I had a wonderful experience with rouxbe's recipes, at the beginning of this month we took a cruise with HAL and I took some cooking lessons, I was quite disappointed, but my husband said I would not be disappointed if my experiences with great chefs-restaurants, and as well as if I had not improved so much in my cooking thanks to rouxbe.
So thank you!

Hi,
I have been reviewing videos on the site and there are two key suggestions I have for you to enhance the site:

1. When viewing full screen, you can't rewind/forward the video in case you want to hear something (you have to get out of full screen mode to do it). This is a bit annoying so please allow full control as you would in small screen mode.

2. Login information is not stored. I have my computer logged into to this site at home, but every day for some reason, the site logs me out, then I have to refind the video I was looking for and start viewing. The site shouldn't log me out unless I log out, that way when I click on a video the following day (or week after), I can view it right away.

Other than those 2 annoyances - I love the site as always and recommend it to everyone. My wife (who never cooked much before) made a beautiful pan fried pork chop with a pan sauce thanks to these lessons, it's great!

N.

For the record, the login information is properly stored between sessions on my computer. I only ever need to login again if I happen to change computers. As long as I am using the same computer I can have multiple windows open, with a different recipe, or lesson in each. I have gone for months without ever being required to login again.

I use Mozilla Firefox, but have tested this on Internet Explorer and it also works fine. You may need to experiment a little with clearing cookies, etc.

Full-screen controls:

I agree with N.M., it would be nice to have a slider bar when running videos in full-screen mode. I can rewind to the beginning of the section, but often I just need to go back a few seconds.

Thanks for the suggestions/comments. We are working to update full screen mode to allow for rewinding and forwarding so stay tuned :-) Cheers!

Thanks Dawn. I'll test out the login problem again to confirm but I'm quite certain this happens very frequently and I can't stay logged in.

Fixing the slider for video will be excellent! Also, I'm thinking of getting the new Samsung Tablet using google's OS (droid) - have you guys made an app for that OS as well ( I know there's one for ipad).

1. For the login, aside from trying out the cookie remembering setting we are exactly sure what else we can suggest as no one else seems to be having a problem with this.

2. As for the Android OS question, I don't think we'll have an app any time soon but Rouxbe does work fine through a browser on Android phones. Our CTO (head developer) uses it on his Android phone. You may just have to install Flash manually. And just to be clear we do not actually have an iPad app, we just have a slightly different web experience that lets our videos play on an iPad.

Hope this helps to clear things up. Cheers!

Is there a way to search within the forums? There are so Many discussions so to flick page by page takes too long. For instance there may be a discussion that someone started on sauces but i might not find it if it's buried on the 18th page.

Good point, this is something that we are working on. In the meantime, I just want to make sure you know that you need to click through to the "discussion" tab to see the forum thread searches. Cheers!

Hi Dawn,
Thanks for your answers earlier, I went out and bought the new Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 which would make it easier to use the cooking school in the kitchen (instead of my den) and unfortunately it doesn't work!

When I load up the site, it asks me to upgrade my flash player, which I did (to version 10.3) and it still says to upgrade my flash player....HELP!

Can you please have your web developer look into this? I'm using android 3.1 (honeycomb) for tablets. You also mentioned that you've made a workaround for the Ipad, is there are url I can use on my droid tablet that would also work in the meantime?

Thanks!!

Could you go to the URL http://rouxbe.com/browser-diagnostics using your tablet? Click on the link "Send test results to Rouxbe" on that page (left-hand side). That'll send me some diagnostics information that can help me troubleshoot the problem.

I'm running Android 2.3 on the Motorola Atrix, and the videos work fine with the Flash player, so hopefully we can find a solution that works with 3.1 on the Samsung Galaxy.

As for the IPad version, unfortunately we look specifically for that system before serving up the videos that are designed for it. If we can't get the Flash player working on the Samsung Tablet, I'll see if I can find a way to get the IPad video versions available for Android 3.1 as a workaround.

Regards,

Bruce

In case anyone else experiences problems with Rouxbe on the Samsung Galaxy Tablet, we've figured out that tablet by default is configured to not run Flash in the web browser. To fix this, you can follow the instructions given here:

http://www.mobile88.com/news/read.asp?file=/2011/8/20/20110820194234&phone=samsung-galaxy-tab-10.1-tips-tricks-how-to-enable-flash

Regards,

Bruce

Hello,

I only started using the site yesterday, but so far like the experience for the most part. A couple of suggestions:

1) The option to view discussions in threads. IE: If I post a question or comment or want to follow someone else's questions/comment, it would be nice see all the responses as a nested thread. The current view is more like just a list of comments and to see responses to specific questions you need to scroll through all of the comments.

2) While I certainly enjoy the ability to move to any lesson that I am currently interested in, a recommended order or curriculum/lesson plan would make the experience a little more comforting to those who really don't have a set direction that they want to go in. With so many topics to choose from, it can be a little daunting at first.

Now I am off to make another omelet. Yum.

Hi,

I do love getting notified when someone makes a comment on one of the the threads I'm watching.

However, it would be nice to only get one email per topic no matter how many people commented after that initial comment. In other words, if 10 people make a comment on the same thread, I get 10 emails notifying me.

I'd like to have the option to not re new my subscription to any particular thread until I click on the thread link that comes in my email. When I click on that subscription link on my email, it would automatically renew my subscription. Understand?

Do you already have this and I'm not aware of it?

Thanks!

Hi Aaron and Jude,

Thanks for your feedback. We are always looking to improve the user experience, and have been considering improvements to the forums. I'm not sure when we would actually implement these improvements, but it's definitely on our list of to-dos.

Thanks,

Bruce

It would be nice if we could post comments and questions on the drilldowns and Tips and Techniques. Thanks!

I LOVE Rouxbe! Ok, now that that's out of the way...

I'm a little disappointed with the new layout. I really appreciated the way I could find your recipes by protein (chicken/beef/pork) or by theme (Chinese/Italian/Mexican). That set up made it SO easy to find what I wanted to make that night.

Now, however, it seems a little more disorganized...I can only narrow it down to "mains" or "sides" or whatever which really isn't that helpful. Now when my husband tells me he has a taste for Mexican, I miss being able to go to "Mexican" and see all of those choices. When I feel like chicken, I can no longer just see all chicken recipes...I have to scroll through pages and pages of "mains." It was so much better (in my humble opinion) to be more specific with the search as far as recipes.

Perhaps I'm not just understanding it correctly and there IS a way to see the recipes the old way...if not, it's just no longer helpful to me and I sort of dread coming online and searching through things I don't need to see only to choose tonight's meal. :-(

One 'solution' to Laurie J's request is to allow us to build our own recipe box, and categorize our favourite recipes as we please. Even better would be to allow us to add a particular recipe to more than 1 category.

That way, as I discover my favourite recipes, either by browsing the recipe pages, or through the practice tab of the various lessons, I can build lists of recipes categorized by meal type (Chinese, Mexican, Italian, etc) and/or by recipe type (Soups, Salads, Desserts, Breads, Sauces, Appetizers), or any other category that is meaningful and helpful to me. It could also allow me to add personal notes to each recipe

Wow! That's a really great idea. I have had to try and memorize a few words in recipe titles I saw in the past because I can no longer find them quickly the 'new' way. From there I try searching for it with the key words I hope that I can remember. Ai yai yai!

Yes, a personal recipe box to put things in so I can find them again would be great...as well as going back to the old way of being able to search by protein or ethnic category.

Hi Laurie,

We used to have landing pages (e.g. Mexican, Asian, etc), but these were removed because many new users to the site thought this was the entire cooking school.

However, to achieve the same results, simply type in "Mexican" or "Italian" in the search bar and voila... you'll find all the same recipes.

As for the recipe box, you can bookmark recipes using the bookmark icon at top of any recipe. To find your bookmarked recipes simply go to 'My Rouxbe" and then click on the "Bookmarks" tab, which is located to the left of the page, under your profile picture.

We do plan on adding some features here but the cooking school side of Rouxbe (being a cooking school) always seems to take priority over recipes (as we are not a recipe site). However, we will be implementing some new features here at some point - promise.

Cheers,
Joe

Hi Rouxbe,

It seems as though everytime I read the forum someone is asking about a lesson on a specific topic.
Is there a list anywhere that students could look at that indicates upcoming lessons?
Not that I need a lot more, as I am still working through what is here :)

Andrew

Ahhh, we know our students are eager to see what is on our production schedule, but just like any great magazine or series of novels, they don't pre-release what each issue/book is going to be about :)

We can say that once we complete a basic culinary curriculum, we'll be moving on to more pastry and advanced culinary lessons. Just know that we are working hard to write and produce new lessons on a regular basis. We hope you understand :) Cheers!

So when I finish all 74 lessons, there will be more? I hope so.

I guess hunger is the best sauce...:)

Hi, excellent site, love the lessons, video can really teach things that are hard to grasp in even the best books.

I am sure you have many international users like me. First , I really acknowledge that the language used is extremely clear and easy to understand for users like me whose mother tongue is not English. My only complaint is that only imperial measures are used throughout the lessons, and some of us may use metric. For example, I had to be back-and-forth with a units translator open in another browser tab when watching the boiling-simmering-poaching lessons, to make sense of the farenheit temperatures. Given that those videos are already recorded, or that saying the conversion aloud in both units system may slow down things, why not edit the videos and simply show the conversion in small text at the bottom whenever a measure is used? That would really make things easier for all non-imperial users.

I've been meaning to learn how to Cook for years but never got inspired ... until Rouxbe. Now loving it.

First and foremost, just keep the lessons coming. Great to hear that you are planning on more advanced culinary lessons (pastry etc).

I echo Enrique's message about Metric. Also, feel that recipes/videos could be a little clearer as to the quantity of servings that will be produced.