[Clipart] Some thoughts on the browsing interface

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

Carl Worth <cworth at east.isi.edu> writes:

> Currently, from the main page, it takes a few clicks before the user
> can find any images to browse. I think the main page should
> immediately present a browse interface with lots of different
> images. Functions such as Upload can be moved to other pages, since
> the casual user can't make use of them anyway, and the front page
> should be optimized more for casual users.

I think that there should be a *link* to the upload page directly from
the front page, though.

> Additionally, I think the browser interface currently partitions
> things too much. Currently, from what I can tell, each image appears
> only in a single, fully-specified category. 

I think that is the way we want to do things.  You wouldn't want to
look through all the images in a category, then go to a subcategory
and see a bunch of the same images.  However...

> For example, if I click on the Animal category, I see a single
> scorpion. If I don't know any better, I might think that that's the
> only animal in the library, and move on.

At the time of the 0.04 release, the scorpion was the only animal not
in one of the subcategories.  That will of course change.

> Instead, I think the browse interface should present images in all
> of their parent categories as well. This way, the categorization
> would provide a way to filter the results, rather than a way to show
> new images.

I *don't* think you'd want to browse through eleven hundred animal
images, then click on "birds" only to find eighty of the same images.
Even worse, if you're looking for a specific type of animal that's not
a bird nor a mammal nor any of the other subcategories, you don't want
to have to look through all eleven hundred animal images.

I think a better approach would be to add a folder icon for each
subcategory to the results for the category, to make it more
blindingly obvious that there are subcategories with more images, so
that the user doesn't draw the mistaken conclusion that the images
standing loose in the parent category are the only ones.

> As a consequence, the top-level browser interface would provide all
> available images, rather than the current interface, which provides
> no images at the top level.
  
I think the top level should show the unsorted images and toplevel
categories, just as the Animal category shows the animal images that
aren't sorted further as well as the subcategories of animal.
  
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