The 2011 NARGS Seed Exchange

[maggiepie]

All's well that ends well.

Many thanks to all involved, I can only imagine the amount of hours that went into making this happen.
Hope your hair grows back

Happy holidays to all.

Helen Poirier

[Tom Waters]

Everything worked very smoothly for me too! Thanks to everyone who helped this come together.

[Saori]

Thanks for all your hard work! My order went as smooth as butter!

[Lori S.]

Wow, that was slick!  Thanks very much, Chris and Laura, and Joyce and Bobby (and anyone else who may have been involved), for all your hard work to set that up!  It's much appreciated.

[McDonough]

I am duly impressed of the NARGS online seed exchange ordering system... just went through it from start (first look at the seedlist) to finish (paying via PayPal), and it was so easy and seamless.  Huge kudos to NARGS WebMaster Chris Klapwijk, seed exchange director Laura Serowicz, and the whole seed exchange team!  As an IT guy myself (Information Technology), I know full well the huge amount of effort that goes on behind-the-scenes which largely goes unappreciated, but I must say to Chris in particular, the online seed ordering experience and user-interface is extremely well done (I'm a known critic of bad software implementation), the interface has all the right links, options, and User-Interface implementations... certainly worth the small delay in ironing out wrinkles, a new standard has been set. 

[Howey]

Just got it this morning - absolutely wonderful and thank you, thank you, thank you.  So easy to manage - and I need lots of "easy" these days.  Merry Christmas!  Fran

Frances Howey
London,Ontario, Canada
Zone 5b

[Lis Allison]

Wow! That was frickin' amazing!

Got my order done so slick and fast I can hardly believe it. And to see the list of what I was asking for, well, that was the icing on the cake!

Major kudos to the team - that must have have been an awful lot of work. Thank you!

[IMYoung]

I can enter the seed system to make a seed request... but I still  cannot download the list.  In the seed ordering area it does not seem possible to see who the donors of particular species are... is that possible in the downloadable list?

If so, could someone who has managed to download it, email it to me, please? I think my email is visible to all members.

I know there have been problems  and those involved in the set-up will have been distraught at the difficulties... but it is all coming together now and it will be a boon, both for the members and for those picking and packing the seed in future. well done folks!

Cheers,
 Maggi

[Dobak]

I've just sent the seedlist and orderform to you Maggi. 
By the way, when I looked at your profile, the email address was "hidden".
Regards,
Dave Dobak

[Peter George]

Which browser are you using? I have both Firefox and Explorer and only the Firefox handles the seedlist and the donor list competently.

[maggiepie]

I'm using chrome and had no problems with either downloading the list or doing the seed order.

 

[IMYoung]

Still no joy downloading the list... but I have it from Dave and also Bill Moyles, with an offer from Lori if I was still stuck...   Wonderful kind folks, all!

Peter, I use Firefox mostly, but I tried IE, and Google Chrome too.

I'm just going to close everything down and try again... that may help.  Will report back soon.
In the meantime I have made a seed request, using the very simple system   So easy to use!


Later edit: Still no luck with the downloads, I'm afraid.
21.43pm UK time

[Lserowicz]

We still haven’t had a chance to figure out why some members can’t get the pdf’s, as it seems to be a problem (or no problem at all) for a variety of browsers and operating systems...We hope to have it fixed as soon as Chris Klapwijk gets a well-deserved break.

If anyone wants a copy of any of the pdf files sent to them they may contact me at: seedintake@mi.rr.com.

The Donors list pdf is on the "Welcome to the 2011-2012 Seed Exchange" page just below where it says Additional Information.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we worked out the online ordering problems and many thanks for your kind words. Our goal was to make it as simple and useful as possible for a wide range of computer configurations - and I think Chris certainly achieved that goal!

[Jan Jeddeloh]

I placed my order last night and, wow was it slick.  While I had my list already to go I love the "click on Google" feature and ended up changing a few selections because of it.

Now that it's working it's truly impressive.  Everyone involved can pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Jan Jeddeloh

[McDonough]

Researching more on the problematic PDF download links, seems that most of the time it's due to a PDF plug-in that is trying to open the PDF within the browser, whether it is Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. So, there's probably nothing wrong with the actual links nor PDF files themselfs, but in the behavior of PDF browser plugins.  The solution is to set PDFs to open up directly in Adobe Reader instead.

The most reliable way to fix the problem is to do the following:
(ps: for me, doing these steps worked like a charm, then the PDF links worked instantaneously)

1.  Download and install Adobe Reader (do this even if you have other Adobe Acrobat products installed), you need the latest "Reader":
     Download/Install from this link (select your operating system, language, and Reader version (latest version 10.1 is recommended):
     http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/

2.  Close your internet browser.

3.  Launch Adobe Reader
     -  Go to the 'Edit' Menu and select 'Preferences'
     -  In the left column select 'Internet'
     -  Uncheck 'Display PDF in browser'
     -  Click OK

4.  Launch your internet browser, and try the links on the NARGS.ORG web page again.

Hopefully this will work for those of you having PDF download problems.  There's lots more information out there on PDF download difficulties, a few more possibilities are listed in this link:
http://library.rice.edu/services/access-to-electronic-resources/troubleshooting-pdf-downloads