General notes

This is another update with some new features and improvements.

General online interface

  • improved analysis of experiment data (check your experiments, analyze section)

  • Mac Safari fully supported (all tested on version 12)

New in experiments

  • Quick overview of all commands/instructions (documentation still being improved)

  • you can now use "else" in if statements (documentation)

  • expressions do not need to contain spaces (documentation)

  • you can use "text" in blocks (documentation)

  • improved use of text variables (documentation)

  • improved use of color names for "show" instructions (see below)

  • improved fullscreen and scaling (documentation)

A major new feature is that you can scale experiments to fullscreen. Using the option scale, you can make sure that in fullscreen the experiment fits in the participant’s screen resolution. Without option scale, the experiment will not change size when going into fullscreen (this is how it used to be before this version).
You can adjust the size of the box in which experiments are shown when not in full screen mode. Use the option frame for this (documentation)

New use of colors

The R G B color coding is useful, but there is a simpler shortcut when you simply want to quickly show a shape or text in a certain color. This is in addition to the use of RGB. Note that RGB use is necessary when you want to set colors via variables or via a table.

Example of use of colornames
show rectangle 0 0 100 100 green
show text "hello" 0 0 blue
show circle 0 0 100 red
show background yellow
show line 0 0 200 200 grey

New in online surveys

  • new boxes layout (watch video)

  • improved useability in edit survey screen

  • option to only use completed surveys in analysis

  • participants can always choose fullscreen underneath an experiment

  • set the minimal/maximal number of characters in a textline or textbox. minchar and maxchar in textline (documentation)

  • range questions now by default require participants to click the range slider at least once (unless o: free is selected)

  • range questions show question mark if slider not yet clicked (unless you choose o: no_number)

About the changed range question

From now on, range questions work more similarly to scale questions. By default, participants will have click the slider at least once in order to get a value.

For the rare situations where researchers want to allow participants to skip range questions, use the option o: free. In that case, in your data file, you will see a NA value (which is the same for scale questions).

The main advantage of this is that people cannot give "wrong" default answers. That is, by forgetting to click a range and then getting an answer that is not what they wanted.

Take for example the following:

l: age
t: range
o: free
q: How old are you?
- {min=18,max=100,start=18}

In this example, you show a range slider and it starts with value 18. New is that if people do not click it, you will get an NA value in your data file. Also, because of the o: free line, people can skip it.