[Clipart] Some thoughts on the browsing interface

[Jon Phillips]

We could also just take the google approach and have a large search box
at the top of the page. Feelin' Lucky?

Jon


On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 03:31, Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:
> 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.
>   
-- 
Jon Phillips

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