my generative work from Grasshopper to Houdini, so I can’t say if the time was extended.

To dismiss Remote makes sense, it was rather weird and disconnected.

So yes, overall things are good.

Thank you!!!

Cheers,

Tom