For people like me who are too stingy to buy software (and particularly suspicious of sites which require a monthly fee for eternity), we’re always on the lookout for freebies. One of the needs of choral directors is to make seating charts, and periodically there’s a request on the forums for computer-based solutions to address this.
I use a Word clone to make charts, but a UK-based group, the Monday Mondays, decided to make their own, JavaScript-based one. It’s free for anybody to use.
It’s a little clunky, but hey, it’s free.
Pros:
- Reasonably intuitive to use: click on a name, then click where you want it to go (can’t drag). Entering the names in the first place is kind of a pain, but that’s true for any system. Fast.
- Flexible section names (in case you have baritenors or other “transsectionals”)
- Switch two singers’ seats easily (something hard to do in Word)
- Move groups of singers at once (for example to add a singer in the middle)
- Browser-based; print directly from browser (a mixed blessing)
- Did I mention it’s free?
Cons:
- Can’t save to file; you have to do a complicated workaround to save charts from one session to the next
- Row width is limited to 15 seats (really?)
- Name length limited to 10 characters
- Fixed cell width (although you can change it manually)
- Can’t edit singer or section names within cell; have to create a new cell and discard the old one if you change somebody’s section designation
Overall: might be helpful for some users, has a lot of potential for improvement. I’ll stick with my Word clone (Apple’s Pages) for now. I’ll write to suggest to them that they might save the user’s work in a cookie rather than the multi-step process they’re using.
Zane Knudtson says
kathy kibbey cushman says
Allen H Simon says
Gary Weidenaar says
Jena Dickey says
Ryan Kelly says