I did a pretty huge update on myhttp://209.46.18.232/wiers.us/skyalc/workbench.php :

- Results now display names and prices along with effects and ingredients for each recipe, which doesn't really change how its used, but DOES allow the results to be sorted by value (with obvious benefits).

- There is an actual working input for your inventory - its the default for the "ingredients" tab. This is actually just a modification to the old "excluded ingredients" input; the search now excludes the stuff you do NOT mark as having in your inventory.
(I'd noticed from browsing the permalinks that people were probably trying to list their entire inventory as "prefered ingredients". Rather than fight human nature, I made it much easier to do what people were already trying to achieve; enter their inventory as a baseline for further work. The "preferred ingredients" page is better for narrowing down results, so is no longer the default.)

- Repaired the permalinking issues, so that its possible to save / share settings and search results as bookmarks.


Hope folks enjoy, and can give feedback on other improvements they would like. In the works is the ability to have the recipe values calculated based on character specific information (skill level, perks, fortification enchantments). I'm wondering if the permalinking system will still be good enough for people once that's in place (IE, the permalink would encode both the recipe settings AND the character skill) or if I should add user accounts that are specific to a character, and have the user account information modify the search parameters in a permalink. Obviously, the later would take a lot more work, and it also comes with some (manigable) security concerns.

I've also noticed is that some of my results (in terms of value calculations) are slightly different from those found in other tools, but its like a 1 septim difference, probably from rounding. On the other hand, I also list a lot of recipes some other tools don't. I don't THINK this is due to any flaw in my tool (or others) but simply due to differences in search methods / goals. But if somebody DOES happen to spot a bad recipe in my listing, or knows of one that is missing, I'm hoping they will let me know!

Also, since my wife keeps harping on it, should I try to make money off this? She thinks I should charge a one time fee for account access, but I don't think she understands how unlikely that is to go over, and the added headaches involved. (That's one place where app developers have a big advantage!)

(NOTE - no, this is NOT a mod related post. Its about a web tool that contains 'spoilers & hints' for alchemy recipes)

EDIT: I didn't know what this was, I though you posted here by mistake, sorry.

Great site,once I figured it out.Only took a few minutes but I allready learned something.
I'm going to play around with it more when I have time.

Thanks. "A few minutes" is still pretty long to figure out how to use a website (few people will bother) so any suggestions you have on making it more obvious how to do things would be appreciated.

The instructions page is pretty detailed, but if people HAVE to read it the first (or second) time they visit the site, I'm probably doing something wrong.

A few minutes coming from me doesn't meen much and I don't know how to make it any better.

I do have a question on the values of the potions.
How are these values figured?At what alchemy level do these values apply and are there any perks aplied?
I do like these values as they help in finding good potions to make for leveling purposes.

They are based on a character with 100 skill and no perks or enchantment augmentations. I've added a tooltip (hover / mouse-over on the values) to that effect.
Unless you have some perks that boost specific effects and not others (such as "physiscian") the values you produce will all be the same multiple of the ones listed.

I calculate these values dynamically based off the values of the individual effects, so (once I build the interface to input and store the needed values) it will be possible to calculate them for any specific character's skill / perk / enchantment augmentations, based off user input. I'll probably want user accounts for that, so that people can easily save their character info and so when you visit a permalink / recipe book listing you get value etc results specific to your own character.

I don't know if it's wise to expose your site's IP like that, but oh well.

Err sorry, that was the only thing that stood out like a rusty nail to me.

The IP address of a server is (by necessity) "exposed" to anybody who visits any website. That's what IP address means - its the number that is used to access a computer (in this case a web server) on the internet. When you type in something like "www.foofoo.net/horse-stilts.asp", you send that domain name to a domain name server, which then returns the IP address of the server. So if you've visited a website, you (be definition) knew its IP adress. Or at least, it was in your computers memory somewhere. Browsers with good dev tools make it very easy to see that, info and a lot of other stuff about any website you visit.

I'm just bypssing that process, because you generally need to pay money or do a lot of extra work to get your servers IP listed with a DNS server. Usually the people you pay for hosting take care of that (and take an extra few bucks for the work) but I get my hosting for free through my job, and don't want the added hassle. If I ever do register with a DNS, the IP address will still work (and is in fact a faster way to get the same result).

Try this one: http://74.125.230.193/ - you'll see google!

The reason people don't normally link to an IP address is because IP adresses are hard to remember and even harder to tell apart. That means (for example) somebody could give you the link to http://74.135.230.193/ and set up there pretending to be google, and you probably wouldn't know the difference between the two. That's a problem when the link is supposed to be your bank; its not a problem when the link is a toy you get game information from.