feedback on my software project
 

Let me start by saying I am the developer of www.kanakku.com. I made the site to be a hassle free spreadsheet/calculator alternative. I don't want users to create accounts, register, download extra tools, or spend money to use my site.

The site has been up for less than a month, and I wanted to get some feedback from other programmers. The site itself was made using j2ee and icefaces. Also the security for the site is done through iptables. What do you think of the site? Should I change the design? Should I make changes to the security? Is the UI appropriate? How is the performance? What would you add or remove? Any feedback you can give would be appreciated.

I am currently working on adding graphing to the site. Thanks for the help.

First, I won't use a web-based spreadsheet because of privacy considerations. A local program will work just as well.

But I took it for a spin anyway, and the first thing I noticed was that I couldn't use the arrow keys to go from one cell to the next. That's where I stopped.

Thanks for the feedback. Actually I don't track any of the edits you make to the spreadsheet. I intentionally did this because I also don't like having my edits tracked. Also, not having a database saves me the cost and hassle of maintaining a backend database.

For your other concern. You can move between the cells with the arrow key. In order to do this hold down the ctrl key and then press the arrow key. You can see some of the basic usage of the site by watching the tutorial video http://www.kanakku.com/pages/help/video.html.

I'm not sure why I would ever need this---maybe if I'm at an Internet kiosk that provides nothing but a browser. BUT--if I'm at such a kiosk, I'm most likely on vacation and not doing spreadsheets.

This aside, the site in it's current form is lacking some very fundamental capabilities---eg summation,and constructing equations be clicking on cells.

I like the tabs with functions, but you would need to add the other common things like financial.

Finally, can you download your work as an Excel-compatible file? If not, that would be a deal-breaker.

How to add up the values of cells?

I need to make another tutorial video to describe the additional functionality.

Summation can be done by making a multi selection and clicking the add button then making the second multi selection. Be default the app will add items on each row (so you are doing a summation on each row). To change this default behavior you need to go to option and preferences then select a new value for "handle multi selection by". Selecting "Aggregate" will do a summation of all the values in both selections. All binary operations like + or - or * need two multi selection values. Unary operators like log only need one multi selection. Matrix multiplication counts as a binary operator along with all the other matrices functions.

Yes you can download the spreadsheet as a csv file or upload a csv file into the spreadsheet to continue your work. This is important because I don't auto backup your changes or keep track of your edits. Only csv is supported at this time.

You add values by writing the formula you have without =. So you would enter a formula like 7+9+3^3-sin(4)/(5)^(1/2) and then press the enter key or the = symbol on the calculator. You can't add cells like b4+b5+b6 yet. But you can multi select two or more cells and preform the + operation.

The app is still in beta, and I appreciate the feedback. I am working on other enhancements, but I think I might start working on HKO's problem after I finish what I am doing.